After a meal and a cup of coffee, a 4K video that originally needed to be rendered for 20 hours was rendered. In the Malanshan Video Cultural and Creative Industrial Park in Changsha, Hunan Province, with a "video supercomputing", the video rendering efficiency can be improved more than 100 times under the support of the platform computing power.

Computing power is the ability to process data. A film containing a large number of 3D special effects, involving 3D model rendering, special effect synthesis, etc., with slow rendering speed and long post production time. "With the computing power of 'video supercomputing', the production cycle of video products has been greatly shortened and the production cost has been greatly reduced, making the creative ideas more coherent and the production process more smooth," said Lu Shaohe, the technical director of Changsha Malanshan Investment Development and Construction Co., Ltd.

Such technological empowerment is just a microcosm of Malanshan Video Cultural and Creative Industrial Park's commitment to the integration of culture and technology. Malan Mountain originally has no mountains, but now it has emerged as an "industrial altitude" of video culture and innovation, forming a development highland integrating culture and technology.

New business type brings new cultural experience

The empowerment of science and technology on culture is helping the cultural relics collected in museums, the heritage displayed on the vast land, and the characters written in ancient books to live

From the invention of paper-making and printing to the application of radio and television, to the connection of a network cable to the Internet world... Our convenient life today is inseparable from the integration of culture and technology. At present, new technologies represented by 5G, big data, AI (artificial intelligence), VR (virtual reality), etc. have long been embedded in human life, and have a profound impact on cultural formats, content and dissemination. A number of new business forms with mutual integration and in-depth interaction of culture and technology are emerging in all parts of the country.

"This is a piece of Wuxi Forest of Steles. You see, even the strength of pen can be seen after digital restoration!" Li Wuwang, president of Malanshan Cultural Digital Innovation Center, displayed a set of contrast pictures, as if to return to the moment when craftsmen and artists were on the rock wall thousands of years ago and chiseled words into the immortal rocks.

The Wuxi Forest of Steles beside the Xiangjiang River has preserved 505 square cliffs carved since the Tang Dynasty. Many literati and calligraphers wrote on the cliff, and stone inscriptions of poems and prose, big or small, seal characters or grass, were gradually spread along the mountain. Loving in the mountains and rocks, the thousand year culture echoes in the changing seasons. However, after wind and rain erosion, the surface of cliff carvings has been weathered to varying degrees, and some of them can no longer be identified with the naked eye.

How to make these precious cultural relics reappear at that time?

"Use 'digital' means to rejuvenate stone carvings. Each stone tablet collects hundreds of photos from dozens of directions, and uses technology to achieve high-precision digital imaging with a trace recognition of 0.01mm." Li Wuwang introduced, "After the completion of digital collection and restoration, we will also establish a full information model of 24 types of data on seven layers of steles and stone carvings, and create a documentary... so that cultural relics can not only be 'seen', but also 'understood'."

In 2022, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the Opinions on Promoting the Implementation of the National Cultural Digitization Strategy, which proposed to "promote the deep integration of culture and science and technology, integrate and apply advanced and applicable technologies, and enhance the dissemination, attraction and appeal of culture". Science and technology enable Chinese excellent traditional culture from "perceivable" to "applied". New growth points of cultural industry are taking shape in Malanshan.

"The Milky Way revolves. Time goes by for thousands of years. You can see today's Chang'an." The action capture actor was wearing a special "action capture costume" to link the digital person "Li Bai". First, he played the heroic young Li Bai invited everyone to enjoy the grand scene of Chang'an. Then the picture turned, and his hands made a sound movement of playing the pipa, The middle-aged Li Bai in the picture then plays the magnificent movement of "the roc rises with the wind one day and soars up to 90000 li"

This is the real scene of the previous production of the "Out of Circle" program "Chang'an Poems of Mountains and Rivers". In the AR creative interaction of the program, the audience held their mobile phones and gently scanned the landmark buildings, and they could see the magnificent picture of "poetic Chang'an" after Li Bai came through. "Compared with the traditional manual animation production method, the dynamic capture technology has shortened the production cycle and improved the efficiency by two to five times, especially in projects involving a large number of animation scenes, the advantages are more obvious." Wang Xuezhe, general manager of Lingyunguang (Malanshan) Virtual Production and Broadcasting Base, said.

Science and technology enable new forms of culture to speed up "circle breaking". With the application of digital technology, new cultural formats break the time and space constraints, bring new cultural experiences to the audience, and open more possibilities for cultural transmission.

"The systems used in the dynamic capture shed, from the underlying algorithm software to the hardware, are all independently developed by us. We use the park's' cloud, network, computing 'resources, and the latest generation of 4K high-speed optical cameras to achieve submillimeter level ultra-high capture accuracy and realize domestic substitution. Based on the park's industrial ecological resources, we also provide technical services for radio, film, video, games, animation and other industries." Wang Xuezhe said. Ling Yunguang settled in Malan Mountain last year, and now a nationwide motion capture shed with 120 cameras has been built.

"Culture is a soft power, while technology is a hard support. The integration of culture and technology is the general trend and key to the digitalization of the cultural industry. When soft power meets hard support, the integration of the two will burst out with vigor and promote more innovative achievements." Zeng Xiong, secretary of the Party Working Committee of Malanshan (Changsha) Video Cultural Innovation Park, said.

Continuous release of cultural consumption potential

Nowadays, young consumers not only pursue single cultural products, but also hope to have a consumption mode that can bring them rich experience and emotional added value

"The last one, say something!"

"May Aya and Stone be happy!"

Recently, the immersive Miaojing Wedding Theater "Detamping Wonderland" was staged in the Aizhai Wonderland Tourist Area of Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Hunan Province. A small audience incarnated as a "person in the play", who traveled through time and space to attend a grand Miao village wedding banquet and interact with the characters in the play at zero distance.

"" Detamp "means' beautiful canyon '. The whole play takes hundreds of millions of years of basalt cliffs as the sky curtain, traditional Miao village buildings as the stage, and consists of nine small theatres and one large outdoor theater of Water Moon Fantasy. The audience is no longer onlookers, but the plot promoter. The' open blind box 'goes into the home of fellow villagers, traverses back to the poetic and bloody Xiangxi, and performs the heroic resistance of the children of Xiangxi together A moving story of war and defending the country. " Director Li Yan introduces. "De Tam Fantasy" made its debut on the social networking platform during the National Day last year. This year's "May Day" holiday is even more difficult to find.

The integration of culture and science and technology has not only spawned new cultural formats, but also shaped new consumer formats. Similar "immersive experience" is one of the key words of current cultural consumption. Characteristic scene consumption is increasingly popular among young people. The audience will experience "poetry and distance" in the live scene and get more specific cultural cognition and aesthetic enjoyment. This new consumption experience also releases a broader development space for the cultural industry.

Science and technology make culture glow with new vitality. It can not be simply understood as a difficult shot, a few wonderful pictures, but also through the whole chain industry including creativity, planning, execution, etc., which has great industrial value. The integration of culture and science and technology continues to release the potential of cultural consumption, and the driving effect of new cultural industries is obvious. According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics in the first quarter of 2024, the 16 industry sub categories with obvious characteristics of new cultural formats achieved an operating revenue of 1263.3 billion yuan, an increase of 11.9% over the same period of the previous year, 3.4 percentage points faster than all cultural enterprises above designated size.

"Previously, a performance required more than a dozen technicians. Now, through digital control devices, naked eye holograms and other technologies, one button intelligent control is used on the scene, and only one technician is required to control a performance, which greatly reduces the cost of human operation and fully reflects the productivity of digital art." Li Yan said.

Science and technology enable excellent culture to become "hot" and cultural industry to become "prosperous". As an immersive cultural and tourism project at night, "Dehang Fantasy" broke the traditional operation mode of scenic spots based on ticket income. During the "National Day" holiday performance last year, the income of the scenic spot increased by 183.85% year on year.

"Welcome to the Youth Theater of" Just the Young Student "! The place where you are is the promenade of Hunan Provincial No. 1 Normal School in the early 20th century. We will restore the youth experience of young people a hundred years ago in this theater..." In Juzizhou Scenic Area, an immersive youth play is being staged in a building built in the 1950s. In the new scene of red tourism experience, the audience experienced a century old emotional interaction experience while enjoying the performance. From May 2023 to now, "Just the Young Student" has completed more than 580 performances and received 63000 audiences.

"How to make all kinds of cultural industries more integrated, more diversified and more experienced through technology empowerment has always been one of the directions of our park's attention." Li Jinsong, Director of the Office of the Management Committee of Malanshan (Changsha) Video Cultural and Creative Park, introduced.

In Malanshan, forward-looking and innovative enterprises and teams in the field of cultural and technological integration, such as "Detamp Wonderland", "Just Young Students", were actively introduced. Since the establishment of the industrial park, more than 3000 upstream and downstream enterprises have been introduced, forming a digital culture industrial chain covering creativity, content production, storage, broadcasting and trading, and realizing "the industrial park is the industrial chain, and the upstream and downstream are the upstream and downstream". Up to now, the Park has achieved a cumulative revenue of more than 270 billion yuan and a tax revenue of 16 billion yuan for enterprises above designated size.

How to Continue to Break the "Integration Problem"

The efficiency generated by the integration of culture and technology has realized "1+1>2", opened more imagination for people, and become a "new engine" to promote high-quality economic development and cultivate new quality productivity

"Imagine that you write a story, and then 'poof' a video is generated. Just like a magician turns a rabbit out of a hat, Wanxing 'Sky Curtain' can turn a video of more than 60 seconds with one click." Zhu Wei, vice president of Wanxing Technology, introduced. Even without any video production experience, people can still create videos of a certain level. The audio and video multimedia model Wanxing "Sky Curtain" was released in Malan Mountain in January this year, and was officially open beta recently.

In recent years, the emergence of the big model represented by ChatGPT big language model and Sora big video model indicates the acceleration of the AI (artificial intelligence) era. "Traditional content production often requires a lot of manpower and material resources, while Wanxing 'Tianmu' can quickly generate high-quality audio and video content through AI technology, greatly improving the efficiency of content production, and promoting the innovation of the entire industry chain. The big model is moving from the era of graphic 1.0 to the era of 2.0 with audio and video multimedia as the carrier," said Zhu Wei. At present, Wanxing Technology Large Model R&D Center has settled in Malanshan.

A variety of cultural forms provide a wide range of application scenarios for scientific and technological innovation, which in turn enables the birth of new cultural formats. Practitioners use new technologies to explore creative expression and meet the development needs of the cultural industry in the new era.

"In fact, there is still much room for improvement in the effect of the video big model, and the application is difficult and challenging. It is not difficult to obtain video data, but it still requires a certain cost, time and technical ability to convert it into data that can be used for the training of the big model." When talking about future development, Zhu Wei said.

Audio and video producers have low human efficiency ratio, high labor costs, and most of the software required for the existing production process is dominated by foreign countries... At present, there are still problems in the development of the audio and video industry, which need to be solved urgently. With Malanshan Video Cultural and Creative Industrial Park as the representative, Hunan's audio and video industry has a strong agglomeration, a good industrial foundation and a rich stock of audio and video resources, providing a broad space for the application of new technologies.

"Director Aiman, I hope my video can cut out a nostalgic feeling, just like looking back on the way we went when we were children." "I see, when we shoot, we can choose scenes with a sense of the age, and at the same time add elements of childhood memories, such as childhood games, food, etc. What do you think?"

Recently, in a new reality show variety show launched on the dual platforms of Hunan Satellite TV and Mango TV, AI assistant director "Aimang" planned a "go as you go trip" for the guests, and received the first order of video clips.

Can do program planning, select roles, undertake copywriting, separate script writing, and cut short videos... "Director 'Aiman' represents a big step of AI in the field of film and television production. At present, it is not fully competent for all aspects of directing work independently, but with technological progress, we hope that it can evolve in the future in the direction of expanding multilingual capabilities, introducing visual recognition functions, and interacting with the physical world through external devices. " Yu Yi, head of Multimedia Algorithm Group of Mango TV Intelligent Algorithm Department, said.

To further promote the deep integration of culture and science and technology, we should not only see the empowerment of science and technology, but also see the guidance of high-quality cultural innovation on science and technology. Let the needs of cultural enterprises effectively match the capabilities of science and technology enterprises, reduce docking costs, and promote in-depth cooperation between the two sides.

"In Malan Mountain, the state of" two-way rush "of culture and technology has come out! We are striving to build a technological base of" cloud, network and computing ", innovate the chain of" production, learning, research and use ", cultivate and attract more talents who are good at using new technologies, promote the formation of more new growth points of cultural industries, and look forward to the birth of more new cultural formats in Malan Mountain in the future." Zeng Xiong said.

Format design: Zhang Fangman Zhang Danfeng

People's Daily (the 6th edition on May 19, 2024)

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