Comment by jjcm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjcm | Hacker News Reader

The quality is quite high, but an observation is the direction they're taking these models correlates heavily to the usage demand of China vs the West. Specifically, they're immensely focused on t2v for action / high effect shots. There's one human reference shot in the entire release page, and that one doesn't focus on dialog at all.

For filmmakers I've talked to in the US, one of the biggest demands they have is v2v where they can carry over an actor's performance and insert it into whatever world they want. The movie market in China is somewhat different though - it's heavily oriented towards high action / high special effect movies. Consider this list of hollywood movies that have flopped in the US, but did great in China:

Warcraft (China: $225m box office, US: $47m)

Resident Evil (China: $159m, US: $27m)

xXx: Return of Xander Cage (China: $164m, US: $44m)

Pacific Rim: Uprising (China: $99m, US: $59m)

One read of this is that action movies / visual spectacles translate more universally than dialog-based movies. Another read is culturally China prefers that type of content in general. I suspect that for Bytedance, their focus is on action / special effects because thats where they see the demand.

I hear this a lot, but I observed this is no longer that simple.

Like Green Book (2018) made over US$70.7 million in China.

And one of the most popular films in 2021 was Hi, Mom (2021), made over US$785 million.

Obsession (2026) is another one that is doing amazing in China, absolutely beating high action films like Supergirl ($12 million and going vs less than $1 million)

Supergirl is basically a lazy slob who is born with godlike powers, I can see why that doesn't play well in a culture that prioritises hard work and self-discipline.

Not doing terribly well anywhere as far as I've heard. That one is probably not cultural

Whoever put those trailer together really knew how to sell it as a "do not bother to see movie".

And frankly, Jason Momoa fatigue may also be a issue. Jason momoa playing Jason momoa, playing Jason momoa. Its like with The Rock playing the rock, ... Like guys, acting ranges?

> Obsession (2026) is another one that is doing amazing in China

I haven’t seen the movie yet but I’ve been a subscriber to the YouTube channel of Curry and Cooper [1] for a long time. I’m looking forward to watching the movie.

I wonder how many of the other people that went to see Obsession were already fans of Curry and Cooper.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/@thats_a_bad_idea

China has a population 4 times bigger than the US, and the films you cite did roughly 4 times better in each example.

But how much does ticket cost in China compared to the US? (Genuine question)

Anywhere from ¥20 ($3) to ¥100 ($15) in large cities. Depending on the city, type of ticket and whether it's China-exclusive or worldwide release. Looking at prices, ¥40 doesn't seem like a bad deal.

I have a friend who works in a Chinese movie theatre. According to them each ticket is from ¥15 to ¥40, though it definitely varies based on the time of the year and the location.

The countries' box office markets are about the same size, though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_industry#Largest_markets_... ("Largest markets by box office revenue")

    United States and Canada $8,870,000,000  2025[175]
    Europe                   $8,200,000,000  2024[176]
    China                    $7,400,000,000  2025[177]

It's not about cultural difference but simply what's easier.

Action sequences are forgiving. There's lots of motion and shiny vfx to fudge things over. Rapid cuts mean each shot can be short enough that the inevitable accumulation of AI hallucinations from frame to frame doesn't get distracting. Sets can be generic: if you're generating robots attacking New York, the viewer isn't going to have time to track if the bodega on the corner is in every shot, or if the Chrysler Building switches place around town. Shots can be practically from different cities and nobody will notice.

Carrying over an actor's performance is the opposite. You want long shots and impeccable scene stability. You can't just throw some additive-blended particles on the actor's face to distract from its generation deficiencies, like you can do for the Marvel scenes.

Bytedance is a corporation looking for clout, not to help filmmakers. They're releasing a model that makes them look good, and action sequences do that.

It's a counterintuitive thing to viewers who have long been told that vfx is the most expensive kind of moviemaking. With gen AI, these somewhat convincing Marvel pastiches are trivial to produce, but a sitcom episode is utterly impossible.

hong kong films is the mirror image of hollywood and fantasy/action are a lot more popular than american.

But you're probably just blundering with value comparison since just per capita, your numbers arn't that' extreme, still the point stands.

I think it makes sense that historically American film focused on narrative based dramas and slow burn horror. Think of classic Hollywood hits such as Citizen Kane and Psycho. This is even apparent in the recent success of Obsession, which really follows strongly in the trend of Hitchcock, magical realism, human drama, psychological horror.

Compare this with historically successful Honk Kong films: Kung Fu Hustle, Police Story, Ip Man. I mean there are examples of Hong Kong films that are slow burn human dramas, like Chungking Express and Eat Drink Man Woman, and successful American action films like Diehard, but I think its clear that Hollywood film didn't start out with action movies, and Hong Kong film didn't start out with slow burn dramas, but adopted these genres afterwards; you could even claim that successful Hong Kong films like the Bruce Lee films of the 70s fueled the American appetite for action in the 80s, which was the most prominent era for that genre in the US.

As a corollary to this, it becomes clear that the Korean and Japanese film making industries are not as culturally distinct from Hollywood as Honk Kong film making is. For Korean film, the reason is obvious: Koreatown in Los Angeles is right next to Hollywood, in some respects is a part of Hollywood, and there are deep ties now between the Korean and American film making industries for that reason, and Korean-Americans have an overly high degree of representation in American media, and Korean productions often come to America to shoot (think of the end of Squid Games: it's almost certainly the case that they shot in LA because a producer has a cousin or something that works in Hollywood).

Don't they just have 3x as many video game nerds? Those numbers sound pretty similar per capita.

Or western movies don’t have stories Chinese audience would relate to, but for dumb visual effect fests, there is no story so it works everywhere.

Google and xAI only allow 720p when you start adding references, and neither allow you to sync to audio.

This is entirely because of deepfakes.

Apparently Seedance has a version without guardrails if you are a licensed production company. I suspect Google Omni would too, but I don't know anyone who uses that model.

On carrying over actors' performance side, https://beeble.ai/ works pretty well. Friends from VFX are using a mixture of Seedance and Beeble (especially their SwitchX model)

The faces look amazing. They can post train for identity preservation easy, that is just an adapter

I2p makes more sense and easier to do. But t2v is indeed of no use in any serious production, you must have the actor, product or setting communicated to the model visually

why you also didn't consider population size different ???

China have 1.5 billion people vs US 350 ish

Repost from above:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_industry#Largest_markets_... ("Largest markets by box office revenue")

    United States and Canada $8,870,000,000  2025[175]
    Europe                   $8,200,000,000  2024[176]
    China                    $7,400,000,000  2025[177]

Que revenue China is the same as Europe/US. Population does not matter so much, its revenue generated by the area.

Are they targeting movies or ads?

They have support for long format and the industry is already attempting long shots with Seedance 2.0 which cannot be efficiently done without drift in other leading models like Kling.

Surprising. I thought Vin Diesel was a twat in any language.

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