Rhino Entertainment Original
Wen Yueban edited by Pu Fang
Many people are aware that the era of AI has arrived, but the release of SORA is still shocking how quickly and violently the new era has come. The past half month can be called the "aftershock" period after the release of SORA.
The B side of the rapid development of technology is a series of chaos that detonated when the AI storm hits, and the Gemini AI model is pointed out that the historical images generated are sometimes inaccurate, and the "Godfather of China's AI" jokingly called by netizens in this side has been banned and the course has been removed from the entire network. Everyone is in the fog of a new environment, and the only thing that is certain is that if you don't learn, you will be eliminated.
Film and television is one of the industries with the strongest sense of shock, and the rapid expansion of SORA in the field of culture and life** has made AI production seem to be close to reality. How to understand and grasp the new era has become a compulsory course for film and television people.
The forerunners have already set out. Just a few days before the release of SORA, a short drama "White Fox" with a "full AI production process" attracted a lot of attention in the industry.
*Lin Zhiqiang is born in radio and television, and served as the vice president of Youku in Alibaba, responsible for variety shows, commercialization and content industrialization business, and has been the leader of many variety shows and evening projects in the industry. Lin Zhiqiang, who has been deeply involved in the industry for many years, resigned more than a year ago to start a business and became the founder of Touchfei Ruituo, and created this "White Fox". His insights and thoughts on the AIGC industry from the perspective of a content creator may inspire practitioners.
Lin Zhiqiang said to Rhino Entertainment: "After Sora appeared, my feeling wasAIGC is no longer an outlet, nor is it a wave, it will become sunshine and air in the future. ”
A "lead".
Ice and snow swept across the land, everything withered, and the cold killed all ...... lifeAccompanied by the old voice, an ancient story opened the curtain to the audience: the world is full of desires, and the magic weapon of the immortal descending gold pill awakens the white fox and goes to the world; The picture flashed over the desolate and boundless snowfield, the battlefield of thousands of troops and horses, and the golden fairy mountain waiting. And no matter the script, lines, and ** of "White Fox" are all generated by AI.
It is necessary to know that the controllability and consistency of AI Wensheng ** has always been the biggest difficulty plaguing the industry, but "White Fox" can complete the dramatic presentation of AI ** multiple scenes, multiple characters, and multiple story lines, and realize the upgrade from AI ** to AI short drama, as the first AI drama in China, it is definitely a big leap.
How?
Behind this, Lin Zhiqiang and his team have gone through more than two months of trial and error, "Before the emergence of SORA, all the tools we used had more or less efficiency problems, and we needed to make a lot of attempts and take a lot of detours, and finally we were able to achieve the effect of consistency, consistency, and interactivity, which we think is acceptable." ”
Perhaps, as Lin Zhiqiang said, "White Fox", which is limited by technical tools, still has strong experimental attributes. However, through the precipitation of experience, its breakthrough in production cost and efficiency has shown outstanding value to the industry.
Lin Zhiqiang. From writing the script with the AIGC tool to finally completing the three films, it took a total of 20 days; The cost is only the necessary labor, equipment, and licensing costs"The full cost of a single minute is several thousand yuan, RMB."
The content and effects presented are impossible to present in the current live-action short dramas. Lin Zhiqiang summarized the advantages of AI production, in addition to reducing costs and improving efficiency, another key point is to "liberate creativity"."The core is aesthetics, there is nothing mysterious about tools, everyone can use them, but everyone will use the same tools to make different content." Therefore, the more AI is used, the more important aesthetics and creativity will be. ”
At present, the team has accumulated a complete set of workbooks for AI film and television, continuing and replicating the certainty of this advantage. This is not simple, because the biggest problem is how to achieve the "industry leadership" that Lin Zhiqiang hopes in the rapid iteration of technology development in the early stage.
Shortly after the first three episodes of "White Fox" were launched, Sora was born, which made Lin Zhiqiang sigh"We finally learned to use an old-fashioned rifle, and as a result, people are already using fully automatic rifles."Problems that once required a lot of energy to overcome are no longer a problem under the new technology.
In fact, Lin Zhiqiang has long been mentally prepared for this"My goal for our team is to be industry-leading. Whether it is the stage of an old-fashioned rifle or a fully automatic rifle, we must continue to practice our internal skills and continue to launch works. According to him, during the Spring Festival, the team is tracking the announcement of all technical solutions and various interpretations, and making reserves for the production of content through SORA.
This process of catching up with technology is by no means meaningless, and the marksmanship practiced with the "old rifle" has formed muscle memory, and it will be able to adapt to the "fully automatic rifle" more quickly in the future; "The tests that we do on the Runway, on the Midjourney, will become a part of the digital asset for us, and it will be a very important foundation for future development. ”
Behind the insistence of "leading" is the positive judgment of Lin Zhiqiang and the Touchfei Ruituo team on the future"I think the fun is that we're running at full capacity, and SORA is the sports car that will appear on this road, will there be fighter jets in the future? It's entirely possible. ”
A "revolution".
After 20 years in the content industry, Lin Zhiqiang's preference for technology is one of Lin Zhiqiang's main labels. He was the most active advocate and initial practitioner of virtual shooting and production in the industry, and also created the country's first virtual New Year's Eve concert at the beginning of his business.
Over the course of my career,The realization of ideas is largely limited by the limitations of technology. Lin Zhiqiang said, "The basic ecology of the industry is that people who engage in content do not understand technology, and those who engage in technology do not understand content, and content and technology are separated from the upstream and downstream relationships." But in the future, if the combination with technology is still the same as in the past, there is path dependence and inertial thinking, I think it will be eliminated. ”
"In the past, we talked about creating industrial film and television production, but in my opinion, it was not a revolutionary change, but more of an improvement and optimization. But AIGC is revolutionary. ”
This "revolutionary" can be summed up in three aspectsProduction boundaries, production methods, production relations.
The first is the production boundary, which Lin Zhiqiang describes as "what you think is what you get".The production mode of the traditional ** industry determines the threshold of creation and also restricts the execution of ideas, but in the AIGC era, this production boundary will be greatly liberated, "what you think in your head, as long as you express it in words, you can get the ** content you want." ”
The second is the production method, the entire workflow of the script, shooting and post-production has been subvertedWhat used to take hundreds of people to work together could be done by one person with a few pieces of software, and the results are amazing, and "it will lead to the third change that I just talked about next, and I think there is a great opportunity for startups in the future, and the relationship between platforms and creators will change." ”
At the level of production relations, Lin Zhiqiang put forward the concept of "super creator".
When the threshold for creation is lowered, the production of content is liberated, and a single person can become a production and output platform, then the ultimate test is the creator's aesthetic and innovation ability, "In the past, creators were still heavily dependent on the platform in a sense, and in the AIGC era, a super creator can form a vertical content platform, and they will have more voice and creative space in the face of the platform." ”
This is also the most important part of the so-called "revolutionary", and Lin Zhiqiang judges that it will also bring great opportunities for future start-ups.
And this "revolutionary change" needs to be commercialized to complete the final closed loop.
For a long time, Lin Zhiqiang has been on the future development direction of the industryIt has formed the cognition of "content + technology + commercialization", and technology should realize value through content and land through commercialization. However, AIGC's production characteristics of low cost, short cycle and fast feedback will naturally be more certain.
In the current environment, customers have become more and more cautious in their choice of commercial cooperation, even if they have a budget in hand, brands also want to have more certain and efficient delivery channels, and AI content is expected to become a must in the future in addition to variety shows, dramas, short dramas and other content forms. Lin Zhiqiang revealed that in the script and finished film of "White Fox", space for brand cooperation was reserved this time.
As a "new quality productivity" in the film and television industry, AIGC relies on the ecological model of "content + technology + commercialization", which will most likely bring about changes in the industry. This is a path that Lin Zhiqiang, as a deep cultivator and pioneer in the content industry, has sorted out with high certainty.
If AIGC is only regarded as a production aid, it is a small matter, because it does not take into account its infinite boundaries and infinite possibilities. When it opens up to be big enough, you'll have more awareness of this new worldAIGC will be infrastructure, it will be sunshine and air. Lin Zhiqiang said.
A kind of "future".
After the completion of the first three episodes of "White Fox", Lin Zhiqiang did not cooperate or promote it on a large scale with great fanfare, but only uploaded it to the ** account and Douyin account of Touchfei Ruituo Company, but it still attracted the attention of a large number of industry insiders, leaving a lot of likes and **.
We haven't released and disseminated it as a complete and real commercial project, and we are only exploring a small step from ** to series; With the advent of tools like SORA, I hope that the story of "White Fox" will get better and better, gradually serialized, and of course, it will match the corresponding dissemination. ”
After "White Fox", Touchfei Ruituo still has the planning of the entire AI content systemAnd the style of this first step shows a long-term and professional tendency. This kind of restraint is based on a practice based on Lin Zhiqiang's understanding of the industry.
First, we will carefully exercise the ability to "tell stories" with AI, and then gradually find a window period for experimental and commercial docking. At present, two of the four projects in the plan are the presentation of classic Chinese stories, one focuses on the combination of culture and tourism, and there is also a hard science fiction long drama. The ideas of these development plans are intended to amplify the advantages of AIGC in terms of content.
"The most suitable genre is science fiction and fantasy, and the underlying logic is actually oriental aesthetics. ”Lin Zhiqiang specifically mentioned, "Many good stories in China have not been filmed and visualized, so whether we can achieve a breakthrough through AI is also a direction we hope to explore." ”
And this development concept reflects a key word of Lin Zhiqiang's positioning of Touchfeiruituo: "differentiation".
Under the current industry environment and business model, I can't guarantee that we are a company that can make a lot of money, but I hope that it will firmly become a company with outstanding advantages and obvious differentiation in the integration of "content + technology + commercialization". We want to do what technology companies can't do, Internet companies can't do well, and we are good at. ”
Perhaps it should be thought that it is inevitable that Lin Zhiqiang and Touchfei Ruituo can take the lead in launching "White Fox" produced by "all AI".
Facing the sea of stars in the era of AI content, pioneers have seen new opportunities. With the transformation of production relations, more new people can get opportunities; The difficult start of the film and television industrialization process does not rule out a fast channel to directly enter the intelligent. With the rapid iteration of AI products, this process may be faster than imagined.
At this juncture, companies such as TouchFit Ruituo are showing strong differentiation and scarcity in the industry, getting out of path dependence, and finding direction for the industry in the unknown fog. Lin Zhiqiang compared the current film and television AI industry to "a fetus restless in the mother's womb", and it is worth affirming that "White Fox" is making the first immature "first cry" for this "fetus".