The Unbearable Mediocrity of Microdramas
In addition to screenings of microdramas in their entirety, the schedule included industry panels that underlined the format’s value—for Hollywood, for brands, and for the next generation of stars.
Key points
- The first few episodes of a series tend to be free, luring viewers onto apps that house microdramas; the rest of the story sits behind a paywall.
- Presenting microdramas in full at Alza meant the screen went black every few minutes to signal the end of an installment.
- Microdramas are still finding their stylistic footing, but they share some hallmarks.
Microdramas—also known as vertical dramas, or just “verticals”—are series created to be watched upright on phones (alza is Spanish for “rise,” as a cutesy nod to verticality).
Many microdramas are exceedingly mediocre; actors give wooden performances in clunky stories about warring werewolf clans or secret billionaires.
Additional details
- Instead, it was closed to the general public, with the sidewalk outside taken over by a small red carpet covered by a white tent, where the occasional group of attractive actor types in suits and gowns got their photo taken.
- Their design mimics the mindless scrolling of consumers on platforms such as TikTok, and tries to compete with the usual rotation of person-on-the-street interviews and front-facing-camera confessionals.
- The fervor felt similar to that of a start-up: One panelist compared the speed of making a particular series to “building tracks as the train is moving”; the idea that shooting vertically should be seen as a creative challenge, not a limitation, also came up several times.
- Keep them swiping.” The writing that I considered too blunt or obvious was, I learned, effectively designed that way; producers worry that the moment a story is at all potentially confusing, viewers will lose interest.
- (Diggs was in attendance, shaded under a large cream-colored hat.) The plot follows a group of unwitting reality-dating-show contestants who are tasked with completing mysterious, murderous challenges.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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