Douyin's Li Liang discusses short dramas and AI creation, calls on peers to compete in the open and criticizes expert self-media

Douyin's Li Liang speaks out again on the development of short dramas, full text below:

Recently people have been talking about short dramas quite a bit, so I'll also share my personal view. Short dramas and traditional film and television dramas are not fundamentally different; only the medium is different and the form of expression is different. Neither is better or worse than the other. Imagine if a short drama were changed into 45-minute episodes or 90-minute episodes—would it be very different from a TV series or a film? I think the core is content quality. This short-drama format developed relatively late, and under the attention and criticism of all sectors of society, its content and quality have improved very quickly. In particular, the participation of a large number of knowledgeable and educated creators has greatly improved the overall creative quality of short dramas. Recently, Hongguo released a short drama titled "Fish Skin Brings New Patterns," which is about the wisdom of getting through winter in severe cold—the national-level intangible cultural heritage Hezhe fish-skin crafting technique: one fish-skin garment requires about fifty cold-water fish skins, which are shade-dried, pounded soft with wooden mallets, sewn together with fish-skin thread, and then adorned with cloud patterns and wave patterns; it blocks wind and keeps out dampness, and can accompany a hunter through a night in deep snow. In the drama, craftswoman You Kexin leads returning young people in making fish-skin paintings and starting livestreams, and in the end passes the old fish-skin knife to her apprentice. I recommend taking a look.

In addition, with the development of AI, video creation centered on short dramas will see unprecedented development, especially in historical dramas, science fiction dramas, and other areas, showing scenes that are very difficult for traditional production methods to complete at low cost. In the next few years, I believe its creative power will be fully comparable to Hollywood blockbusters and has great development potential. Precisely because of this, we see many peers, including Tencent's Green Bubble, joining in and gaining very good market share, developing very quickly. I hope everyone can compete in the sunshine and develop healthily together.

I also want to talk about expert self-media. In recent years, many experts have transitioned to self-media, and their fees are several times or even more than ten times higher than those of ordinary self-media. I think as long as the market accepts it, it is reasonable, but there are ways even on the way; basic moral norms must still be followed. We have observed that Mr. Qin Shuo attended a certain company's creator carnival on the 23rd and delivered an important speech; on the 24th, he posted in his own Moments deep, bone-deep praise for one of that company's film and television dramas (see screenshot); on the 26th, reportedly based on August data from Japan's Nomura, he wrote the so-called "Byte Time." We pointed out that this characterization does not conform to the facts and is very imprecise, but Mr. Qin Shuo still insisted on using that title and on making this characterization of the industry. In our own discussions, we felt it may be that the "interested parties" behind the scenes insisted that he make this characterization, which is very inconsistent with his original expert style.