They are a Chinese cultural phenomenon that glue millions of viewers on their phones, but the out of control of “vertical dramas” offers an unlikely source of employment for film and television crews here in Great Britain.
The melodramas melodramas have regrettable breathless titles such as a flash marriage with the billionaire and my firefighter ex-husband and are broken down into a minute episodes for enthusiastic consumption to vertically kept smartphones of the spectators.
Great Britain is an increasingly popular place for this typically low budget production, which reflects the popularity of British actors in a genre that proves a blow with US audience, the popularity of British locations for dramas with a royal or aristocratic topic and the lower costs of filming compared to the USA.
The creation of vertical dramas collapsed with a break-in of the British film and television market, with almost a fifth of the freelancers of the industry working that they are unemployed.
Dan Löwenstein, a British film and TV director, shot 16 vertical dramas last year, including a version of Pride and prejudices for Reelshort, a platform based in the USA with a Chinese parent.
Löwenstein spoke about a place in Kent, which is possessed by my CEO of My Scheming, a remake of a Chinese hits about a relationship between a sprout of a family of crime and a lawyer.
According to Löwenstein, the vertical drama genre provides the actors and the crew “Income and Opportunities”.
“It brings income for people and offers opportunities. For actors, there is the opportunity to play a leading role in a film. For the crew, if you enter into a production company or with a producer, you can work quite full -time at the moment because so many are produced in Great Britain.”
A significant difference to the conventional drama is the pace of production. Löwenstein says it is normal to shoot three pages of script a day on a standard feature, but with a vertical drama it went up to 25. It is obsessed to shoot 77 pages in seven days and in lines like “I'm about to be, to be engaged, you will be married. One last round?” And “Wayne! You and your lawyer bitch are dead – you hear me?
Löwenstein recognizes the quality gap between rapidly moving vertical dramas in telenovela style and conventional television devices.
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“Here the question of quality comes into play because they fly so quickly that the quality obviously suffered from it.
But in the UK there is still a “taboo” in the genre, he says. “Some people still frown … in the rotary community, some actors, other crew, it is not for them. And sometimes it is not for me either. It depends on the script. But it becomes more legitimate. If the times in the scripts get better.”
He adds that he likes to experiment with new formats and find vertical dramas as “interesting new space to play”, even though he also develops several feature films.
The demand for vertical content increases rapidly, with an important audience in the United States. Global downloads of vertical drama apps such as Reelshort and FlexTV rose by 460% last year, while the monthly number of users for these apps have reached almost 600 million this year, which rose by 131% in the same period 2024.
A crew of 22 and the budget has obsessed in the typical area of vertical dramas of $ 150,000 to $ 250,000 ($ 110,000 to 185,000 GBP).
Zoey Edwards, a hair and make-up artist who worked on Löwenstein's pride and prejudice and belongs to the previous experience of Bridgerton, has worked on five vertical dramas in Great Britain. She says that the work came at a time when the entire British television and film industry had to deal with the effects of the Hollywood writers and actors in 2023.
“It was nine months in which I did not work in film and television. But as soon as the film and television production came back, the industry did not return to the level it was. The vertical drama has made a gap in my work.”
She adds: “It is not the most exciting work or the most gripping screenplays, but it was still fun to do what you are qualified for and to be with people who understand your job.”
Tom Walder, who was worked as a director of photography last year on more than a dozen British vertical dramas, including the Austen adaptation, says vertical dramas were an important addition to an industry that he is in a post-kovid river stain.
“Vertical dramas definitely helped me to become financially freer,” he says, adding that they have made a “amount” of film experts available with more options, since vertical drama work was started this year.
“It is a pleasure to be one of the pioneers of such a novelty,” he says.
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Charles Alexander, a lighting technician in the obsessed film, moved from Australia to Great Britain last year and says that vertical dramas have provided urgently needed work.
“When I arrived here, the industry was very quiet and many people seemed to fight and leave the industry,” he says. “So it was good for me to find this work and I like a lot of the crew with which I worked on these productions.”
Tim Barber, an actor in Obsessed who worked in the telecommunications industry for two decades before he turned to acting, says that he had made five vertical dramas since February, and the genre gave him a brief introduction to professional spectacle.
“If you want to put together a show as a beginner actor, it feels like a great niche for people who are fresh from the drama school.” He describes the vertical dramas on which he worked, and says: “Many of them are like Mills & Boon for a new generation.”
Obsessed is a co-production between fire media, a company that belongs to the Canadian tramy Han and FlexTV born in China, a popular vertical drama platform by Mega Matrix, which is led by the tech entrepreneur Yucheng HU. Mega Matrix predicts last year that the short drama market worth $ 5 billion could reach USD 36 billion in 2023 to 2027.
Han admits that there were problems with drives. Vertical dramas have achieved a bad start when they started shooting in Great Britain with problems like inexperienced producers and crew.
“At the beginning, some companies weren't very professional and there were security concerns,” she says.
A British television crew member who worked on vertical dramas last year said that there is “an element of the wild wing” about these industries -niche, in terms of security, long hours and low payment. Another says that vertical dramas “rushed film sets” and “accidents can always happen when they rush”. But another crew professional is sometimes the choice between working on a vertical drama or a “pub job”. The Guardian was also told by a British vertical drama, in which the crew members are still waiting for the payment.
Pengyu Lyu, a producer of FlexTV, says the reason for shooting in the UK is simple. The target group is located in the west, so that they “are the mother tongue everywhere”. It is possible to use China as a “western” place, but it looks “like China,” he says. FlexTV shot three vertical dramas in Great Britain last year.
When asked about security, hours and payment, he adds: “In this country in which we film, we will follow local law and the work requirements, so that there are no uncertain rotating conditions, low wage and long working hours.”
Gentting Yuan, a chief author and producer at FlexTV, says that the reasons for shooting in Great Britain can also depend on the subject of the drama. From the lost heir to Royal Highness, a FlexTV drama was shot in Great Britain because Britain “is better suited for topics in connection with license fees and aristocracy. Currently, the costs in the UK are somewhat lower than in the USA,” she adds.
Some in the industry see a direct connection between the rise of the cheap dramas in Great Britain and the long -term crisis in traditional television production, in which many experienced people were unemployed.
According to an older producer, there is definitely a swing to cheaper alternatives, since fewer people actually see Broadcast TVs and vertical dramas are a good example. For people in the industry who are used to paying for their mortgages and feeding their children, there is simply not earned enough money. “
In the meantime, according to the vertical dramas, Löwenstein is a medium that is worth preserving an “understanding”, since mere telephone is used in modern society.
“There are two final goals: to improve the quality level of the vertical dramas and to work on films and high-end TVs more often.”