October 1, 2025 • 39 mins
It’s like “TV on TikTok,” but kids aren’t watching these. Instead, middle-aged women are on the cutting edge here: Vertical dramas are like full-length movies, just distilled down into catchy 60-90 second episodes and watched on your phone. Dexter talks to Teig Sadhana, the star of “My Boss is my Secret Sperm Donor” and other classics, and Jen Cooper, superfan and industry consultant, about why this new format is taking off, who’s watching, and if this might be the future of television.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read + Watch:
Jen’s website: https://www.verticaldramalove.com/
Teig’s instagram, @sadhat8: https://www.instagram.com/sadhat8/?hl=en
kill switch podcast on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8oh6zDRg1zgHkyOfikoeQS7cafAytstv&si=jsXSLEYgyrArLpGy
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Show you and where we're gonna have a baby together.
What the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, I introduced her to the sperm bank or use
Frozer's sperm, and told them to use your sample.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
The procedure has already done and she is gonna be
prevaty shooting what.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I swear to God, if you want my best friend,
I would fire you right now.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
I know what you're thinking. What am I listening to?
So that's a scene from My Boss is My Secret
Sperm Donor. This is a series with over thirty million
views online. Welcome to the world of vertical dramas. It's
basically like a full movie or a TV show, just
cut up into a bunch of sixty to ninety second
(00:54):
episodes meant to be watched on your phone.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
That needs to be a crescendo. Basically, every like forty
five second, you have to start a crescendo.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Tig Suddener is a New York based actor who played
the main character in My Boss Is My Secret Sperm Donor.
He's the guy just now who was threatening to fire someone.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Sometimes it is more tactful, and your crescendo might be
sort of stretched out over maybe two episodes, but in general,
the format requires you to have a cliffhanger every minute.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
A cliffhanger every minute. How do you even do that?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Honestly, dude, it can be like a crazy look. It
can be like someone enters a room and the camera
is like like eight K camera in my face and
I'm like what, Like it'll be like dramatic turns in
the scene.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Tigue is a classically trained actor, but he's recently found
his niche as a main man in the vertical drama space.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
You finally welcome La Pila.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
The doctors told me how you've stayed here by my
side all this time?
Speaker 6 (01:49):
I know?
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Hard you back Toork.
Speaker 6 (01:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
That was Tigue again playing the role of Elliott in
After Awakening Siblings Strike Back. This is a series with
over a million views. Some of the other shows you
start and have titles like Taming My Billionaire's Ruthless Desire.
There's also My Sister is Not someone to mess with
and the classic after Divorce. I enter my cougar era.
(02:16):
I see a lot of slaps. Also, Yeah, that's definitely one.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
Because you're desperate.
Speaker 6 (02:22):
Shut up.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
I hope you'll give us your blessing.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I've had rumors and things about how many slaps need
to be written into scripts and things like that.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Wait, how many slaps need to be written into a script?
Speaker 6 (02:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, it's one of the numerical metrics that
they can use in their market sort of analysis. I
think there's something about when someone sees a slap on
screen that creates an engagement spike or something.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Maybe this is the first time you're hearing of vertical dramas,
or maybe you've seen an ad for them on TikTok,
but you just never watched a full thing. But some
of these things are getting tens of millions of views.
The industry is worth billions of dollars. So who's making
this stuff and who are those millions of people who
are watching them? And isn't just a matter of time
(03:09):
before we're all watching I'm Afraid Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
This is.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
This is kill switch. I'm DEXORH Thomas.
Speaker 6 (03:30):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I would by.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
So how would you describe vertical dramas to somebody?
Speaker 1 (04:16):
A vertical drama in its current state is a film
Taylor produced for a vertical screen. It is for prominently phones,
but it is a film told in one minute to
two minute episodes across maybe sixty to one hundred episodes.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Vertical dramas first started getting popular in China back in
the early twenty tens. They're now produced in over a
dozen languages, and if anything, the stuff made in English
is kind of late to the party, but the format
has mostly stayed the same as the stuff that was
big in China.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
It's based a lot on Chinese narrative storytelling, and so
a lot of the sort of archetypal narrative tropes that
they use in storytelling in China are how we structure
the vertical here at the moment, And there's a lot
of times where the script is a carbon copy of
a successful vertical that did well in China, and they'll
just take that and they'll translate everything to English and
(05:10):
hopefully making sure that it fits.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
This is pretty similar to the soap operas or telling
no villas that you'd see in English or Spanish speaking countries.
But if you're familiar with Korean dramas, which were also
popular in China way before they got big in the States,
you're starting to get closer to the cultural vibe here.
So imagine a really emotional, over the top dramatic show,
but strip out most of the slow parts, punch up
(05:33):
the drama, and chop it down so it'll fit on TikTok.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So things like enemies to lovers, archetypes, so you know,
two people who hate each other at the start of
the movie and then slowly fall in love, or an
archetype where I think I said the lead male is
constantly coming to heads with the lead female's mother, so
it's a mother in law trope. There's a lot of
these sort of tropes. Angry husband who hates his wife
(05:56):
then realizes he actually needed her more than he thought,
and he's been a jerk the whole time. So it's
like these like sweeping archetypes that have been around for
thousands of years in China and are like very well
proven in Chinese culture to carry narrative well. And it's
a process now of seeing how well they do and
how to tailor those narratives or alter things a little
(06:17):
here in the West to keep it as strong here
as it is in China.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
What was your reaction when you first got your first gig?
Did you know that these things existed?
Speaker 6 (06:26):
No?
Speaker 1 (06:27):
No, I needed my rampaid.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I came over in twenty eighteen to study theater and
graduated in May twenty twenty four, and then was like
spamming out applications and submissions on all the different actors'
sites that they sort of half teach you how to
use at acting school. And one guy got back to
me because someone on his project had pulled out. It
(06:51):
was a project called Glory of Revenge, which is as
of yet unreleased. I had a quick phone call with
him a couple days later. I was out in Burninghand, Pennsylvania,
which is like deep Amish country and we're like in
the middle of nowhere. I remember calling my mom and
having to like convince her that it wasn't pornography. I
think she was quite concerned about what these were. But
(07:11):
that was kind of my introduction to verticals.
Speaker 6 (07:13):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Wow, So, I mean you get on set, your train
in theater, you get handed this script.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I mean, what is this like a bit overwhelming to
be honest, because we've got seven days. So, like, the
way that they filmed them is they hired two AIRBMB
mansions out in Pennsylvania. They took a crew of maybe
ten of us. That's crew and cast. We all stayed
in the mansion as well because it was an Airbnb
and it saves on accommodation and stuff. So we're sleeping
on the set. We're living and breathing in the set
(07:43):
all week. It was I think a seven day shoot
and it's twelve hour days, so.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
It was a lot. It was a lot. How many
of these vertical dramas have you've done so far?
Speaker 6 (07:53):
Eleven?
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Eleven? Wow?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, I got a draw full of crazy scripts. Man,
they're so good for Christmas gifts to give them the
people you drink you read the lines.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
That's so good.
Speaker 6 (08:03):
She's bleeding out.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Someone needs to decide now.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
She won't make it without a transfusion. Her sister is
the only match. She's given blood for you dozens of times.
Why can't you save her this once?
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Shut up?
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Pross too fragile to donate.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Yeah, what if something happens to you, you idiot. We're
not risking that.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
But what about Bella?
Speaker 6 (08:20):
She's your daughter too.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
If she dies, she dies.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
This is probably where I should admit that this stuff
is not for me. But it does make me wonder
why these over the top romance soap operas are the
thing that everyone is making. Tigu's got a theory about this.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I think they're a brilliant medium to gain large numbers
of viewers fast, and the viewers are invested, they care.
The viewers are emotionally invested and engaged in new content,
engaged in storylines. They're fully locked into this now in
a way that maybe other genres don't have that same pull.
(09:02):
And then I think that's been the genius way to
sort of build the structure and the scaffolding of the
business model. And now I think the last evaluation of
the space, based on still just this first phase of
verticals here in the West is about five point five
billion dollars I think, wow, which is an insane amount
of money.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
Okay, yeah, but who's making that money. Well, it's a
bunch of different companies. Each company has an app where
you can watch their specific shows. So if you want
to watch a particular show, say one made by one
of the big companies called Real Short, you have to
download the Real Short app. But another show might be
made by another company, say Drama Box, and if you
(09:40):
want to watch that, you have to download the drama
Box app, and so on.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
So most of the original apps that have come over
a Chinese owned apps, and they're coming from tech companies,
so they're not coming from traditional TV and media. They're
coming from a tech company that's set up an app
that is then making these looking at all the data.
So everything is about data analytics and it's like this works,
We'll do.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
More of this.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
If you get really into vertical dramas, then at some
point you're going to run into Jen Cooper. She's got
to be one of the most well known English language
vertical drama fans. She's got a website where she writes
reviews of new verticals that have come out, She gives recommendations,
and she does some other stuff too, which we'll get
to later. She only discovered verticals last year, which in
(10:22):
this space still means she's a veteran and she's seen
things change a lot.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
Everyone suddenly realized these things are making so much money,
and obviously the money is all going back to the
tech companies in China, so everyone's like, well, we need
a piece of this. So we've gone from the beginning
of the year of being one of two other apps
to now it's exploding everywhere.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
You know.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
There's Turkish apps as career apps. The UK is putting
together apps that will be out to their apps that
are going to be available in America.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
One of the first apps to try to bring vertical
dramas to an audience in the US was real Short.
Real Short was launched in twenty twenty two, and it's
kind of like TikTok in that it's an America based company,
but it's created and backed by a Chinese company. In
twenty twenty four, their app actually overtook TikTok for the
number one spot in the entertainment section of Apple's App
(11:09):
Store in the US. Two years from launch to number
one is really fast, and so of course, since then
dozens of apps like real Short have also popped up
in the app stores.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
So I have about forty on my phone.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
I'm sorry, four zero, Yes, okay, I didn't know there
were that many.
Speaker 5 (11:29):
Forty forty is nothing. They are well over one hundred,
and there are new ones setting up every day.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
So if you were annoyed at having to pay for
Paramount Plus and Netflix and Hulu and having a switch
between all those, imagine that just times ten. But how
do you get this into vertical dramas well? Jen is
really into rom coms, or she was, but she says
she kind of found herself watching the same old stuff
because Hollywood wasn't making anything new that she was interested in.
(11:58):
And she's probably precisely who vertical drama apps were looking for.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
So I came to them the same way most people do,
which is via either TikTok, Instagram or Facebook ad. So
when I was scrolling through TikTok, ad popped up, I
was like, what's this And I kind of recognized it
because I had watched some Chinese and Korean dramas and
I kind of know that storyline. But that's interesting that
they're doing it with a Western cast clearly based in
the West. Started watching, and then I haven't really gone
(12:25):
back since.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Jen got hooked in a way that doesn't really happen
for her with say a Netflix show. This is a
fundamentally different kind of entertainment.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
It's massively a dopamine hit, so it is engineered to
deliver that even just the way that the episode's structured
of it's like adrenaline. So it's very very fast paced.
It's kind of high states high drama. This outrageous, this happens,
This happens, and so because it moves very fast and
you kind of know pretty much most of them, they'll
be a happy ending. It's giving you that kind of
(12:56):
hit of feel good. This is delivered, but then it's
also complete and I move on with my life. That
is I think the crux of why it is so popular.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Let's talk about this dopamine thing real quick. So TikTok
videos thrive on this. You watch a funny one minute
clip and that makes you feel good, so you swipe
to the next one looking for more. Now that clip
might make you feel sad or even angry, but for
a minute, you feel something, swipe to the next one.
It's a constant stream of content that prings that part
(13:27):
of your brain that craves an immediate reward but also
craves novelty. But novelty is kind of a risky way
to run an app, see with TikTok. With Instagram. As
good as those algorithms are, it'll occasionally show you something
that you personally find boring enough to snap out of
it and put your phone down. Good for you, not
(13:49):
good for the app. This is a market problem that
vertical dramas theoretically can fix. TikTok has kind of sporadic novelty.
Vertical dramas have controlled novelty. Once you're locked in, every
cliffhanger leads to the next cliff. Nothing's left to chance.
It's a slick, curated format and there are a bunch
(14:10):
of subgenres to get you locked in.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
There's definitely a massive subgenre of werewolf romances, and it
is werewolf's done in a very specific way, and not
like you know, American werewolf in londonal Tea Wolf. It's
much more coming from romance novels.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
You took something that didn't belong to you, and now
who you're gonna pay. It's just so unfortunate we have
to ruin that pretty base of yours.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
So hold on, hold on, Sorry, your brain's gonna explode that.
I can see this now that you're mentioning it. I've
noticed this. The billionaire stuff cool, the cheating spouse, got
it understood. I'm not sure I can come up with
an internal explanation for why werewolf, But now that you've
brought it up, why were wolves?
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Because the law that they follow is that you have
a fated mate, so you have someone you are meant for.
I think that's the appeal in that it's someone out
there basically going you two are meant to be together,
and that's just fate. Also, just some actors are great
at it and are quite willing to basically growl a
bit and be very entertain on screen. I'm not a
massive fan myself, but yeah, they're very, very popular.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Okay, so now you know why there's so many werewolf stories.
But who's watching this stuff? And how is it making
enough money to be a billion dollar industry? That's after
the break. Maybe the billion dollar industry part tipped you off.
(15:50):
But vertical dramas aren't free, at least none. If you
want to watch a full series, the app.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Will probably give you about the first ten episodes for free.
With the idea, you immediately get sucked into the story.
You get hooked. You want to know what happens next.
Then you come up against the paywall, and then that's
the key. Are you hooked enough that you want to
know what happens that you give the money to get
past the payball. They do a very good job because
a lot of us do that.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
And once you're willing to put down some money to
get past the paywall, you have two options. Pay per
episode or pay for a subscription.
Speaker 5 (16:22):
The new person, the naive person, will then buy coins.
So it works quite like if you think about a
gaming app, so you buy a bundle of coins to
unlock a certain amount of episodes. That is an incredibly
expensive way of doing it. So if you do that,
you stare bankruptcy in the face and kind of buyer's reborse.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
But if you get.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
Savvy, what you do it's like you look for a
weekly subscription, monthly subscription, and what that does is that
unlocks every show on that app platform that you can
then watch. It's still a more expensive way to consume
the media, but it's much more cost effective.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
But even still, a subscription can cost up to twenty
dollars a week. That's for one app, and remember there
are a lot of these apps.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
I think people are easily spending two hundred dollars plus
a month of this, and it's probably quite a lot
more because I think everyone rounds down because they don't
want admit what they're spending.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
How much money when you spend it when you were
first watching these things?
Speaker 5 (17:18):
Can I decline decline the question because my husband might
listen to this that bad really yeah, it was a bit,
But I think what happens is in the middle of
the night, if you're having a pretty rough life and
there's something that you think will deliver a dopamine here
and give you escapees of people pay for it.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
People will pay for it, and the numbers are pretty good.
So let's talk about costs. The Washington Post reported that
an entire vertical series usually costs under two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars to make. Compare that to TV, which
can cost millions of dollars per episode. And if you
want to talk about revenue, this year, films are averaging
(17:58):
about thirteen million dollars a box for sales. One vertical
app is saying that they have shows which again are
way cheaper to make than TV shows or movies that
do those numbers. And more so, the math is pretty good,
but who's paying. One of the really interesting things for
this is that clearly this is a new developing wave
(18:22):
of using technology, shall we say, usually the people who
are on the front end of that are kids, video
games and even online games. Right it was kids. This
is not kids who are at the forefront of this.
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 5 (18:38):
I think this is the thing that's fascinating. So I
know that when they started making these vertical dramas, they
were targeting the YA audience, so they thought it would
be that kind of teen early twenties. But actually, at
the moment, the main consumer of them are probably people
who I'm exactly like, women in their thirties to sixties seventies.
There's actually slightly older women, people who would be real romances.
(19:00):
That is who's mainly watching them. The content at the
moment is pretty much romance.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
And whatever they've stumbled upon is working. Jen says that
for a lot of fans, verticals is their new main
media diet. It's completely replaced Netflix, Hulu and everything else
for them.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
I don't watch much mainstream media now, which I think
is the thing that people find surprising because they think
it sits alongside are the consumption, and I really don't
watch much. The only reason we still have Netflix is
because my teen's revolted. I would have got rid of it.
We must have access to this and this. It's like, okay, fine,
you need to watch Wednesday. We'll have Netflix.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
After getting really hooked on vertical dramas, Jen tried looking
up more about them online, only to find that there
wasn't a whole lot of information available about this stuff
in English. So she decided to do something about it. Now,
when I say that Jen is very well known in
the vertical drama space, I meant it. Not only does
she have a website called Vertical Drama Love, which has reviews,
(20:00):
interviews with actors, and just all sorts of other information.
She decided to put together an entire online festival called Vertfest.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
We did a two day festival of vertical dramas and
I really wanted to make it global. So the idea
was because it was online, no one needed to pay travel.
You know, you could attend for whether you are in
the world, and also try and represent the world. So
we had a mix of panels, virtual drama stars, and
we tried to make it clicb thats we have people
from the UK Vertical drama is huge in the Ukraine,
so we have people from the Ukrainian industry. We had
(20:30):
people from Australia, we had Canada, and we had lots
of American ones because the Americans tend to just they
do make the most. So we were able to do
online meet greets where you as a fan could then
pay extra to have a conversation with your favorite start
and that was really popped on both sides, One for
a fan to be able to talk to the star,
two for the star because they're like, they're really aware
that we all as fans pay a lot and basically
(20:52):
bankroll their jobs. They know that the money is coming
from us, and so I think that's partly why they're
quite so happy to engage.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Jen not On. They made a source of information about
vertical dramas, but Vertfest helped make a community for fans
that didn't really have anyone else to talk to about
their favorite shows.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
The initial thing that brings them in is they don't
have anyone else in their day to day life to
talk to you about these things. I would say a
lot of the viewers are often dealing with really hard
stuff in their life. You've got people with serious illnesses,
who are caring for relatives, gone through big traumas and griefs.
There's quite a lot of people who like, this is
the first time I smiled since my child died or
(21:29):
something like that watching vertical drama. So people have gone
through truly awful things, and I think they come to
talk to initially about the vertical dramas, but then we'll
stay because there's just friendships. And it's the thing for
me is it's made the world feel a lot more
close together because it's felt so divided. But with this,
it's like I have good friends in Brazil and in
(21:50):
Germany and Australia and New York and Canada, and you
realize the commonality of your experience. You know, it turns
out whether you've got a teenager in the UK or
teenager in Brazil, they.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Hog the bathroom.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
You know, that's just what happens. So I think that's
why a lot of people have stayed.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
Jen also launched the first awards program for the genre,
which she called the Vertical Drama Love Fan Awards. She
didn't really know what to expect when she announced it,
but a lot of people participated. Sixteen thousand votes came
in from around the world.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
It was just crazy. It's like, it's just be it
my kitchen table. But why not. I'm going to do
the awards again next year. I need to slightly elevate
it for the kitchen table, so working on that club.
But yeah, I was just like, well why not? And
then people voted, and I think it was that thing
of someone taking what people were doing seriously.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
And one of the winners of the awards Tigue Sadner.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
So I was lucky enough to win the Rising Star
Award in that which was one of the two major
awards in the whole festival, which was great. I got
thousands of votes internationally and what we saw from that
was a huge swing from Kazakhstan of all places, and
the Philippines and India.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
This growing international community. It feels like they're connected to
actors in a different way from traditional movie or TV stars.
There's something about the medium that feels that they can
have a more intimate and more parasocial connection.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
There's something very cool about its sort of cultural alignment
with social media. And then it does feel like a
very personal thing that's driven so much fan support and
sort of furvor in the fan space because how connected
people feel to it. Hollywood feels quite big, alien, mechanical,
(23:35):
and that's somewhat what people admire is it's this machine,
this is different.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
After only a few years, vertical dramas have started to
eat into viewership of TV and movies. So what could
that mean for Hollywood and could we start to consider
this stuff art. That's after the break. You might remember
(24:08):
years ago when people who were complaining about how expensive
TV was finally had a different option. The people who
stopped watching TV and went over to Netflix or Hulu,
they called us cord cutters, and it felt like TV
was dying and there was something new coming out. And
now the streamers seem to be stagnating like everything else
in traditional media, and verticals are only getting bigger, so
(24:31):
naturally those legacy film and TV companies are trying to
get in on the action.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
It is really exciting that basically pretty much every big
name in studio you can think of is looking but
virtual goal dramas. They might not say it publicly, they
are all looking. There's a lot of big names. We
went from last year there was one Rolling Stone article
and that was it, and now there's been a snowball
oppressed since that first article that I've got. So it
went from that in the UK to be you know,
there's been a bit of a segment on the news
(24:57):
here now on the TV news, and it's happened to
What's America And it's.
Speaker 7 (25:01):
Slimmed down well for the TikTok generation. It's one of
thousands of so called vertical dramas made for viewing on phones,
a format exploding in popularity across East Asia and in
the US.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
So it's beginning to reach a little bit more of
a tipping point that people are becoming aware of these things.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Jen would know about this. She's gone from superfan to
online festival organizer to being a consultant in this industry
that again is only a few years old, and not
all media companies are talking publicly about their interest in verticals,
but they're starting to back in August, Disney announced the
newest additions to the Disney Accelerator, basically this program where
(25:45):
they invest in something they think is promising and could
make money. Out of thousands of applicants, they picked four companies.
First up is some AI animation software, and then there's
an AI three D printing manufacturer. There's some holographic display
tech startup, and also Drama Box, a vertical drama app
(26:06):
whose homepage, as I'm recording this shows titles like fake Dating,
My Rich Nemesis, and Mate It with My Fiance's Alpha Daddy.
Speaker 5 (26:15):
So they're now partnered with Disney, which is really exciting
because it means they get access toward Disney's resources and
mentorship and the kudoss Disney gets to safely look at
vertical dramas without actually really investing anything. But Drama Box
went on a big recruitment drive earlier this year, hired
a lot of American writers, and that content is now
coming through, and that content is very, very good.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
The turnaround time to make these dramas also makes them
easier and cheaper to just keep cranking out. They have
timelines that would be absolutely impossible for a traditional studio.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
I had a really cool conversation actually with an investment
team based out of the UK who put a lot
of money into West End and Broadway shows, and he
said the most attractive thing from him as an investor
is the turnaround. Financially, you can read coep your money
within a couple months. Even in major theater it might
take you week thirty six and a huge amount of
risk before you can get your money back, whereas this
(27:09):
it's two months if you play it right.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
But if verticals are really going to go mainstream, some
things that work right now might have to change.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
The titles are horrific. Okay, there is no other word
for it. So the problem you have is that, again
a lot of the apps you are not coming from
an interest in the quality of filmmaking. This is the apps,
not anyone involved in making it, but the apps. In morality,
it is basically about what will make us the most money.
(27:41):
So therefore the titles are getting more and more apporting,
and it is clickbait. There is no consideration that as
an actor you might not want certain of these titles
on your IMDb because people will look at them and
think you're doing soft pat It's.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Not just the titles. The content is probably a bigger
factor here. Tigue's breakout role was in a series called
Hurt Me, Love Me. This is a vertical that was
released in twenty twenty four on Drama Box that app
I just mentioned earlier. In that series, Tigue plays a
bad husband who eventually realizes the error of his ways
and sees the light and becomes a better husband. Okay,
(28:18):
bad husband is kind of under selling it. He was
physically violent toward his wife.
Speaker 6 (28:23):
Who the hell are you so on?
Speaker 1 (28:26):
You text me to come back for one to parade
another man a stranger in front of me in my
own house?
Speaker 6 (28:32):
Is that right? How long have you tuben together, I
would not get that hell out of my house.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
No, it was really hard, man. That was like my
second I think, And it was hard because the narrative
was so difficult to deal with. The basic idea is
like my wife and the piece is mute from like
an emotional damage injury and my character. Where I got
to eventually was that my character feels cornered and manipulated
by everyone in his life, and it makes him a
(29:00):
kind of horrible character to be perfectly honest. And I
really hit my head against that for a long time.
And also we got a lot of responses with people
who are uncomfortable about it. We got a lot of
sponsors also from people who loved it. I still to
this day get a lot of messages from India and
the Philippines about that character specifically. There's something resonated in that.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
What do people say just that they loved it?
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I think like a lot of people feel like they
really got I guess his sense of being cornered. It's
that cornered animal thing, which I don't necessarily personally, like
philosophically think that that excuses someone's actions, but it did.
I guess to these guys attract them to the character.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
What was the process going from a stage play, you know,
sort of the easily understandable path for a theater student
to be doing what you're doing now.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Honestly, awesome question, because it's a big difference. My first
script on my first vertical set, like was color coded,
all labeled, like. I did the whole drama school nerd thing,
which you need to do when you're operating with high art,
because I think it does help you sort of get
a grip of what this person's piece of work is
that you're contributing to by playing one of their characters.
(30:12):
If you kind of understand the piece and pull it apart,
that level of detail isn't needed at all on verticals.
It can be, and it hopefully will be as we
sophisticate the space and the products, but for the most part,
that's something quite specific to the depth of theater or
major feature films that are meticulously written and produced for
(30:32):
a high art approach.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
So I mentioned to a few friends who work in
Hollywood work in the TV industry that I was working
on this episode about vertical dramas, and the response was
not very good. Overall, what people were telling me was
they really don't want to touch this stuff. That to them,
the stories are over sexualized, they're cheesy. And more than
one person told me that the scripts that they've been
(30:54):
handed looked like AI. Not that they were AI translated
from some other language, but just straight up to them,
it looked like chat GPT. To some people, even being
associated with vertical dramas feels risky for their career.
Speaker 6 (31:08):
How dare you.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
Make a scene, especially in front of the Kaplan heiress.
Her family donated millions to the school, and I will
not have you jeopardize that or bully her.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
I was not bullying her.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
I was asking questions.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
Act up again, and I will make sure you get expelled.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
But sir, she is not Miss Kaplan because I am
Haley Kaplan.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
I mean, it's like everything is there, the money, the accessibility,
the audience, everything. But I would argue, at this stage,
the prestige is there.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
Yeah, I would say that's mistake. Yeah, definitely, the prestige.
I think that will come as the quality improves, maybe
another year. So in my head where I think it
will go and it will sit is it will be
another form of media that people consume, So it will
sit alongside cinemona, it will sit alongside TV, and they'll
have verticals. So in the way that Meryl Street now
would do TV as well as cinema, I think you
(32:02):
will potentially see people move through. So a few of
the actors who've made their name in the space have
now been cast in TV and cinema stuff. I know
of people in those spaces who are looking at vertical dramas.
So it's kind of that like splintering. I think of
how people can see more media. You know, some people
are mainly on Twitch with gaming, some people are more
on YouTube, but it's just adding another avenue to that.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
And this is the other side of it. If you're
thinking from an up and coming actors perspective, if you're
looking for a role on a casting website, ads for
vertical dramas can make up half the listenings you're going
to see. Verticals are some of the only things hiring.
And look, if you need a gig, you need a gig.
But just throwing money at stuff isn't sustainable for any
(32:46):
art forum. So again, how do you attract talent into
a medium that a lot of people look down on.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I think what we're trying to figure out now is
what does prestige mean in this space? What is for instance,
a prem vertical and how can we supply premium verticals
into the space, which I think is what we need
to do. So I did one four Real Shorts, big
company in the space that now sits at thirty point
five million views, that did really really well commercially, and
(33:15):
that also was like featured on I think The gut
Field Show on Fox and things like that, like it
ran up some breasts here and there, like again, he
was making fun of it because it's that's his mo
o heets have a plan for our short attention span.
Speaker 8 (33:28):
Silicon Valley based Real Short is producing sexy, steamy episodes
of original content, think of old pornography, but without the
actual porn. Titles include Pregnant and Spoiled by the Billionaire
Dilfs and Joe You'll.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
Like this one. My Boss is my secret sperm donor.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
I played the boss, So I think that got a
lot of attention.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
Yeah, what does it feel like when you see people
making fun of your stuff?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
It's really hot out here and I'm making a living
and building a foundation of a career that has space
for me to expand and grow and develop and bring
my people in with me. So like, I'm not too
bothered about it. Like I do see validity in people
being quite skeptical of these and quite skeptical of the
business model that creates these as well.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
I definitely get it. Bro There's just so much potential.
I'm not too worried about it. Really.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
That's what I so interesting about how you're approaching this,
man is because you're kind of out here. You're not
just acting in these things and then catching the check
and dipping. You're kind of evangelizing for a format.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Absolutely, and I wouldn't put it all on myself either.
So the fact the way that the fans have communicated
kind of from the outset has been feedback, has been commentary,
which I think is healthy. I think if we can
have good dialogue and discourse about what we're consuming, I
think we can then improve in upscale.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
Something we always see from these newer formats is the
struggling with the question is this art are verticals there yet?
Our verticals are going to come up against that question
are they already there?
Speaker 5 (35:05):
I think they are going to have that question. But
then there's also what is art, and it's kind of
art reflects what people need during the times that they
live in, and the times that we live in now
are pretty grim. Everyone agrees it feels worse. People want escapism,
and that's what verticals de liver. So, yes, it probably
is art for the masses rather than art for the hierarchy.
(35:29):
It's dopa mean for the masses. But that's what people
want and that's what people need. So the main thing
that people come to vertical dramas is I need something
that instantly transports me out of my life and means
i can switch off for an hour and a half
and I'm not thinking about my day to day challenges.
I've got that, I've got a dopamine hit, I move
on bonuses that I'm now part of a nice community
(35:49):
and I've made friends around the world. But that is
why people are there. But my understanding is things like
often that classic good over evil story comes up as
something people would see in art when life is hard,
so like during World War Two. That's when like Captain
America right, And again a lot of the verticals, particularly
the more traditional ones, is good people overcoming the terrible relatives,
terrible whoever they get their comeupance, they get the happier
(36:11):
for after verticals, there are proper bad guys who'd get defeated,
and people.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Need to see that real life's not always as simple,
but the verticals can be exactly.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
One hundred percent. They make this wonderful simplicity that we
will wish we could live in day to day.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
You know, I'm kind of noticing a theme recently, so
the VTubers episode, which again is a bunch of people
who go to these massive concerts to watch a pretend
anime girl on stage, or the Low Fi episode where
we talked about how much a genre means to people
even if a lot of the listeners just have it
on in the background. And then there's this one, and
again I promise we didn't plan this ahead of time,
(36:48):
but I'm seeing this need that people have for something
that can bring together, even if or maybe especially if
other people don't understand it, because I think when you
find something like that that means that much to you,
of course you want it to get better. With Low five,
maybe it's a little late, but with verticals, the fans
saying what they want and what they don't want is
(37:11):
actually helping people like Tige have more clout to push
the industry in the direction that he wants to go
while it's still early enough to do that. Thank you
so much for listening to kill Switch. If you want
to hit us up, you can email us at kill
Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC, or on Instagram at kill
switch pod. And hopefully if you made it this far
(37:32):
you like the show, and if so, you know, maybe
think about leaving a review. It helps other people find
the show, which helps us keep doing our thing. And
once you've done that, did you know that Killswitch is
on YouTube? So if you've been wondering what the Fisker
cars or the anime YouTuber avatars look like, you can
see it all there. The link for that and for
everything else is in the show notes. Kill Switch is
(37:53):
hosted by Me Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Shena Ozaki,
Darluck Potts, and Julian Nutter. Alexandervild helped produce today's episode.
A theme song is by me and Kyle Murdoch, and
Kyle also makes this show in Kaleidoscope. Our executive producers
are Ozwa Lashin, mngesh Had Tokadur, and Kate Osbourne from
iHeart are executive producers are Katrina Norville and Nikki E.
(38:17):
Tor Oh and one other thing. Teague and I spent
a bunch of time just nerding out over cameras, which
I will spare you having to listen to. But there
was something I found really interesting, and it was how
even the film crews are still figuring this stuff out.
They're shooting this stuff on regular Hollywood level equipment though, right.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Yeah, I've worked with like massive major cameras and like
different approaches. This is also an interesting tech point. I've
shot these sometimes where they'll use three or four cameras
at once. I've also seen cameras physically turned on their side,
so you're literally shooting out of like a red film camera,
but it's turned on its side, which is just kind
of quirky to see because it's gonna be vertical, so
they literally just turned the camera.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
I've seen that. I've seen you posted some of the
behind the scene photos on your Instagram, and there's one
where they're using a regular Hollywood style camera. I mean,
these things cameras cost about as much as a car,
and they've got the little monitor on there and then
they just put black tape down the middle so they
can see, Okay, we're not using the rest of this,
it's only the stuff in the middle. And they just
(39:18):
put tape on the monitor.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
So I don't know how they measure to make sure
that that's right either, so that their frames right. So
that seems crucial to me.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
You don't want to.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Mess that one up.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Any filmmakers out there are probably cringing right now, but hey,
look it's a brand new industry. Anyway, catch on the
next one.
Show you and where we're gonna have a baby together.
What the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, I introduced her to the sperm bank or use
Frozer's sperm, and told them to use your sample.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
The procedure has already done and she is gonna be
prevaty shooting what.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I swear to God, if you want my best friend,
I would fire you right now.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
I know what you're thinking. What am I listening to?
So that's a scene from My Boss is My Secret
Sperm Donor. This is a series with over thirty million
views online. Welcome to the world of vertical dramas. It's
basically like a full movie or a TV show, just
cut up into a bunch of sixty to ninety second
(00:54):
episodes meant to be watched on your phone.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
That needs to be a crescendo. Basically, every like forty
five second, you have to start a crescendo.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Tig Suddener is a New York based actor who played
the main character in My Boss Is My Secret Sperm Donor.
He's the guy just now who was threatening to fire someone.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Sometimes it is more tactful, and your crescendo might be
sort of stretched out over maybe two episodes, but in general,
the format requires you to have a cliffhanger every minute.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
A cliffhanger every minute. How do you even do that?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Honestly, dude, it can be like a crazy look. It
can be like someone enters a room and the camera
is like like eight K camera in my face and
I'm like what, Like it'll be like dramatic turns in
the scene.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Tigue is a classically trained actor, but he's recently found
his niche as a main man in the vertical drama space.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
You finally welcome La Pila.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
The doctors told me how you've stayed here by my
side all this time?
Speaker 6 (01:49):
I know?
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Hard you back Toork.
Speaker 6 (01:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
That was Tigue again playing the role of Elliott in
After Awakening Siblings Strike Back. This is a series with
over a million views. Some of the other shows you
start and have titles like Taming My Billionaire's Ruthless Desire.
There's also My Sister is Not someone to mess with
and the classic after Divorce. I enter my cougar era.
(02:16):
I see a lot of slaps. Also, Yeah, that's definitely one.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
Because you're desperate.
Speaker 6 (02:22):
Shut up.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
I hope you'll give us your blessing.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I've had rumors and things about how many slaps need
to be written into scripts and things like that.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Wait, how many slaps need to be written into a script?
Speaker 6 (02:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, it's one of the numerical metrics that
they can use in their market sort of analysis. I
think there's something about when someone sees a slap on
screen that creates an engagement spike or something.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Maybe this is the first time you're hearing of vertical dramas,
or maybe you've seen an ad for them on TikTok,
but you just never watched a full thing. But some
of these things are getting tens of millions of views.
The industry is worth billions of dollars. So who's making
this stuff and who are those millions of people who
are watching them? And isn't just a matter of time
(03:09):
before we're all watching I'm Afraid Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
This is.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
This is kill switch. I'm DEXORH Thomas.
Speaker 6 (03:30):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I would by.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
So how would you describe vertical dramas to somebody?
Speaker 1 (04:16):
A vertical drama in its current state is a film
Taylor produced for a vertical screen. It is for prominently phones,
but it is a film told in one minute to
two minute episodes across maybe sixty to one hundred episodes.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Vertical dramas first started getting popular in China back in
the early twenty tens. They're now produced in over a
dozen languages, and if anything, the stuff made in English
is kind of late to the party, but the format
has mostly stayed the same as the stuff that was
big in China.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
It's based a lot on Chinese narrative storytelling, and so
a lot of the sort of archetypal narrative tropes that
they use in storytelling in China are how we structure
the vertical here at the moment, And there's a lot
of times where the script is a carbon copy of
a successful vertical that did well in China, and they'll
just take that and they'll translate everything to English and
(05:10):
hopefully making sure that it fits.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
This is pretty similar to the soap operas or telling
no villas that you'd see in English or Spanish speaking countries.
But if you're familiar with Korean dramas, which were also
popular in China way before they got big in the States,
you're starting to get closer to the cultural vibe here.
So imagine a really emotional, over the top dramatic show,
but strip out most of the slow parts, punch up
(05:33):
the drama, and chop it down so it'll fit on TikTok.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So things like enemies to lovers, archetypes, so you know,
two people who hate each other at the start of
the movie and then slowly fall in love, or an
archetype where I think I said the lead male is
constantly coming to heads with the lead female's mother, so
it's a mother in law trope. There's a lot of
these sort of tropes. Angry husband who hates his wife
(05:56):
then realizes he actually needed her more than he thought,
and he's been a jerk the whole time. So it's
like these like sweeping archetypes that have been around for
thousands of years in China and are like very well
proven in Chinese culture to carry narrative well. And it's
a process now of seeing how well they do and
how to tailor those narratives or alter things a little
(06:17):
here in the West to keep it as strong here
as it is in China.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
What was your reaction when you first got your first gig?
Did you know that these things existed?
Speaker 6 (06:26):
No?
Speaker 1 (06:27):
No, I needed my rampaid.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I came over in twenty eighteen to study theater and
graduated in May twenty twenty four, and then was like
spamming out applications and submissions on all the different actors'
sites that they sort of half teach you how to
use at acting school. And one guy got back to
me because someone on his project had pulled out. It
(06:51):
was a project called Glory of Revenge, which is as
of yet unreleased. I had a quick phone call with
him a couple days later. I was out in Burninghand, Pennsylvania,
which is like deep Amish country and we're like in
the middle of nowhere. I remember calling my mom and
having to like convince her that it wasn't pornography. I
think she was quite concerned about what these were. But
(07:11):
that was kind of my introduction to verticals.
Speaker 6 (07:13):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Wow, So, I mean you get on set, your train
in theater, you get handed this script.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I mean, what is this like a bit overwhelming to
be honest, because we've got seven days. So, like, the
way that they filmed them is they hired two AIRBMB
mansions out in Pennsylvania. They took a crew of maybe
ten of us. That's crew and cast. We all stayed
in the mansion as well because it was an Airbnb
and it saves on accommodation and stuff. So we're sleeping
on the set. We're living and breathing in the set
(07:43):
all week. It was I think a seven day shoot
and it's twelve hour days, so.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
It was a lot. It was a lot. How many
of these vertical dramas have you've done so far?
Speaker 6 (07:53):
Eleven?
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Eleven? Wow?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, I got a draw full of crazy scripts. Man,
they're so good for Christmas gifts to give them the
people you drink you read the lines.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
That's so good.
Speaker 6 (08:03):
She's bleeding out.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Someone needs to decide now.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
She won't make it without a transfusion. Her sister is
the only match. She's given blood for you dozens of times.
Why can't you save her this once?
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Shut up?
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Pross too fragile to donate.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Yeah, what if something happens to you, you idiot. We're
not risking that.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
But what about Bella?
Speaker 6 (08:20):
She's your daughter too.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
If she dies, she dies.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
This is probably where I should admit that this stuff
is not for me. But it does make me wonder
why these over the top romance soap operas are the
thing that everyone is making. Tigu's got a theory about this.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
I think they're a brilliant medium to gain large numbers
of viewers fast, and the viewers are invested, they care.
The viewers are emotionally invested and engaged in new content,
engaged in storylines. They're fully locked into this now in
a way that maybe other genres don't have that same pull.
(09:02):
And then I think that's been the genius way to
sort of build the structure and the scaffolding of the
business model. And now I think the last evaluation of
the space, based on still just this first phase of
verticals here in the West is about five point five
billion dollars I think, wow, which is an insane amount
of money.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
Okay, yeah, but who's making that money. Well, it's a
bunch of different companies. Each company has an app where
you can watch their specific shows. So if you want
to watch a particular show, say one made by one
of the big companies called Real Short, you have to
download the Real Short app. But another show might be
made by another company, say Drama Box, and if you
(09:40):
want to watch that, you have to download the drama
Box app, and so on.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
So most of the original apps that have come over
a Chinese owned apps, and they're coming from tech companies,
so they're not coming from traditional TV and media. They're
coming from a tech company that's set up an app
that is then making these looking at all the data.
So everything is about data analytics and it's like this works,
We'll do.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
More of this.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
If you get really into vertical dramas, then at some
point you're going to run into Jen Cooper. She's got
to be one of the most well known English language
vertical drama fans. She's got a website where she writes
reviews of new verticals that have come out, She gives recommendations,
and she does some other stuff too, which we'll get
to later. She only discovered verticals last year, which in
(10:22):
this space still means she's a veteran and she's seen
things change a lot.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
Everyone suddenly realized these things are making so much money,
and obviously the money is all going back to the
tech companies in China, so everyone's like, well, we need
a piece of this. So we've gone from the beginning
of the year of being one of two other apps
to now it's exploding everywhere.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
You know.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
There's Turkish apps as career apps. The UK is putting
together apps that will be out to their apps that
are going to be available in America.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
One of the first apps to try to bring vertical
dramas to an audience in the US was real Short.
Real Short was launched in twenty twenty two, and it's
kind of like TikTok in that it's an America based company,
but it's created and backed by a Chinese company. In
twenty twenty four, their app actually overtook TikTok for the
number one spot in the entertainment section of Apple's App
(11:09):
Store in the US. Two years from launch to number
one is really fast, and so of course, since then
dozens of apps like real Short have also popped up
in the app stores.
Speaker 5 (11:22):
So I have about forty on my phone.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
I'm sorry, four zero, Yes, okay, I didn't know there
were that many.
Speaker 5 (11:29):
Forty forty is nothing. They are well over one hundred,
and there are new ones setting up every day.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
So if you were annoyed at having to pay for
Paramount Plus and Netflix and Hulu and having a switch
between all those, imagine that just times ten. But how
do you get this into vertical dramas well? Jen is
really into rom coms, or she was, but she says
she kind of found herself watching the same old stuff
because Hollywood wasn't making anything new that she was interested in.
(11:58):
And she's probably precisely who vertical drama apps were looking for.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
So I came to them the same way most people do,
which is via either TikTok, Instagram or Facebook ad. So
when I was scrolling through TikTok, ad popped up, I
was like, what's this And I kind of recognized it
because I had watched some Chinese and Korean dramas and
I kind of know that storyline. But that's interesting that
they're doing it with a Western cast clearly based in
the West. Started watching, and then I haven't really gone
(12:25):
back since.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Jen got hooked in a way that doesn't really happen
for her with say a Netflix show. This is a
fundamentally different kind of entertainment.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
It's massively a dopamine hit, so it is engineered to
deliver that even just the way that the episode's structured
of it's like adrenaline. So it's very very fast paced.
It's kind of high states high drama. This outrageous, this happens,
This happens, and so because it moves very fast and
you kind of know pretty much most of them, they'll
be a happy ending. It's giving you that kind of
(12:56):
hit of feel good. This is delivered, but then it's
also complete and I move on with my life. That
is I think the crux of why it is so popular.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Let's talk about this dopamine thing real quick. So TikTok
videos thrive on this. You watch a funny one minute
clip and that makes you feel good, so you swipe
to the next one looking for more. Now that clip
might make you feel sad or even angry, but for
a minute, you feel something, swipe to the next one.
It's a constant stream of content that prings that part
(13:27):
of your brain that craves an immediate reward but also
craves novelty. But novelty is kind of a risky way
to run an app, see with TikTok. With Instagram. As
good as those algorithms are, it'll occasionally show you something
that you personally find boring enough to snap out of
it and put your phone down. Good for you, not
(13:49):
good for the app. This is a market problem that
vertical dramas theoretically can fix. TikTok has kind of sporadic novelty.
Vertical dramas have controlled novelty. Once you're locked in, every
cliffhanger leads to the next cliff. Nothing's left to chance.
It's a slick, curated format and there are a bunch
(14:10):
of subgenres to get you locked in.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
There's definitely a massive subgenre of werewolf romances, and it
is werewolf's done in a very specific way, and not
like you know, American werewolf in londonal Tea Wolf. It's
much more coming from romance novels.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
You took something that didn't belong to you, and now
who you're gonna pay. It's just so unfortunate we have
to ruin that pretty base of yours.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
So hold on, hold on, Sorry, your brain's gonna explode that.
I can see this now that you're mentioning it. I've
noticed this. The billionaire stuff cool, the cheating spouse, got
it understood. I'm not sure I can come up with
an internal explanation for why werewolf, But now that you've
brought it up, why were wolves?
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Because the law that they follow is that you have
a fated mate, so you have someone you are meant for.
I think that's the appeal in that it's someone out
there basically going you two are meant to be together,
and that's just fate. Also, just some actors are great
at it and are quite willing to basically growl a
bit and be very entertain on screen. I'm not a
massive fan myself, but yeah, they're very, very popular.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Okay, so now you know why there's so many werewolf stories.
But who's watching this stuff? And how is it making
enough money to be a billion dollar industry? That's after
the break. Maybe the billion dollar industry part tipped you off.
(15:50):
But vertical dramas aren't free, at least none. If you
want to watch a full series, the app.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Will probably give you about the first ten episodes for free.
With the idea, you immediately get sucked into the story.
You get hooked. You want to know what happens next.
Then you come up against the paywall, and then that's
the key. Are you hooked enough that you want to
know what happens that you give the money to get
past the payball. They do a very good job because
a lot of us do that.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
And once you're willing to put down some money to
get past the paywall, you have two options. Pay per
episode or pay for a subscription.
Speaker 5 (16:22):
The new person, the naive person, will then buy coins.
So it works quite like if you think about a
gaming app, so you buy a bundle of coins to
unlock a certain amount of episodes. That is an incredibly
expensive way of doing it. So if you do that,
you stare bankruptcy in the face and kind of buyer's reborse.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
But if you get.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
Savvy, what you do it's like you look for a
weekly subscription, monthly subscription, and what that does is that
unlocks every show on that app platform that you can
then watch. It's still a more expensive way to consume
the media, but it's much more cost effective.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
But even still, a subscription can cost up to twenty
dollars a week. That's for one app, and remember there
are a lot of these apps.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
I think people are easily spending two hundred dollars plus
a month of this, and it's probably quite a lot
more because I think everyone rounds down because they don't
want admit what they're spending.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
How much money when you spend it when you were
first watching these things?
Speaker 5 (17:18):
Can I decline decline the question because my husband might
listen to this that bad really yeah, it was a bit,
But I think what happens is in the middle of
the night, if you're having a pretty rough life and
there's something that you think will deliver a dopamine here
and give you escapees of people pay for it.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
People will pay for it, and the numbers are pretty good.
So let's talk about costs. The Washington Post reported that
an entire vertical series usually costs under two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars to make. Compare that to TV, which
can cost millions of dollars per episode. And if you
want to talk about revenue, this year, films are averaging
(17:58):
about thirteen million dollars a box for sales. One vertical
app is saying that they have shows which again are
way cheaper to make than TV shows or movies that
do those numbers. And more so, the math is pretty good,
but who's paying. One of the really interesting things for
this is that clearly this is a new developing wave
(18:22):
of using technology, shall we say, usually the people who
are on the front end of that are kids, video
games and even online games. Right it was kids. This
is not kids who are at the forefront of this.
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 5 (18:38):
I think this is the thing that's fascinating. So I
know that when they started making these vertical dramas, they
were targeting the YA audience, so they thought it would
be that kind of teen early twenties. But actually, at
the moment, the main consumer of them are probably people
who I'm exactly like, women in their thirties to sixties seventies.
There's actually slightly older women, people who would be real romances.
(19:00):
That is who's mainly watching them. The content at the
moment is pretty much romance.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
And whatever they've stumbled upon is working. Jen says that
for a lot of fans, verticals is their new main
media diet. It's completely replaced Netflix, Hulu and everything else
for them.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
I don't watch much mainstream media now, which I think
is the thing that people find surprising because they think
it sits alongside are the consumption, and I really don't
watch much. The only reason we still have Netflix is
because my teen's revolted. I would have got rid of it.
We must have access to this and this. It's like, okay, fine,
you need to watch Wednesday. We'll have Netflix.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
After getting really hooked on vertical dramas, Jen tried looking
up more about them online, only to find that there
wasn't a whole lot of information available about this stuff
in English. So she decided to do something about it. Now,
when I say that Jen is very well known in
the vertical drama space, I meant it. Not only does
she have a website called Vertical Drama Love, which has reviews,
(20:00):
interviews with actors, and just all sorts of other information.
She decided to put together an entire online festival called Vertfest.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
We did a two day festival of vertical dramas and
I really wanted to make it global. So the idea
was because it was online, no one needed to pay travel.
You know, you could attend for whether you are in
the world, and also try and represent the world. So
we had a mix of panels, virtual drama stars, and
we tried to make it clicb thats we have people
from the UK Vertical drama is huge in the Ukraine,
so we have people from the Ukrainian industry. We had
(20:30):
people from Australia, we had Canada, and we had lots
of American ones because the Americans tend to just they
do make the most. So we were able to do
online meet greets where you as a fan could then
pay extra to have a conversation with your favorite start
and that was really popped on both sides, One for
a fan to be able to talk to the star,
two for the star because they're like, they're really aware
that we all as fans pay a lot and basically
(20:52):
bankroll their jobs. They know that the money is coming
from us, and so I think that's partly why they're
quite so happy to engage.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
Jen not On. They made a source of information about
vertical dramas, but Vertfest helped make a community for fans
that didn't really have anyone else to talk to about
their favorite shows.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
The initial thing that brings them in is they don't
have anyone else in their day to day life to
talk to you about these things. I would say a
lot of the viewers are often dealing with really hard
stuff in their life. You've got people with serious illnesses,
who are caring for relatives, gone through big traumas and griefs.
There's quite a lot of people who like, this is
the first time I smiled since my child died or
(21:29):
something like that watching vertical drama. So people have gone
through truly awful things, and I think they come to
talk to initially about the vertical dramas, but then we'll
stay because there's just friendships. And it's the thing for
me is it's made the world feel a lot more
close together because it's felt so divided. But with this,
it's like I have good friends in Brazil and in
(21:50):
Germany and Australia and New York and Canada, and you
realize the commonality of your experience. You know, it turns
out whether you've got a teenager in the UK or
teenager in Brazil, they.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Hog the bathroom.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
You know, that's just what happens. So I think that's
why a lot of people have stayed.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
Jen also launched the first awards program for the genre,
which she called the Vertical Drama Love Fan Awards. She
didn't really know what to expect when she announced it,
but a lot of people participated. Sixteen thousand votes came
in from around the world.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
It was just crazy. It's like, it's just be it
my kitchen table. But why not. I'm going to do
the awards again next year. I need to slightly elevate
it for the kitchen table, so working on that club.
But yeah, I was just like, well why not? And
then people voted, and I think it was that thing
of someone taking what people were doing seriously.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
And one of the winners of the awards Tigue Sadner.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
So I was lucky enough to win the Rising Star
Award in that which was one of the two major
awards in the whole festival, which was great. I got
thousands of votes internationally and what we saw from that
was a huge swing from Kazakhstan of all places, and
the Philippines and India.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
This growing international community. It feels like they're connected to
actors in a different way from traditional movie or TV stars.
There's something about the medium that feels that they can
have a more intimate and more parasocial connection.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
There's something very cool about its sort of cultural alignment
with social media. And then it does feel like a
very personal thing that's driven so much fan support and
sort of furvor in the fan space because how connected
people feel to it. Hollywood feels quite big, alien, mechanical,
(23:35):
and that's somewhat what people admire is it's this machine,
this is different.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
After only a few years, vertical dramas have started to
eat into viewership of TV and movies. So what could
that mean for Hollywood and could we start to consider
this stuff art. That's after the break. You might remember
(24:08):
years ago when people who were complaining about how expensive
TV was finally had a different option. The people who
stopped watching TV and went over to Netflix or Hulu,
they called us cord cutters, and it felt like TV
was dying and there was something new coming out. And
now the streamers seem to be stagnating like everything else
in traditional media, and verticals are only getting bigger, so
(24:31):
naturally those legacy film and TV companies are trying to
get in on the action.
Speaker 5 (24:37):
It is really exciting that basically pretty much every big
name in studio you can think of is looking but
virtual goal dramas. They might not say it publicly, they
are all looking. There's a lot of big names. We
went from last year there was one Rolling Stone article
and that was it, and now there's been a snowball
oppressed since that first article that I've got. So it
went from that in the UK to be you know,
there's been a bit of a segment on the news
(24:57):
here now on the TV news, and it's happened to
What's America And it's.
Speaker 7 (25:01):
Slimmed down well for the TikTok generation. It's one of
thousands of so called vertical dramas made for viewing on phones,
a format exploding in popularity across East Asia and in
the US.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
So it's beginning to reach a little bit more of
a tipping point that people are becoming aware of these things.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Jen would know about this. She's gone from superfan to
online festival organizer to being a consultant in this industry
that again is only a few years old, and not
all media companies are talking publicly about their interest in verticals,
but they're starting to back in August, Disney announced the
newest additions to the Disney Accelerator, basically this program where
(25:45):
they invest in something they think is promising and could
make money. Out of thousands of applicants, they picked four companies.
First up is some AI animation software, and then there's
an AI three D printing manufacturer. There's some holographic display
tech startup, and also Drama Box, a vertical drama app
(26:06):
whose homepage, as I'm recording this shows titles like fake Dating,
My Rich Nemesis, and Mate It with My Fiance's Alpha Daddy.
Speaker 5 (26:15):
So they're now partnered with Disney, which is really exciting
because it means they get access toward Disney's resources and
mentorship and the kudoss Disney gets to safely look at
vertical dramas without actually really investing anything. But Drama Box
went on a big recruitment drive earlier this year, hired
a lot of American writers, and that content is now
coming through, and that content is very, very good.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
The turnaround time to make these dramas also makes them
easier and cheaper to just keep cranking out. They have
timelines that would be absolutely impossible for a traditional studio.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
I had a really cool conversation actually with an investment
team based out of the UK who put a lot
of money into West End and Broadway shows, and he
said the most attractive thing from him as an investor
is the turnaround. Financially, you can read coep your money
within a couple months. Even in major theater it might
take you week thirty six and a huge amount of
risk before you can get your money back, whereas this
(27:09):
it's two months if you play it right.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
But if verticals are really going to go mainstream, some
things that work right now might have to change.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
The titles are horrific. Okay, there is no other word
for it. So the problem you have is that, again
a lot of the apps you are not coming from
an interest in the quality of filmmaking. This is the apps,
not anyone involved in making it, but the apps. In morality,
it is basically about what will make us the most money.
(27:41):
So therefore the titles are getting more and more apporting,
and it is clickbait. There is no consideration that as
an actor you might not want certain of these titles
on your IMDb because people will look at them and
think you're doing soft pat It's.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Not just the titles. The content is probably a bigger
factor here. Tigue's breakout role was in a series called
Hurt Me, Love Me. This is a vertical that was
released in twenty twenty four on Drama Box that app
I just mentioned earlier. In that series, Tigue plays a
bad husband who eventually realizes the error of his ways
and sees the light and becomes a better husband. Okay,
(28:18):
bad husband is kind of under selling it. He was
physically violent toward his wife.
Speaker 6 (28:23):
Who the hell are you so on?
Speaker 1 (28:26):
You text me to come back for one to parade
another man a stranger in front of me in my
own house?
Speaker 6 (28:32):
Is that right? How long have you tuben together, I
would not get that hell out of my house.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
No, it was really hard, man. That was like my
second I think, And it was hard because the narrative
was so difficult to deal with. The basic idea is
like my wife and the piece is mute from like
an emotional damage injury and my character. Where I got
to eventually was that my character feels cornered and manipulated
by everyone in his life, and it makes him a
(29:00):
kind of horrible character to be perfectly honest. And I
really hit my head against that for a long time.
And also we got a lot of responses with people
who are uncomfortable about it. We got a lot of
sponsors also from people who loved it. I still to
this day get a lot of messages from India and
the Philippines about that character specifically. There's something resonated in that.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
What do people say just that they loved it?
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I think like a lot of people feel like they
really got I guess his sense of being cornered. It's
that cornered animal thing, which I don't necessarily personally, like
philosophically think that that excuses someone's actions, but it did.
I guess to these guys attract them to the character.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
What was the process going from a stage play, you know,
sort of the easily understandable path for a theater student
to be doing what you're doing now.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Honestly, awesome question, because it's a big difference. My first
script on my first vertical set, like was color coded,
all labeled, like. I did the whole drama school nerd thing,
which you need to do when you're operating with high art,
because I think it does help you sort of get
a grip of what this person's piece of work is
that you're contributing to by playing one of their characters.
(30:12):
If you kind of understand the piece and pull it apart,
that level of detail isn't needed at all on verticals.
It can be, and it hopefully will be as we
sophisticate the space and the products, but for the most part,
that's something quite specific to the depth of theater or
major feature films that are meticulously written and produced for
(30:32):
a high art approach.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
So I mentioned to a few friends who work in
Hollywood work in the TV industry that I was working
on this episode about vertical dramas, and the response was
not very good. Overall, what people were telling me was
they really don't want to touch this stuff. That to them,
the stories are over sexualized, they're cheesy. And more than
one person told me that the scripts that they've been
(30:54):
handed looked like AI. Not that they were AI translated
from some other language, but just straight up to them,
it looked like chat GPT. To some people, even being
associated with vertical dramas feels risky for their career.
Speaker 6 (31:08):
How dare you.
Speaker 4 (31:09):
Make a scene, especially in front of the Kaplan heiress.
Her family donated millions to the school, and I will
not have you jeopardize that or bully her.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
I was not bullying her.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
I was asking questions.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
Act up again, and I will make sure you get expelled.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
But sir, she is not Miss Kaplan because I am
Haley Kaplan.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
I mean, it's like everything is there, the money, the accessibility,
the audience, everything. But I would argue, at this stage,
the prestige is there.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
Yeah, I would say that's mistake. Yeah, definitely, the prestige.
I think that will come as the quality improves, maybe
another year. So in my head where I think it
will go and it will sit is it will be
another form of media that people consume, So it will
sit alongside cinemona, it will sit alongside TV, and they'll
have verticals. So in the way that Meryl Street now
would do TV as well as cinema, I think you
(32:02):
will potentially see people move through. So a few of
the actors who've made their name in the space have
now been cast in TV and cinema stuff. I know
of people in those spaces who are looking at vertical dramas.
So it's kind of that like splintering. I think of
how people can see more media. You know, some people
are mainly on Twitch with gaming, some people are more
on YouTube, but it's just adding another avenue to that.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
And this is the other side of it. If you're
thinking from an up and coming actors perspective, if you're
looking for a role on a casting website, ads for
vertical dramas can make up half the listenings you're going
to see. Verticals are some of the only things hiring.
And look, if you need a gig, you need a gig.
But just throwing money at stuff isn't sustainable for any
(32:46):
art forum. So again, how do you attract talent into
a medium that a lot of people look down on.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I think what we're trying to figure out now is
what does prestige mean in this space? What is for instance,
a prem vertical and how can we supply premium verticals
into the space, which I think is what we need
to do. So I did one four Real Shorts, big
company in the space that now sits at thirty point
five million views, that did really really well commercially, and
(33:15):
that also was like featured on I think The gut
Field Show on Fox and things like that, like it
ran up some breasts here and there, like again, he
was making fun of it because it's that's his mo
o heets have a plan for our short attention span.
Speaker 8 (33:28):
Silicon Valley based Real Short is producing sexy, steamy episodes
of original content, think of old pornography, but without the
actual porn. Titles include Pregnant and Spoiled by the Billionaire
Dilfs and Joe You'll.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
Like this one. My Boss is my secret sperm donor.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
I played the boss, So I think that got a
lot of attention.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
Yeah, what does it feel like when you see people
making fun of your stuff?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
It's really hot out here and I'm making a living
and building a foundation of a career that has space
for me to expand and grow and develop and bring
my people in with me. So like, I'm not too
bothered about it. Like I do see validity in people
being quite skeptical of these and quite skeptical of the
business model that creates these as well.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
I definitely get it. Bro There's just so much potential.
I'm not too worried about it. Really.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
That's what I so interesting about how you're approaching this,
man is because you're kind of out here. You're not
just acting in these things and then catching the check
and dipping. You're kind of evangelizing for a format.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Absolutely, and I wouldn't put it all on myself either.
So the fact the way that the fans have communicated
kind of from the outset has been feedback, has been commentary,
which I think is healthy. I think if we can
have good dialogue and discourse about what we're consuming, I
think we can then improve in upscale.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
Something we always see from these newer formats is the
struggling with the question is this art are verticals there yet?
Our verticals are going to come up against that question
are they already there?
Speaker 5 (35:05):
I think they are going to have that question. But
then there's also what is art, and it's kind of
art reflects what people need during the times that they
live in, and the times that we live in now
are pretty grim. Everyone agrees it feels worse. People want escapism,
and that's what verticals de liver. So, yes, it probably
is art for the masses rather than art for the hierarchy.
(35:29):
It's dopa mean for the masses. But that's what people
want and that's what people need. So the main thing
that people come to vertical dramas is I need something
that instantly transports me out of my life and means
i can switch off for an hour and a half
and I'm not thinking about my day to day challenges.
I've got that, I've got a dopamine hit, I move
on bonuses that I'm now part of a nice community
(35:49):
and I've made friends around the world. But that is
why people are there. But my understanding is things like
often that classic good over evil story comes up as
something people would see in art when life is hard,
so like during World War Two. That's when like Captain
America right, And again a lot of the verticals, particularly
the more traditional ones, is good people overcoming the terrible relatives,
terrible whoever they get their comeupance, they get the happier
(36:11):
for after verticals, there are proper bad guys who'd get defeated,
and people.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
Need to see that real life's not always as simple,
but the verticals can be exactly.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
One hundred percent. They make this wonderful simplicity that we
will wish we could live in day to day.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
You know, I'm kind of noticing a theme recently, so
the VTubers episode, which again is a bunch of people
who go to these massive concerts to watch a pretend
anime girl on stage, or the Low Fi episode where
we talked about how much a genre means to people
even if a lot of the listeners just have it
on in the background. And then there's this one, and
again I promise we didn't plan this ahead of time,
(36:48):
but I'm seeing this need that people have for something
that can bring together, even if or maybe especially if
other people don't understand it, because I think when you
find something like that that means that much to you,
of course you want it to get better. With Low five,
maybe it's a little late, but with verticals, the fans
saying what they want and what they don't want is
(37:11):
actually helping people like Tige have more clout to push
the industry in the direction that he wants to go
while it's still early enough to do that. Thank you
so much for listening to kill Switch. If you want
to hit us up, you can email us at kill
Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC, or on Instagram at kill
switch pod. And hopefully if you made it this far
(37:32):
you like the show, and if so, you know, maybe
think about leaving a review. It helps other people find
the show, which helps us keep doing our thing. And
once you've done that, did you know that Killswitch is
on YouTube? So if you've been wondering what the Fisker
cars or the anime YouTuber avatars look like, you can
see it all there. The link for that and for
everything else is in the show notes. Kill Switch is
(37:53):
hosted by Me Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Shena Ozaki,
Darluck Potts, and Julian Nutter. Alexandervild helped produce today's episode.
A theme song is by me and Kyle Murdoch, and
Kyle also makes this show in Kaleidoscope. Our executive producers
are Ozwa Lashin, mngesh Had Tokadur, and Kate Osbourne from
iHeart are executive producers are Katrina Norville and Nikki E.
(38:17):
Tor Oh and one other thing. Teague and I spent
a bunch of time just nerding out over cameras, which
I will spare you having to listen to. But there
was something I found really interesting, and it was how
even the film crews are still figuring this stuff out.
They're shooting this stuff on regular Hollywood level equipment though, right.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Yeah, I've worked with like massive major cameras and like
different approaches. This is also an interesting tech point. I've
shot these sometimes where they'll use three or four cameras
at once. I've also seen cameras physically turned on their side,
so you're literally shooting out of like a red film camera,
but it's turned on its side, which is just kind
of quirky to see because it's gonna be vertical, so
they literally just turned the camera.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
I've seen that. I've seen you posted some of the
behind the scene photos on your Instagram, and there's one
where they're using a regular Hollywood style camera. I mean,
these things cameras cost about as much as a car,
and they've got the little monitor on there and then
they just put black tape down the middle so they
can see, Okay, we're not using the rest of this,
it's only the stuff in the middle. And they just
(39:18):
put tape on the monitor.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
So I don't know how they measure to make sure
that that's right either, so that their frames right. So
that seems crucial to me.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
You don't want to.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Mess that one up.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Any filmmakers out there are probably cringing right now, but hey,
look it's a brand new industry. Anyway, catch on the
next one.
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