Incident: On January 16, the main creative team of the virtual short drama “Seventy-Two Lives”, director Xie Duosheng, producer Liang Zikang, and lead actor Hui Huizhou made their first live broadcast at the Beijing Yuanke Fangzhou MAC Metaverse Entertainment Production and Broadcasting Technology Center. They used XR virtual production technology to recreate classic scenes from the drama and recount the wonderful highlights of behind-the-scenes filming.
The first virtual production skit hit the market, and the size of the short drama market grew rapidly. The first virtual production short drama “72 Lives” in China was officially launched on the Douyin platform on January 3, 2024, and stood out among all kinds of skits with unique innovations in technology and content. As of January 19, “72 Lives” reached 7.58 million hits on the Douyin platform, with over 352 million views, ranking first in the Douyin Short Drama List.
According to Ai Media Consulting, China's short drama market reached 37.39 billion yuan in 2023, an increase of 267.65% over the previous year. It is estimated that the Chinese short drama market will exceed 100 billion yuan in 2027.
XR technology is continuously expanding its application fields, and XR virtual visual effects enhance film and television shooting productivity. XR has rich business forms and is widely used, including games, film and television, medical care, education, industry and many other fields. The American film series “The Mandalorian” series, which debuted in 2019, first applied XR technology to film and television. By using an LED video wall, pre-rendered content (such as environment, etc.) was projected onto the LED wall in real time to replace traditional green screen shooting, eliminating the need for the crew to build expensive and time-consuming physical scenes, bringing movie-level effects to TV series, and achieving a significant increase in film and television productivity.
XR technology helps cut costs and increase efficiency in skit shooting, empowering the skit market. The domestic film and television industry is actively trying to apply XR virtual visual effects technology to film and television productions. For example, the main creative team of “72 Lives” mentioned during the live broadcast that the entire drama accounted for over 60% of virtual filming, and the main creative team only used seven days to shoot nearly 60 minutes of virtual content; the traditional post-production method would take at least half a year, and the cost would be four times that of using XR technology. We believe that the huge success of “72 Lives” as the first virtual skit in China is expected to start a wave of application of XR virtual visual effects technology in the skit market and drive more technical and content teams to participate.
The business expanded into the field of live streaming by cooperating with traffic IP. Ling Yunguang took advantage of the development of the metaverse industry to set up a subsidiary Yuanke Vision in 2022. The company actively participated in the strategic layout of the “5G+4K/8K+AI” at the headquarters, developed an XR ultra-high-definition production system, and successfully applied it to nearly 100 quality programs such as CCTV's Spring Festival Gala and National Treasure, and participated in drafting the first “XR Fictional and Real Production System Technical Requirements and Test Methods” standard in China. Ling Yunguang collaborated with the main creative team of “72 Lives” to restore large-scale virtual scenes such as cable cars and cityscapes in the live broadcast, expanding XR technology to the live broadcast field, and once again verifying the maturity of Ling Yunguang's XR virtual visual effects technology, which is expected to further enhance the company's popularity and bring new growth impetus to the development of the company's cultural metaverse business.
Risk warning: risk of macro-cycle fluctuations, increased risk of market competition, and risk of accounts receivable.