Speaker A
One of the earliest videos on this channel is about a book I wrote when I was in elementary school. I don't remember what I said in that video.
Exploring the rise of TikTok-style vertical dramas, their cultural impact, economics, and creative value in modern entertainment.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Vertical dramas are a rapidly growing entertainment format with significant cultural and economic impact.
- They offer affordable production costs, allowing for a large quantity of content.
- These dramas provide emotional escapism and community for viewers.
- Despite criticism, vertical dramas are commercially successful and attract major investments.
- Understanding vertical dramas requires recognizing their unique storytelling style and audience engagement.
What the video covers
- The video begins with a personal anecdote about the creator's early writing experience and love for storytelling.
- Introduces microdramas or vertical dramas, a popular format originating from China, blending soap opera elements with TikTok-style short videos.
- Highlights the massive popularity and profitability of vertical dramas, especially in China and growing in the US market.
- Discusses the low production costs of vertical dramas compared to traditional TV shows, enabling high volume content creation.
- Explores audience appeal, noting these dramas serve as escapism during stressful times and reflect relatable emotional experiences.
- Mentions the community and fan culture around vertical dramas, including fan awards and creator interviews.
- Addresses criticism and mixed opinions about the quality and artistic value of vertical dramas.
- Examines the business model, including monetization strategies and user engagement techniques.
- Notes investments by major companies and the growing industry size, projecting a $14 billion global market.
- Concludes with reflections on the balance between judgment and appreciation for the economic and creative opportunities vertical dramas provide.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and personal story about early writing
- 01:52What are vertical dramas and their origins
- 04:15Popularity and revenue of vertical dramas
- 05:57Audience appeal and community around vertical dramas
- 07:24Production costs and business model
- 08:47Criticism and defense of vertical dramas
- 11:08Industry investments and future outlook
- 13:39Conclusion: balancing critique and appreciation
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
I tried to re-watch it earlier this week, but because it's super old, I hate it, and I couldn't get through even the first ten seconds. It's been six years since Becoming Davy Jones.
Speaker A
It was top three achievements of my life when I was 12 years old. It was about this mischievous blue j— Did I say the word mischievous?
Speaker A
It was about a bird who fell into a nuclear reactor, and because Child Me didn't understand what a nuclear power plant actually did, when he fell in, it was just a toxic pile of sludge.
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He mutates and emerges as an anthropomorphic birdman. He then is captured by two middle school twins, and then they all become friends, and then they hide the birdman away from the people who are looking for him, the British government. I don't remember how.
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Or why? All I know is that I put my heart and soul into this book.
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It meant so much to me. In fact, the only reason it was as short as it was is that I'm pretty sure for the assignment I was doing it for, I was only allowed to make it like 30 pages max or something like that.
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I thought it was going to be a novel and was gonna be like the main thing I was known for. I was wrong. It was a class assignment, but we entered it into a countywide writing competition.
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And I won third place. Needless to say, I love writing. I don't do it as much anymore except for writing the scripts of these videos, but I will always have respect for the craft and for people who put in the time to get better at this art.
Speaker A
That is not what we'll be discussing today. Touch us and my dad puts your whole family in the East River by Sunday.
Speaker A
Help! He attacked me! Damon Moretti's There will be no homemade meat demonstration today as punishment.
Speaker A
Can't just take people. This is kidnapping. There are laws. I think Sammy Cohen described it best when she said Essentially, if soap operas and TikTok had a baby, fed it Red Bull, and gave it a credit card, you would get a micro drama. Originating in China as Duanju,
Speaker A
microdramas, also known as vertical dramas, are extremely popular and wildly profitable and have been on the rise over the past few years. Now I know what you're thinking, how can you expect me to believe anything you just said when you're dressed like
Speaker A
a timeshare salesman from 1987? Yes, but unlike what I'm about to do to a conference room full of vacationers in a Hilton hotel, I'm telling you the truth.
Speaker A
You may have heard about them from advertisements or on your For You page or from every YouTuber
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ever with a pulse. The response to the new format ranges wildly from people giving stellar 10-star reviews to different series and giving top 10 lists of their favorite shows about billionaires or dating someone you shouldn't or secret billionaires or dating someone you shouldn't in secret or fake dating
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or faking being poor while secretly dating while you're a billionaire. While others share the opinion of one man who tweeted while the AI fruit Love Island thing was popular, saying that I am fundamentally superior to anyone who watches this, which, whether you agree with him or not,
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is objectively one of the funniest tweets of all time. I don't want to just write something off just because I'm on the internet and this is one of the seven government-mandated opinions I'm allowed to have.
Speaker A
There has to be something good to this. There's always two sides to every story? What? It's a layered situation frontalobe six fan. Who wants to talk Roth IRAs?
Speaker A
I know I do. We're gonna get to the pointing and laughing part of this video soon, but there are some interesting positives to this medium I feel like we should discuss first.
Speaker A
Get into it though. I feel like it didn't properly express how popular these shows are. The main service we're gonna be talking about today is called Real Short, but that is far from being the only service like this.
Speaker A
In the App Store's rankings for top free entertainment apps, out of the top 20, seven of them are vertical drama apps.
Speaker A
There's Real Short, Story Reel, Drama Wave, Net Short, Pine Drama, Vibe Short, and Drama Box. And really it's more of a top 15 because some apps in that top 20 shouldn't even be there.
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Like the Netflix game controller, Free Cash, and was it Paramount? That's not real. Last year in China, the revenue produced from microdramas outpaced the revenue of the box office for real movies. By some estimates, China has 830 million users of these apps,
Speaker A
60% of which pay or transact. Obviously, there are bots and fake accounts, but roughly speaking, half of them are watching the shows, and 25% of them are giving these companies money.
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25% of China. But it's more than just China. Many countries are becoming obsessed with vertical dramas, including the US. Time magazine included Crazy Maple Studio, the company behind Real Short, in its list of top 100 most influential companies of 2024,
Speaker A
which is understandable considering that last year US generated revenue from vertical dramas reached an estimated $819 million.
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And that the global industry of microdramas is expected to hit $14 billion by next year. You may be wondering, how on earth are they making that much money?
Speaker A
It's simple. If I give you a penny and in return you give me ten thousand dollars, on my end that is considered a profit.
Speaker A
We'll get into how they get people to pay for it later, but one of the reasons why these things are so lucrative is because of how cheap these shows are to make.
Speaker A
We have made ~ arguably one of the biggest budgets. Can you talk about what that budget is?
Speaker A
I would say double like a regular vertical. It's a medieval fantasy genre. On one day we have more than ninety people on set involved, all Korean cast, and we have a real historical castle.
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We're talking between sort of under a million. No, of course. Yeah. But more than half a million?
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~ no. That is still significant, right? If you're getting up to the top end of that.
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~ half of that. The CEO of Real Shorts says that making an entire show costs less than $300,000. To put that into perspective, by season 10 of Friends, the show cost $10 million per episode.
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By video production standards, these shows cost nothing to make, which is why they are able to make dozens upon dozens of shows every year.
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You will never run out of things to watch because clearly the objective is quantity over quality. Despite that, people love them. Go to IMDb. A lot of these shows have great reviews, and while personally still wouldn't watch it,
Speaker A
I can kind of understand why. The people who come to these shows already know that these things are not Shakespeare, and that's fine. It's just an interesting distraction, and that's exactly what they want.
Speaker A
Jen Cooper, founder of the website Vertical Drama Love, talked about this in an article from The Guardian.
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She talked about how many people, including herself, find vertical dramas at a time of need or just intense stress, and they want something that they can use to escape.
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She also talks about how through her page she was able to cultivate a community of people who love vertical drama.
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She was even able to put together like a fan awards for favorite dramas. On her YouTube channel, she sometimes does interviews with people who are involved in the production of verticals. And she did one with this screenwriter named Jenny
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Rosen, where she made another good point about why verticals could be appealing. There are collective feelings that we're all dealing with every day.
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Where when you see somebody wronged, you can immediately say, That's me. I've been there. Verticals will act out the more extreme version of things that happen to us every day.
Speaker A
Well, what would it be like if I could get revenge? What would it be like if I could, you know,
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end up with Prince Charming? There's some part of us that still keeps that childlike ~ wonder and mystery of like, what would it be like if that were me?
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You know, maybe I'm a c c
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We know it's not real, but that doesn't mean the magic of it doesn't feel real.
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These are deeply human needs and these are deeply human experiences that verticals tap into instantly. You don't need a prestige studio, you do not need celebrity A-list actors.
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You need people who understand how to make somebody feel heard and seen. And that's what gets people's attention.
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I think that's what makes verticals. Very unique. I have to agree with that. Sometimes I don't need a big budget.
Speaker A
I just need to be able to live a fantasy. And I like watching skits of people on TikTok talking about what they really want to say to customers in retail.
Speaker A
Like, what would be the issue of doing that, but with a higher budget than one notepad and literally no other props?
Speaker A
So the idea of verticals filling that spot is not crazy. They just sent me another notification.
Speaker A
Not now, that's written in the script. that'll make sense in about five to seven minutes.
Speaker A
Fun fact, I write these things out of order. A micro drama can fill the needs for emotion and story without 17 episodes of For example, Tyler Perry has made approximately 700 movies and TV shows within the past decade, and five of them are good.
Speaker A
He started out great, but he eventually learned that if you can make stories about black people suffering slowly, turns out the money is still green.
Speaker A
That thing's green. Green! I think that's part of the reason why people will watch entire shows and movies through nothing but TikTok clips.
Speaker A
Granted, I don't love the idea of someone preferring to watch movies through clips because it quote skips through the boring bits.
Speaker A
But I can't say that I do it from time to time. Time to time because it's just way less commitment.
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I want story, I want drama. I just don't always want to spend two hours to get it.
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You know, I keep telling myself one day I'm gonna watch House. You know, I'm not really sure what's going on or why he's so crotchety or why there are so many I didn't know I was pregnant or you're too fat storylines,
Speaker A
but I'll figure it out eventually. Until then, if YouTube Shorts throws me into another rabbit hole and clips start playing, I'm not gonna fight it.
Speaker A
In addition to that, verticals actually help writers in an interesting way. For instance, right now I'm in an animation ~ studio.
Speaker A
Animation takes forever. I'll write something and I won't see it. Done for three or four years. Feature films.
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Beverly Hills Trua was one of the shortest turnarounds, and that still took me ~ three years to see it on a screen.
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Marit CI will talk about a scene. I write the scene. A month later, I'm looking at a rough cut to two months later, and then it's up. It's within a three-month period.
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It's so fresh. And as a writer, you're growing. You're going, that line worked. That didn't work. You're able to see stuff.
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Whereas in feature films and television, you're like, yeah, I remember I wrote that. A while ago. I also agree with the idea that vertical dramas can serve as a very interesting writing exercise.
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Because sometimes you have an idea for a story that is not worth serious investment, but it would be nice to see it brought to life.
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So to think that you could come up with that idea, work on it for a little bit, but you're not married to it, you're done with it in a few weeks, and then later that year you can see it brought to life.
Speaker A
That does sound fun. And it would be stupid to say that the reason these shows are bad is simply because they are vertical or that they're low budget.
Speaker A
Because that would be akin to saying that all of TikTok is just bad. Is there slop on TikTok? Absolutely.
Speaker A
Am I ever gonna stop watching TikTok? No, are you stupid? Every day there are 17 video essays uploaded about a TikTok controversy I've never heard of, nor will impact my life in any way.
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I will learn nothing from it, and yet I will watch each one of those videos in succession. what? Now I have standards for entertainment?
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And I would assume that work like this would give new writers the experience they need to then go on and write bigger and better things.
Speaker A
Fun fact, the head writer in one of my favorite shows actually got their start working as a writer on verticals.
Speaker A
Actually, it's time, it's playing right now. I gotta go. Shh, my show's on. What a surprise. I come home from another night of overtime just to find you sitting there. You know, all I ask is that you work even a fraction as hard as I do every day,
Speaker A
and what do I get? Nothing! You just sit there and you piles in stacks on a table in the corner all day, as if that's helping me!
Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
If you're anything like me, I'd pick dining, I spend an inexcusable amount of money on buying food out.
Speaker A
I may as well get something back for it. Let's mention all the other features that Chime offers, like the ability to set savings goals in the app, that you can get your paycheck up to two days early with direct deposit,
Speaker A
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Speaker A
So sign up for Chime using the link in my description. Or by scanning the QR code on screen.
Speaker A
New users can get up to a $350 bonus with a new Chime checking account exclusively through my link. Huh. Maybe you're not so useless after all.
Speaker A
Anyway, I'm off to do my nightly habit of driving recklessly on the highway because I have complete confidence that no one has nefariously cut my brake lines.
Speaker A
I love driving recklessly. Oh no. It seems someone has nefariously cut my brake lines.
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No! Was the series finale? All of that is to say that it's really easy to cast judgment on these platforms and services without taking a second to acknowledge the good that it can do for the economy, for the audiences, and for creatives.
Speaker A
All those different perspectives can really help change your viewpoint on things. And then you go to watch one of those shows, and your immediate first question is: what were any of those people talking about?
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Hate relationship with commentary videos. Hate it because they have all the same talking points and vocabulary and filming style and subjects of discussion and thumbnail design and title structures. Love it because despite that, I will watch a minimum of seven commentary videos a day.
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I bring that up because one thing I really despise in the commentary space is that they exaggerate everything.
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This person is the worst human being ever. This brand needs to die today. I did not cheat on my wife. And I hate that because it's not human.
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There is no way you absolutely love or hate everything. There is never a middle ground.
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That's why in my videos I almost never say anything with a sense of finality.
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There's always room for doubt. I will almost never say anything absolute about anything. With all of that in mind, objectively speaking.
Speaker A
Real Short is one of the worst apps I have ever seen. As Redditor Fun Machine3238 put it, these things are so bad because they're designed to keep you addicted and paying, not keep you entertained. That simple sentence is the business plan
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for this entire industry, and it is evident in almost every choice they make. I cannot overemphasize just how cookie cutter everything on these apps is.
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All those talks from those writers about human emotions and experiences was way too nice for what this app is.
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It takes the most basic tropes in writing and rinses, recycles, repeats over and over for every last drop that can ring out of it.
Speaker A
How many shows can you possibly make about billionaires? And why do you keep using that word as if it's a normal thing?
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A billion dollars is an absurd amount of money, and anyone with money like that would never live life in any of the ways.
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depicted on these shows. This is more of a side tangent, but I really want to get this point across.
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I shoot videos at 30 frames per second. Okay, so let's suppose that one frame cost a million dollars.
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So if I went silent for three frames, boom, that was three million dollars. Okay, let's compare that to a billion dollars.
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You ready? That was 33 seconds. Fun fact: if a million dollars is a frame, a trillion dollars is nine hours of silence.
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But that is a topic for a different video. Obviously, that doesn't mean every single one of these is completely terrible.
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Issa Rae actually produced her own vertical drama for TikTok's Pine Drama app. I mean, just from the first episode, it looks better than a regular micro drama.
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The acting is better, the writing has a lot more thought put into it. And was able to cause a decent amount of discourse both on and off the app.
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However, for every one of these shows, there are literally a hundred shows about a girl.
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Dating her ex-boyfriend's uncle, who's a mafia boss, written by AI. Something I find so funny about these is that the budget is so low and the acting is so bad that sometimes you can't tell that something was supposed
Speaker A
to be a joke or sarcastic. What did they do that? they covered her with red paint as a prank.
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In the show. But what sucks is that most clips you see, like the ones I've shown you, will always be from the first few episodes of the show. Those are the clips where they're setting up the plot point
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for the show. They are putting their best foot forward. This is not negotiable to us that to make the first ~ no matter if the first eight free episodes or the first ten, make it as extravagant as possible.
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Spend the most resource on those episodes. The best location. We spend more time polishing the acting.
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They spend the first ten episodes really like trying to snack. People's attention and make people hook.
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So you mean to tell me it's just all downhill from here? It's just not really about the quality, the cast, the story is really about how effective you are to grasp the audience within that second.
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It almost goes right into the crux of the story, wherever the drama is. Doesn't require any effort on the part of the user to just jump in and start to watch.
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When asked why some of the writing on some of these shows is so bad, it sounds like they were written by AI.
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The CEO of Real Short said in part They want it to be understandable to everyone, even people without higher education.
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To that, I say, if a person is so incapable of understanding the plot of a movie, so much so that this is the solution, would it be in bad taste to suggest that maybe Movies isn't the hobby for them.
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I'm not saying that, I'm just asking. There is this YouTuber I found called The Book Leo, and she made a fantastic video about something related to this.
Speaker A
It's more like the book and author equivalent of vertical streaming. She made a good point when she was talking about a service called Inket.
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Inket is a free-to-read app where anybody can publish a story. And if they deem it good enough, they will then put it on their paid premium app called Galatea.
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And if it does good enough there, they will then turn it into a micro drama on a different app that they own called Candy Jar. And despite what you may assume from that.
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process it's not the story that they care about. And if you go to their LinkedIn, they're all like leveraging AI and predictive algorithms.
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Inkid discovers unknown stories and turns them into blockbuster hits. By examining reader engagement and behavioral data, the publisher has been able to establish a particular impressive track record of identifying future bestsellers.
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Inkid has really nice graphs where even the writers themselves can see exactly where readers stop binge reading, which chapters They get stuck on. So this is not just about adapting the most popular stories, the stories that get the most views.
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Like this is very specifically about using data science to analyze which stories have the highest reader retention, making sure they keep reading and keep paying.
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I would say this is not about writing good stories at all. This is just about writing whatever story can grab someone's attention the most.
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It's all hollow. It's designed to be as cookie-cutter and as optimized as it can possibly be.
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And it's not just the writing. The look of the show has to be as appealing to the target demographic as possible.
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Even if that means being borderline racist. Is there anything p in particular you're looking for the type of talent that you cast in micro drama? They are looking for a specific kind of kind of look.
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Okay. Yeah. What is the look? Okay, I'm gonna put it really straightforward. I would say they're looking for Barbie and Ken.
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The lack of diversity is Incredibly horrible. Okay, so all of that was the first problem.
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When you download Real Short, all the shows are free to watch. at first. You usually get the first eight to ten episodes for free, and then after that, if you want to keep watching more episodes, you either have to watch an ad or you can pay for it.
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And these shows are like sixty to eighty episodes long. I'm not watching a forty five second gambling ad for each one of So if you choose to pay for it, you have a list of options.
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There's the exorbitantly expensive way, the super confusing way, then that's the end of that list.
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You can pay for a subscription like any other streaming service. It's twenty dollars. You know, that's a bit much for a month, but I mean I g Does that say per week? So you think that's too expensive, and also you don't want to be like the dozens of people on Trustpilot
Speaker A
who say that the subscription is very confusing and hard to cancel. And you really only want to watch this one show and then you're gonna delete the app. Well, you have the option to pay per episode using coins.
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Like a mobile game designed to allow children to spend thousands of dollars of their parents' money because they don't understand the concept of currency yet.
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Real short doesn't allow you to pay per episode with actual money. Instead, you have to pay for coins and then use the coins to pay for the episode.
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I mentioned mobile games not just as a one-off joke, but because you have to.
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Assume that is the reason why they're doing this. First off, because the company that makes real short also makes bad mobile games, but also because I have to assume to real short, the ideal user will do the following.
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You watch the first 10 episodes of a show for free, and now you're hooked. You want to see what happens next, but for every episode after that, you have to watch an ad. But even if you're cool with that,
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they only let you watch five ads a day. I can't do that. I need to know if the billionaire ninja doctor is able to save his alien girlfriend after she was attacked by the clan of the Zhongwen Nidong. But I don't have the 60 coins I need to watch every episode.
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Okay. Maybe we can look into getting a couple. There is no way I'm spending more than $10 on that.
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What kind of greed is that? Hey, if I spend $10, I get 1,100 coins, but if I spend just $5, I get a thousand coins.
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That's a suspiciously good deal. Also, neither of these numbers are evenly divisible by 60, but I'm sure that's not gonna come up later.
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So you get your thousand coins, you watch the next 18 episodes, you're left off on a cliffhanger because no matter where it is, you started or stopped, every episode ends with a cliffhanger, and now you only have 40 coins.
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That's just short of 60 to get to the next episode. no, it didn't. Come up later. But 40, that's basically 60.
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You're so close. Maybe I'll buy it just one more time, or you know, I'll get the 2400 coins for $20 so it doesn't happen again.
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Or maybe we just skip the coin system entirely and just go for the subscription.
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I mean, it's the smart decision when you think about it. This is the entire mobile game business plan tricking suckers into spending way too much money because it doesn't feel like money, and also you're so close! Because why would I spend $10 a month
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on a streaming service? That's way too much money. I'm on a budget. I'd rather agree to spend $19 a and then forget about it for the next seven months.
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But it's worth it because I got to watch that one show about ~ I don't remember exactly what it was called, but there was probably a billionaire in it.
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But when you finally come to your senses and decide to get off the app, it will use everything in its disposal to bring you back because it notifies you about Everything. But using the app, you turn on notifications because duh,
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if you do, you get 30 free coins. It'd be dumb not to. But when you do that, you don't understand what you just signed on to because they're like super clingy.
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We have some free coins for you to claim. Wanna watch a show about a homeless billionaire husband and also it's Christmas?
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You would like the free episode. Yeah! Did we mention the billionaire was homeless during the holiday season?
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Are you going to bed? You could be watching shorts. Okay, okay, what if the show was about the billionaire's mom?
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I kid you not. While I was typing this into the script that I am reading right now, they sent me a notification. You've been replaced, first love. Thank you so much, real short. I would never have wanted to miss that.
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I kid you not. While I was editing this part of the video, they sent me another notification.
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I'm wearing the same shirt. This is like an hour later. They've sent me 19 notifications.
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In And as much as I've enjoyed having them on the top of my notifications list for the past three weeks, why are they all time sensitive?
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On Apple's developer website, it explains that there are four kinds of notifications, that is three.
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There are four kinds of notifications a person can get on Apple products. There are passive notifications that don't announce themselves, they're just kind of on the list of things if you check it later.
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There are active notifications, those are the regular ones they pop up and ding if you have your ringer on.
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Then there are time sensitive notifications, which, as the name suggests, are specifically designed for things that have a sense of urgency. Things like if you have a delivery on its way.
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Or there's a security issue with an account that needs to be taken care of.
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And because these things are genuinely urgent, they're allowed to notify you even if you have do not disturb or focus mode on.
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And this is only one step below the last classification for notifications, which is critical, meant for things like amber alerts and tornado warnings.
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Why is Real Short one step below that? Again, these kind of notifications will show up even with do not disturb on.
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And in my personal experience, they will stay on your home screen for way longer.
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And you may be thinking, I don't think you should be able to send. These kind of notifications for stuff that doesn't really matter.
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Apple agrees with you. And that's why they explicitly say on their website, never use this feature for marketing.
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And RealShort does it anyway. All the time. And it's not just notifications. They will take advantage of every feature they can.
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The thing with iPhones, where anything you're doing in the background stays at the top of your phone, so does Real Short.
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Even if it's paused. Because why would I want the music I'm currently listening to to be the main thing on my dynamic island?
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I closed the app hours ago. Why are you still? Here, you are interrupting my Bay Webster.
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Also, this currently streaming box thing, I have never seen that for a non-live video.
Speaker A
Okay, I just realized something weird that I don't know how else to show. So you play the video, right? And then you exit the app, it automatically goes in picture in picture because, of course, this app does that.
Speaker A
And then, but if you lock it, it stops, you open it, it just starts playing.
Speaker A
But if they have it, I have never seen any other video player app. Ever it lo okay, you open it again.
Speaker A
It just it just starts! Is that not so weird? I know it sounds like I'm nitpicking, but I have truly never seen an app do this.
Speaker A
And I don't think I have had this much disdain for a service in my life.
Speaker A
An overpriced subscription that will use every means necessary to steal your attention just to get you to watch shows where the priority is not story, it's just to get you to waste as much time as possible on the app.
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And yet, despite all of that, or more accurately, because of all of that, the app is mind-bogglingly successful.
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On the app store alone, it has 453. Thousand views and an average of 4.7 out of five stars.
Speaker A
And Real Short, which again is one of many services like this, is set to make a billion dollars this year, up 34% from last year. And someone might reason well, what's the difference between watching something like this and spending time
Speaker A
on TikTok? And obviously, TikTok isn't perfect, but at least it's a human experience full of human jokes and opinions and skits and creativity. In fact, TikTok's main problem is that it's consistently too good at its job and I never want to leave. But vertical dramas,
Speaker A
the best way I can describe. Their feeling is that one episode of SpongeBob where they sold the Krusty Krab to private equity and they started making all the Krabby Patties from gray trash.
Speaker A
What'd he say? Garbage? I can't remember where this clip is, but there was an interview with somebody defending the existence of verticals, and one of the arguments they were making is that, well, you know, people are busy and not everybody has the time to sit down
Speaker A
and watch a whole show. But if they have a few minutes, they can watch a micro drama, and that's not too bad.
Speaker A
The idea that someone would have to work day and night because they can barely afford to live, meanwhile, they hardly talk to anybody because we all live in our own bubble.
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Don't communicate with each other, that they could be so busy and strapped for personal time to themselves that when they come home exhausted, they don't have the time to watch a proper show.
Speaker A
So the best they can do is watch a couple episodes of a vertical drama, go to sleep, and then do the exact same thing tomorrow is repulsive.
Speaker A
I that's the grayest sentence I have ever heard. It's not fair to act like this is the first time that bad television has ever been made, and that before this, all of it was great and made solely for art and not for money.
Speaker A
Hallmark, Lifetime, and Tubi all exist. And like verticals, Hallmark movies have a ridiculously fast turnaround time and are definitely engineered for quantity over quality.
Speaker A
They don't even use different colors in their movie posters. These are the same people copying and pasting.
Speaker A
And even before that, we had the original We Are Just Making This For Money TV.
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The original Bad TV, soap opera. They've been the way That they are for very similar reasons.
Speaker A
Soap operas employs something called continuous open narrative. In other words, if it feels like the show's conflicts have no clear beginning, middle, and end, it's because, yeah, they don't. They're designed to continue as long as advertising deems them
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profitable. Narrative threads are continually hashed and rehashed. Characters die, then come back, then die again, then come back again, then get amnesia, then get their memory restored, then get blown up, but then they survive.
Speaker A
All kinds of stuff. Why? Because these stories are Meant to last forever. I remember pre-pandemic, there was this lady in my neighborhood who was telling me that there was a soap opera she started watching when she was a teenager,
Speaker A
and she still watches new episodes of it today. She was 70 years old. Is it easy and entertaining to critique these shows because they're terrible? Without question.
Speaker A
There is no shortage of YouTuber reacting to every kind of micro drama you can imagine, and I completely understand why they're absurd.
Speaker A
Dad, can I borrow $50,000? Mom needs kidney dialysis and really don't have any money. How shameless of you to come here and beg us for money.
Speaker A
You're still thinking about your ex-wife? No, no. It isn't my loser's sister. We'll give you the money. What?
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If you marry Sebastian Klein in my place. No, I'm not going. I cannot stress this enough.
Speaker A
I barely edited that. Okay, fine, the slap was from a different episode. But everything else, I promise you, was from minute one of that show.
Speaker A
That was the first episode of one of Real Shorts' most popular shows, The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband.
Speaker A
The billionaire husband being played by this guy, Jared Harper. I'm bringing him up specifically because another reason why verticals cannot be overlooked.
Speaker A
That because they're always getting made, they're always creating opportunities for new actors to get work.
Speaker A
And that's something that Jared has spoken about. I had an agent. I was never available because I was super bucked out because you're working as the vertical guy.
Speaker A
They didn't get it. You're better than this. You don't need to do this. You need to make yourself more available to us and to these other traditional, you know, Hollywood opportunities.
Speaker A
So you can maybe book a one-day thing on. So you can make right. And I'm and that's just like a maybe book thing, but I wasn't, and obviously I gotta make rent.
Speaker A
In just one year, they were like. Jared, this isn't good for you. You gotta leave it or or we gotta part ways.
Speaker A
Right. And I was like, let's part ways. I'm crushing it over here unless y'all got an offer, then we can talk about something, but you don't. And the man has been booked and Busy. Jared Harper has been in five different real short shows,
Speaker A
three of which he plays a billionaire, one of which he plays a vaguely rich CEO.
Speaker A
He's got a look to him, I guess. I don't know. And it's so interesting because this is a career path that has been looked down on for a long time.
Speaker A
But it could be the very thing that advances somebody's career in the future. That's kind of how the YouTubes and the TikTok was ten years ago.
Speaker A
So we were at in a position where we were like No, we're traditional actors. I want to be Leonardo DiCaprio.
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I want to be taken seriously. Still, there's still a stigma. If you're a YouTube guy, but not anymore, you actually jump the line.
Speaker A
Right. If you all it is now is if you can garnish attention and if you have fans and you if you have real sales and dollars behind you, you're getting opportunities before traditional actors.
Speaker A
So with all that in mind, Vertical's kinda good then? Lexi Minutreat Mind Tree? She starred in a vertical drama before getting her role as Elle Woods in the Legally Blonde Prequel show on Prime Video.
Speaker A
And lots of actors starred in soap opera before they became famous, like Brad Pitt, John Stamos, Demi Moore, Brian Cranston. And you can say what you want about Jared or his acting ability, but between his five real short shows,
Speaker A
as of recording this, his work has almost a billion views. I do think it's great that it provides people a chance to work.
Speaker A
Not just actors, but directors and writers and crew members. These people get a chance.
Speaker A
To live by their craft, and whether we like it or not, this is the direction things seem to be going in.
Speaker A
I just got a notification. Drama Box is the sponsor and industry partner of a new vertical drama production class at Cal State.
Speaker A
And last year, Fox made a serious investment in a micro drama startup called Holy Water. So if people keep watching it, companies keep investing in it, and it keeps making jobs for creatives, is it really that bad? And how do you decide that?
Speaker A
There is so much more to a movie than just the story. One of my favorite parts of a movie is all the discourse it's able to create and how multiple people can see the same thing and yet take away
Speaker A
a bunch of different points. There's discussion about themes, the director's vision, performances, the look and sound of it. Don't even get me started on soundtracks.
Speaker A
The soundtrack for The Amazing Spider-Man is the best Spider-Man music we have. And the soundtrack for Loki is wild.
Speaker A
Purpose is glorious, is one of the most inspiring pieces of music I've ever heard.
Speaker A
It's also fun to watch people talk and make jokes about it on TikTok. TikTok, watch character analysis on YouTube, talk about it with your friends, get into talk about which characters were dumb or which characters were underrated or weird plot holes or storylines that didn't quite add up.
Speaker A
All of that has the side effect of being interested in the actors themselves and trying to see what other projects they've been in.
Speaker A
And now you're starting to get into the online community of the story, of people talking about the cinematic universe, or people talking about the director's prior work, or other weird stories and interesting things about the production.
Speaker A
Even if a movie is complete dung, at least you get to watch a commentary video of somebody making fun of it.
Speaker A
That's what makes movies beautiful. You can't do that with a micro drama because it was about a good guy who did good things and a bad guy who did bad things and the good guy won and the bad guy didn't.
Speaker A
What's there to talk about? And yeah, I guess you still could watch a commentary video about it, but it's so much funnier when they're watching a movie made by people who are actually trying to make something good, but just utterly fail. First and foremost,
Speaker A
I want to thank the filmmakers, the cast and crew, everyone that put in that hard work, blood, sweat, and tears day in and day out in order to bring this film to life.
Speaker A
It takes multiple miracles to make a movie and for it to all go right.
Speaker A
And so this is definitely a movie that got made. But at the same time, the argument that all verticals are the same. You could say that about all stories technically.
Speaker A
Because eventually all stories boil down to the same things. You've watched the same story on traditional film and television a million times.
Speaker A
You may not know it, but you have. So we we always there's only so many original ideas and I think that the idea of recycling or revisiting something that works.
Speaker A
It's not a problem. It's just a Place where you can sort of explore creativity, I guess. Years ago there was this comedy duo.
Speaker A
Chris and Jack love them. They made a great short film exploring this idea in a really interesting way. Okay, get ready to cry. There's a reason this won the Plyrog Award.
Speaker A
Was that the whole movie? ~ pretty great, huh? But but that was just a series of beeps and colors.
Speaker A
You wanna watch another one? I'm freaking on it. You should watch the rest of the film because it's hilarious.
Speaker A
But the main point is that you can condense any story down to its most basic elements, elements that have been rinsed and repeated for decades, if not centuries. And this is by no means a new thing.
Speaker A
Like Romeo and Juliet is cool, but the basic framework for that plot comes from, or at the very least, is heavily inspired by a story that was written like a thousand years earlier, Pyramus and Thisbe.
Speaker A
Young lovers, forbidden to get together because of a family rivalry. They fall in love, they decide to meet.
Speaker A
One of them confuses the other for dying, and they immediately overreact. And then the girl comes to see that her love is truly gone, so she immediately overreacts.
Speaker A
But does this mean that no stories are original? Technically, yes, but in reality, no. I saw a great explanation of this on Reddit.
Speaker A
If I told you to show me a number using the digits one through nine, and then show me a different one.
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And then a different one. And another one and another one. Okay, there's obviously a lot of combinations you can do.
Speaker A
But eventually you will run out. But even still, you can change the font or the color or the number system, or you can find some other way to decorate it.
Speaker A
In all these examples, you are using the same nine digits, and there is technically a limited number of combinations before it's just the same things over and over and over again.
Speaker A
But because it is each unique to look at, it is a different experience of those numbers.
Speaker A
It's technically a new thing. They're all original. So maybe it is the same stories all the time: good versus evil, a hero's journey, a tragedy, a comedy, whatever.
Speaker A
It doesn't mean that they can't be original. In my opinion, microdramas are more like this.
Speaker A
Yeah, sure, still the same idea, I guess. You can shuffle it around, but it's way less options. And that uniqueness is what makes a show iconic.
Speaker A
Not necessarily that I had never heard a story like this before. I think I remember Austin and Alley because it had a riveting plot.
Speaker A
No, I remember it because of Des. I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for my friends.
Speaker A
Austin, Trish. Just sing the song! And as far as I'm concerned, I have no idea what Caleb Morty's been up to ever since then. La la la la la, not listening. But that's not something I'd ever expect to experience with
Speaker A
a vertical series. They all seem to be executed the same way. So if it's the same ideas with the same style, that being no style, then it isn't original.
Speaker A
And that's because it was never about originality or personality or story. It was about getting you to stare at the stupid app for as long as humanly possible.
Speaker A
And blatantly so the focus of these films is not about the director's point of view at all. The CEO of Real Short was asked about the creative process, and he said something that would make every film school professor weak.
Speaker A
He said, A lot of these directors are thinking when I shoot the film, I don't care about how people think.
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This is my creation, it's my story. No, it's not your story. Your success should be determined by the people.
Speaker A
This isn't to say that verticals could never work. There needs to be innovation in media formats.
Speaker A
If media never changed. I wouldn't be talking to you right now. The closest thing I'd be able to do is go to school for journalism, fake a British accent, and then start doing think pieces for the local news network,
Speaker A
Philomena Kunk style. Am I saying there is absolutely no room for any kind of vertical media in my life?
Speaker A
No, not necessarily. Because that feels the same as saying there's no room for TV and we should all only be watching movies.
Speaker A
And if anything is shorter than two hours, then it's just lazy and it cannot be considered artistic.
Speaker A
But I do know one thing: the current execution of vertical dramas is not. The way I just got a notification.
Speaker A
Nietzsche once wrote, We have art in order not to perish from the truth. Which is a quote I wrote in the script days ago, hoping that by the time I started filming it would eventually make sense to me.
Speaker A
I still don't get it. I didn't quite know how to write this part because every explanation I looked into as to what it is that makes arts and writing so beautiful, every explanation I heard was kind of stupid to me.
Speaker A
But then again, asking the question itself is kind of stupid because you don't need a reason to appreciate how beautiful and life-giving art can be.
Speaker A
When asked if he thought that verticals would be the future of media, the CEO of Real Short said 100%.
Speaker A
Reason being, he thinks other streamers take too long to make content, invest too much money up front.
Speaker A
Don't have enough customer data. And you know, from a business perspective, he's probably right. And what I'm about to say is probably corny and won't change anything, but it everything he's saying is focusing so much on the calculation of whether it can work or not,
Speaker A
and says nothing to the artistry of the storytelling. I know that I'm just some dude recording in my parents' basement, and what I'm saying will have almost no effect on anything that takes place in the media industry. But isn't it cool how humans can make stories
Speaker A
out of anything and they can personify any object? If I show you a rock, that means nothing.
Speaker A
But if I put googly eyes on it, say its name is Raquel, and then tell you she's sad because she's had a rough day, you're now thinking, but what happened to Raquel?
Speaker A
Is that not like beautiful? Like that's so human. That's art. When I think of culture, what do I think of? I think if you visit other countries and then they show you what it is that makes them them and not you.
Speaker A
And in almost every case you do this, you are looking at their art. You're looking at their architecture.
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For anyone to say, let us cut art for anything else. Suppose they did that back in Renaissance Europe.
Speaker A
What what would what would Europe be without the support and interest in a thriving culture of art? As we readily spend money to visit these cities and go to their museums to turn around and say, now I'm gonna cut the art budget here.
Speaker A
That makes no sense to me. Like even writing this video has reminded me of all the times I spent writing and brainstorming throughout my childhood.
Speaker A
And some things I never wrote down, some things I got halfway through, some things I pretty much finished but never did anything with.
Speaker A
I it doesn't matter. I loved it. Writing is really cool. I will be deleting real short the second I upload this video. It feels like the digital equivalent of a shady businessman.
Speaker A
I just want good art to be made. Art is really cool. Also, that book I made in elementary school, in that video, the whole thing was about turning it into an audio book, and I remember I only got halfway through and I promised in the video if
Speaker A
I'd ev if it ever got a thousand listens on SoundCloud, I would finish the recording. That offer is still on the table.
Speaker A
It'll probably yeah, make it happen. I'll I'll probably do it. I'll I'll do it.
Topics:vertical dramasmicrodramasTikTokdigital entertainmentstreamingChinese mediaReal Shortcontent creationmedia economicsaudience engagement
