The Smaller Screen

WHEN WAS THE first time you heard a story? For most of us it was from a parent or a grandparent trying to transport us to new worlds, and to hold our attention. The myths they told us made us believe in miracles, and that life was more than what our eyes could see. Then there were books which enhanced our imaginations, and movies which turned our dreams into cinemascopic reality. Stories are foundational to who we are and how we see the world. You­Tube then repackaged cinema within computer screens, and with digitisation, stories became more accessible than ever. But ever since the rectangular screen became a vertical device in our palms, our culture of story consumption has transformed. Reels have altered our idea of entertainment. The 60-90-second micro drama has mesmerised many with a smartphone. Age no bar, demo­graphic no bar. No wonder then that drama has now gone vertical too, with storytellers condensing their ideas into multiple 90-second episodes. Yes, fiction has gone perpendicular and all you need to do is hold up your palm. Some call it micro drama, others call it vertical shorts. But what it surely is—is a brand-new phenomenon in filmmaking.

Since last year, the trend has blown up as a billion-dollar industry in China, Korea, and the US is not far behind. According to a March 2025 report on NPR, focusing on the US, “Micro dramas dominate the entertainment charts across both Apple and Google’s app stores. ReelShort, DramaBox and DramaWave, three of the most popular apps, were downloaded 34 million times last month, grossing $78 million in rev­enue across Apple and Google, according to analytics firm Appfigures.” This is now a rising trend in India too.

“I’m a thorough believer of adapting to the latest tech. I don’t shy away from AI, from shorter formats or the shift in viewing habits of audiences. I think it’s sheer evolution and one must flow with it,” says Afroz Khan, one of the first Indian writer-directors to capitalise on the format.

Apps like DramaBox, GoodShort, ReelShort and Kuku TV carry thousands of micro shows, all mostly with over-the-top storylines, ready to be consumed by the average reel addict. From vampires falling in love, to billionaires hiring girls to further their lineage, to regular middle-class families turning into mafia households, the crazier the plot the more engagement for the short. These are written and shot like any other regular fiction show, but the camera is held vertical and there’s zero scope for dull moments. A cliff-hanger or a dangling plot point every 60-90 seconds keeps one hooked enough to scroll onto the next episode. While the average length of a film is 90 minutes, globally, micro dra­mas are packaged within 90-100-second episodes. At the moment most of these shows are in Chinese, Korean and Eng­lish and after a couple of free episodes, you’re expected to subscribe to the app for a minimal fee. But now Indian shows are also making their presence felt.

Ad-filmmaker Ronak Chugh, who shot one of India’s first vertical commer­cials for Fast-Track, points out how inter­national filmmakers have been shooting vertical films sporadically for years. “Usually, any advancement in storytell­ing comes to advertising first, because it’s a lot more malleable, adaptable and agile. We shot the Fast-Track film seven years ago, only because we didn’t have enough junior artists to fill a horizontal frame. So, we went vertical. At the time, it was an experiment, but today it’ll work a lot more. Filmmaker Damien Chazelle, who made Whiplash and La La Land also made the first vertical film for Apple four years ago, but it is really now that the format is going places,” he notes.

Afroz Khan and Omkar Pathak’s brainchild, Unmatched, one of India’s first 15-episode micro dramas, that released on content creator and actor Sakshi Keswani’s (@beingsuku) Instagram page, cumulatively garnered more than 30 million views in less than a month. The show about a man obsessed with a woman he matched with on a dating app, is a nail-biting thriller. Though the story isn’t unique, the way it’s been packaged works. The episodes are a minute and a half long, and are so well-shot and well-written, that it could pass off as a full-blown web series. All this at zero subscription cost. “While writing the series we realised that even though the durations are super short, the three-act-structure must apply to the screenplay. Our screenplay draft is writ­ten like clockwork. Usually, one page of a screenplay is one minute of screen time and all our 90-second episodes are exactly one-and-a-half pages long. It won’t land

otherwise—if you don’t actively start with a hook, a twist in the middle and end with a cliffhanger—the episodes won’t work. If you take something you’ve shot for another format and repurpose it for this format—it won’t work. And that’s our secret sauce,” says Khan, who in a decade-long career has never seen this much viewership and feedback for this work. What’s also interesting is that the creators of the show know not just the pulse of the audience, but also receive immediate response through comments and shares. Gone are the days, one needed to wait for a box-office report to know how the story is being received. It’s instantaneous now and in a sense exists forever. “Can’t wait for the next one..” “This ended soon, please tell us what’s going to happen,” “Please release all the episodes at once,” are just a few of the lakhs of comments on Unmatched, proving that without a theatrical, or an OTT release, this show is a hit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s obviously a game changer for content creators, but also an enormous opportunity for actors looking for a large platform. Actor Akshay Anand Kohli who plays the antagonist in Unmatched and is the show’s biggest strength says, “I had a big-budget feature film Azaad that released a month ago, but the overwhelming response that I’m seeing for Unmatched is incomparable. My followers have gone up by almost a 1000 in the last month, my DMs are full of messages about the show, and as a performer I feel like it’s yet another stage for me. With every medium our audience changes, our style alters a little, but the craft remains the same,” Though the format doesn’t nearly engage with characterisation as much as plot, Kohli’s interpretation of the role of a stalker takes the whole show a few notches up. “Afroz and my DoP Omkar were so thorough with research and how they wanted to treat the show, that as an actor I just surrendered, and I enjoyed that sur­render to the medium,” he adds.

WITH RISING PHONE addiction, and rapidly dwin­dling attention spans, micro dramas are the best way for producers and directors to hook their audiences. Mostly those in their 20s, 30s and 40s are submitting to popular platforms like Terribly Tiny Tales (TTT) which are now re-editing and re-packaging their short films into micro-episodes. Well-received short films like Khujli, starring Neena Gupta and Jackie Shroff seem to have found a new lease of life with the format. “Our short films were not shot for the vertical world, but this is an experiment for us to see how well the space is working, and the numbers speak for themselves. The traction is un­imaginable, we have gained followers, and we learn about a whole new way of telling stories which we can now apply to original content,” says Anuj Gosalia, CEO, TTT, who is currently trying to devise a sustainable business model with the same. “A film of ours called Suno which is about domestic abuse has new wings now because it’s reached a set of eyes that YouTube couldn’t reach,” adds studio head Sharanya Rajagopal.

Made at a fraction of the long-format budgets, in India the micro drama world is divided into two. One for Instagram, and the other within apps like Kuku TV that have apparently invested over `100 crores for dubbed versions of Chinese and Korean series. The shows on it are essentially soap-op­eras with drama dialled up 100 per cent, and Kuku TV is looking to produce the same in India. Quantity over quality, and clicks over creativity is the main calling card. But creators of original shows on Instagram, are not keen on compromising on storytelling.

For marine engineer-turned-actor Ashwin Kumar, the attention on micro dramas is a pleasant surprise since he started his page Vertical Short Films (VSF) in 2021. “I used to rehearse plays with my co-actors Shloka Shetty and Harsh Rai, and one day we just decided to record our rehearsals and put it out there. We were performing, shooting, editing all by ourselves and it wasn’t an attempt to gain engagement and views. In 2024 a video of ours named Empathy (23.8M views) blew up online and we went straight from 8k followers to 140k. The idea to shoot vertically was an organic one, but we are lucky to have found a whole community through it,” says Kumar, whose videos are mostly driven towards delivering a moral message. Their shows are just a couple of episodes each, and address current concerns of the youth like dating, com­patibility, body image issues, among others. They are independent creators, and the format allows them to stay free in their thought and storytelling. “We are not working with an investor’s money yet. We have equipment and a set of creative hands we work with and sometimes we also work with brands. But we tell the story exactly the way we want to,” Kumar adds.

Though brands are already investing in the idea, it’s too early to decipher how monetarily sustainable the model is, es­pecially on social media platforms. Will major studios and OTT players jump onto the bandwagon? Word is that most of them are already taking pitches. Will this change the definition of cinema in times to come? Maybe not. Nothing can really replace the experience of movies. But yes, this is an alternative reality in the world of fiction. “Orange Elephant Studio is shooting seven more vertical shows in the second quarter of 2025,” Khan adds and that’s proof enough that vertical storytelling is here to stay.

However, though this world opens avenues for new filmmakers, veterans are still seeing this as an emerging fad. Purists will argue that fiction was always meant for the wide screen, and cannot be watered down to myopic viewing with vertical frames. Independent filmmaker Aditya Kripalani sums it up aptly. “I find that the vertical format is geared towards individuals and us watching cinema or consuming it as an individual. Whereas the horizontal format by its nature was created for group watching and watch­ing it with your lover, friends and family in the theatres. A lot of the shows on the vertical format also deal with modern day life which is full of loneliness and more of a relation with the screen than human beings, which is an interesting connection then. My natural view of life is more left and right, than up and down because that’s how we are built. Our natural feeling of a point of view of life is also left and right, and I hope we continue to make art in the horizontal format.”

entertainmentKhujlimicro dramasSunoUnmatchedvertical shortsVSF production