Film professionals turn to vertical dramas as slack Hollywood schedule drags on

Amid a slowdown in Hollywood production, film professionals have begun seeking employment in a little-covered corner of the motion picture industry: vertical-form features.

Apps such as ReelShort and Dramabox stream full-length films broken into episodes of just one to three minutes. Viewers swipe from episode to episode on an interface resembling that of TikTok or Instagram Reels. The series are meant to be watched on phones held upright; it would make little sense to ever show them on a television or theatre screen.

Users are given a certain number of free episodes for each series, usually representing the first twenty minutes of content. After this, they must pay using in-app currencies to continue watching.

The idea has enduring appeal. If young people seem to prefer short-form mobile social media content to traditional feature films, then why should the movies not be cut into quick verticals? The gratification offered by the mobile-optimized videos has allowed their makers to expand, even as box office revenues look set to decline for the second consecutive year.

Yet, in the past, the concept has not met with success. Quibi, an American iteration of the same idea, failed spectacularly in 2021. The streaming app sold for $100 million — far short of the $1.75 billion it received from investors — at the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Nevertheless, verticals are thriving. Some of their titles garner hundreds of millions of views. A representative for ReelShort told the Los Angeles Post that the company has gained 10 million monthly active users since November, and now sees 55 million unique individuals using its app each month.

Quibi attempted to produce series with sleek production values and name-brand actors. It incurred high production costs in the hope that it could lure viewers from traditional prestige TV networks.

Like Quibi, ReelShort and its competitors use a portrait orientation for their videos, and stream their content in episodes far shorter than those familiar to TV viewers. The difference is in the strategy. 

Verticals, on the other hand, take cues from lower-budget genres such as the soap opera and the paperback romance. Series play on familiar tropes (romances between wealthy businessmen and destitute women, revenge plots, crimes of passion), but often take them to shocking extremes. Among ReelShort’s most popular films are “The Billionaire’s Virgin Surrogate,” “How to Tame a Silver Fox,” and “Shhh, Professor! Please Don’t Tell.”

Despite their titles, these shows avoid overt violence and sexuality. Almost all the drama happens between talking characters. It is a move which seems calculated to reduce costs and appeal to the widest possible audience.

Rachel Bencosme, the spokesperson for ReelShort, attributes her company’s success to “the excitement of a new medium — something fresh and unconstrained by traditional limitations. Vertical storytelling offers a parallel path to conventional formats, opening the door to more experimentation, agility, and creativity.”

For those who work in L.A.’s vast film sector, verticals have become a refuge in the face of an otherwise-bleak industry outlook. Hollywood studios are producing fewer films than they have in years. The industry’s future is still uncertain after the 2023 strikes, the rise of artificial intelligence technology and competition from filming locations outside of California.

“I know a lot of Emmy winners in the sound industry who haven't worked in three years, versus I'm starting out my career right now and I was able to just get very constant work for a year,” said Adam Jamal, a sound designer who chose to begin working for ReelShort out of film school.

Jamal was nominated for the MPSE Golden Reel Student award last year, which has historically offered a direct gateway to Hollywood. Yet, he and other film professionals with recognized qualifications have found verticals to be a more favorable environment, given the slow pace production on larger-budget sets.

Likewise, Yun Xie, a director based in L.A., received the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2025 Slam Dance Film Festival for “Under the Burning Sun.” She described her film to IndieWire as “this deeply personal film about bodily autonomy, about a woman who travels across borders seeking an abortion.” Within months of wrapping production, Xie was directing verticals for ReelShort. She now heads a crew which averages around six vertical productions per month.

It is a path which has become almost the default for emerging filmmakers in recent years. “Most of the people I graduated with (from Chapman University’s film program in 2024) are not currently working in film,” Jamal said. “But of the ones that are, I would say probably 80% of them are working on verticals and the other 20 are working on music videos.”

However, apps like ReelShort and Dramabox are not likely to save the film industry’s workforce in the long term. There is less money in verticals than in traditional media. Series are produced on the cheap, and crew members’ speed can be more important than their technical skills. As a result, career progressions for those who work exclusively in the format may be limited.

Joey Jia, the founder of ReelShort parent Crazy Maple Studios, told Time “Our production cost is below $300,000… in film production, they have to pay a premium, or extra to hire a celebrity. They rely on celebrities to bring more traffic. Most of their budget goes to celebrities. But we don't hire celebrities. We spend almost every single penny on our story.”

That means the high-end salaries available in Hollywood are off the table for those working on verticals. Crew members are paid on a sliding scale based on past experience, and can max out after just a few years.

Additionally, vastly fewer people work on each production. Jamal said, where a typical sound crew would have eight members, ReelShort only employs one. “And then in production,” he said, “instead of having 10 art PAs (production assistants), you'll just have probably a set dresser and maybe one other person. Cinematography crews are like skeleton crews. It's as if you're shooting 30 pages a day instead of three. It's way smaller crews just kind of chugging through it.”

Beyond that, rising viewership may not result in an equal rise in employment. People with experience working on verticals told the L.A. Post that jobs in the sector have been harder to come by in recent months. New viewers spend time working through the back catalogue of the app they use, and may not need to see newly-filmed content right away.

For now, though, verticals stand as a valuable lifeline for the workers of the L.A. film industry. And for young filmmakers, it may be the only way to establish a career. “Having this on my resume and being able to show that I've had consistent film work for the past year is quite nice,” Jamal said. “It's not like stuff that I'm putting in my reel obviously because it's very very low budget, very rushed. But it is nice to have a year of consistent sound editing on my resume when I'm applying to other stuff.”