Tall tales: are vertical dramas the future?

Ultra-bitesize video series for mobile are huge in Asia and catching on beyond

What’s the deal with films on phones? From Scorsese and Cameron lamenting people watching their epics on tiny screens, to Jeffrey Katzenberg’s “on-the-go” streaming startup Quibi failing in 2020 because people ended up not being on the go, cinema and cellphones have a complicated relationship. Or maybe it’s not that complicated, at least from viewers’ point of view: phones enable us to watch filmed stories (let’s please not say “content”) in convenient and flexible ways.

One impact of phones on filmmaking has been the increased acceptability (and even appetite) for vertically shot video. TikTok’s ubiquity as a form of video consumption (not to mention its rivals in YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels) has meant that an enormous amount of video watched by billions is shot in a portrait aspect ratio. Like a phone’s centre of gravity forcing people to hold it vertically, it’s inescapable.

And that’s extended to scripted video too. Since about 2018, China in particular has seen the explosion of video series shot vertically for phone and in minute-long ultra-bitesize chunks. These duanju (referred to in English as “microdramas”), with soap opera-like plots revolving mainly around romance or revenge, are immensely popular in China and broader Asia. They’ve also been making inroads into western markets.

Small stories, big business