can the cross-border communication between online novels and short videos continue?
2024-08-31
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author: xiao yingxuan (associate researcher, school of literature, shandong university)
there are many such videos on short video platforms: "subway surfers" games, soap cutting, cake making and other decompression materials, with ai (artificial intelligence) dubbing automatically generated from online novel text. this type of video is called "(novel) push video" by the creator and is widely popular on video platforms. as the name suggests, the original intention of the emergence of push videos is to promote online literature.
previously, there were two main forms of videos for promoting online literature: one was "fan-made videos" produced by readers and fans, which often took the form of film and television clips, songs, etc., and required secondary creation based on the novel text; the other was "storytelling videos" with real people appearing or speaking, mostly in which book bloggers retell and explain the plot of the novel, focusing on conveying the blogger's personal reading experience, as well as his or her attitude of recommendation or complaint.
these two forms have existed for a long time before the rise of short videos. most of the time, they are produced spontaneously by fans and have not been fully commercialized. with the rise of short video platforms and traffic algorithms, some emerging online literature platforms, especially the "new media text" and free reading platforms that were also born under the logic of traffic, need to explore a new form of video tweets that can convert novels into videos more easily and quickly, and tweet videos came into being. compared with the first two forms, it has lower production costs, faster speeds, and is more suitable for mass production. it does not require creative adaptation of text. today's ai dubbing can more conveniently convert text into voice automatically, and there are also massive, ready-made material libraries for decompressing videos to choose from; it does not require the emotional participation of creators, has no "fan" attributes, and does not provide value orientation for recommendation or not.
after being produced, the tweet videos will be released to major platforms, not only attracting traffic to the novel, but also to the short video platform, and thus receiving dual encouragement from online literature and short video platforms. early tweet videos were supported by online literature platforms, and creators often only excerpted part of the novel in order to attract readers to the serialized platform to read. in order to cope with this loss of traffic, short video platforms have launched built-in reading areas and have begun to collect and produce tweet videos that can show the complete novel text. readers no longer need to go to external platforms to read, thereby achieving on-site conversion of traffic.
with the dual encouragement of online literature and short video platforms, tweet videos have quickly established a mature industry chain. the production process can be described as repetitive and mechanical, and even first-time users can easily do it: just extract the novel text, copy it to the dubbing software, generate audio, select, download and unzip the video material, combine the video material and dubbing audio in the editing software, match subtitles, add background music, and a tweet video is ready. some specialized production tools have been developed very well, which can automatically create cover images, automatically extract text based on novel links, and even support direct input of links from most online literature platforms. ai dubbing also has a variety of tones and speeds for video producers to choose from.
however, because the production method is too simple, some video platforms will automatically judge it as a "low-cost creation" type because the images of the tweets are highly overlapped or repeatedly moved (i.e. repeatedly posted on multiple platforms), which in turn limits the traffic of the tweets. in response to this, the producers have tried to change the video materials, such as replacing them with videos made up of pictures generated by drawing ai software based on the text of the novel. but judging from the results, this attempt has little effect, and images that match the content of the novel are far less popular than decompressed videos.
this involves another more important question: why do people like to watch such mechanical and single tweet videos? clarifying the logic of dissemination and acceptance behind them may help us further understand the popular cultural psychology in the new media era.
the picture shows the "subway surfers" game. file photo
video images are a very important part of the sensory experience that tweets can bring to viewers. for example, "subway surfers" is a live screen recording of a mobile game. in this type of game, players need to "parkour" (avoid obstacles such as trains) along the subway tracks endlessly. as long as the character is alive, the process of playing can continue. many viewers are keen to watch this process, which helps relieve stress in the mechanical repetition of endless clearance. therefore, "subway surfers" has become one of the most popular decompression video materials.
the creators of the tweet videos further discovered that after extracting this kind of video footage and adding arbitrary audio, it can effectively enhance the audience's attention to the sound content. netizens even launched a "subway surfers" challenge: when no one listens to you seriously, just play the "subway surfers" video in front of the other party, and the audience will immediately be focused. this may reveal to some extent the scientific principle of the popularity of tweet videos: the sensory areas in the brain often influence each other, and auditory stimulation may trigger activity in the visual area, and vice versa. this cross-influence allows people to mobilize multiple senses, and the experience will become more complex, three-dimensional and vivid. when the brain assumes that the vision is in a state of "emptying" and decompression, perhaps the hearing will become sensitive as a result.
in the postmodern society proposed by french philosopher baudrillard, electronic media has built a virtual "hyper-real" world for the public, creating a "simulation culture" that eliminates the dimensions of time and space, from which the audience can obtain sensory enjoyment, neural pleasure and unique artistic experience. today, the internet brings people interactive and virtual experiences, making human society gradually move towards the "hyper-real" world described by baudrillard, in which the "simulation culture" is the visual content in short videos.
however, the tweet video does not conform to the logic of this "hyper-real" world. to be precise, because its text content itself is "simulation culture", this re-creation and re-imitation of the text makes the viewer strongly aware of its fictional nature. it is also for this reason that people prefer "subway surfers" rather than pictures generated by text. in the former, they still retain the autonomy of text fantasy in their own hands.
in this way, the tweet video may be a compromise of online literature to the visual turn in the "picture reading era", but from another perspective, it is more of a backlash of auditory culture. the auditory content of the tweet video is very rich. first of all, the novel text. the tweet video generally does not choose a too complicated world setting, but prefers to set a simple story with a large number of twists and suspense in a short period of time, or a genre text that can be immediately recognized as a routine, in order to grab attention as quickly as possible. secondly, the timbre and intonation of ai dubbing. generally speaking, female-frequency novels (works with women as the protagonists and readers) use female voices, and male-frequency novels (works with men as the protagonists and readers) use male voices, with a speaking speed of more than 1.2 times to match the fast-paced needs of the audience. finally, the background music is mostly songs that easily give the audience a sense of story and picture. these songs are often not only popular on short video platforms, but also widely used in "fan-made videos".
the picture shows a screenshot of a video of making a cake.
with the repeated reinforcement of multiple fixed collocations, many types of routines will form a certain echo with the video materials. some viewers have summarized the template: videos of making cakes are used for "sweet articles", subway surfing is a "cool article", and cleaning cosmetics is a "reunion article"... the audience's interest in watching online article routines and decompression videos has multiplied their sensory experience.
of course, the popularity of tweet videos is inseparable from the precise matching and push of big data algorithms. the platform obtains "user portraits" through user data and behavioral habits to infer their preferences, thereby recommending content that meets user expectations, increasing users' viewing time, and locking them into the platform. the more popular a tweet video is, the more accurate the platform data analysis will be. users will decide whether to continue watching in just a few seconds, and the efficiency of the background analysis of user preferences based on sliding and dwell time will also be greatly improved.
from the above, we can see that the push video is a new growth point for online novels in combination with decompression videos, which promotes the media integration of online literature content, channels and readers. this multi-platform linkage or in-site traffic diversion model is expanding the boundaries of online literature production, dissemination and acceptance. the push video conveniently realizes the "breaking dimension" from text to video, conforming to the transformation of social platforms from text to pictures and then to videos as the main body. the reading threshold and consumption cost of online literature are further reduced, releasing a broader potential reader market.
however, tweet videos pursue the fragmentation of auditory content and the flattening of vision. the fast-paced, "cool" and climax-filled content projection and touch allow instant pleasure stimulation and emotional fluctuations to occupy the space of imagination, and the user's logical thinking is thus broken down into short-paced fragments. although the text excerpted from the tweet video can attract readers in a short period of time, it is often difficult to guarantee that the subsequent plot meets expectations, so that many readers will return to the comment area of the video to "clear mines" and complain about works that are not worth watching. at the same time, some users are immersed in the continuous stimulation of short videos. even if they see interesting novel content, it is difficult to withdraw from the short video platform and go to the novel platform. most of the time, they will just continue to mechanically slide their fingers up and comfort themselves, "it doesn't matter, the next one will be better."
the phenomenon of tweet videos exploded in 2022, but the overly single video mode may soon peak the traffic, and the creation of new modes such as ai drawing has not created new hot spots. it is still too early to draw a conclusion on whether the role of tweet videos in attracting and promoting online novels will last. however, it should be pointed out that short video novels cannot replace the complete novel reading experience. the ultimate goal of grafting online novels with short videos is to use short videos as a communication medium to lead users back to the text of the novel and experience the breadth, depth and infinite imagination of the novel world.
guangming daily (page 09, august 31, 2024)
source: guangming daily
