I've ignored vertical shorts for a while now... thought they had the staying power of myspace or vines or eight track tapes... now I'm reconsidering my position. Enlighten me: why are they here to stay or just a fad? Ready Set GO!
PS Stage32 has a class on this tomorrow- if I didn't have a "day job" meeting, I'd be going live. Here's the link: https://www.stage32.com/education/products/how-to-write-vertical-micro-d...
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I think vertical shorts are here to stay, Libby Wright. They've been becoming more and more popular, and I've been seeing more and more articles and posts about them. I'm looking forward to the webinar tomorrow!
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Maurice Vaughan I think it sounds like it could be a really fun challenge to write a story that's compelling in such a different format!
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It does sound like a really fun challenge, Libby Wright. I have some script ideas I might turn into vertical scripts. I might even turn some of my short scripts in verticals.
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noob here, with my two cents’:
Vertical shorts - their limitations are hard to ignore. When episodes are constrained to just two or three minutes, very few scenes can be developed meaningfully. Most narratives—whether dramatic, comedic, or documentary—need breathing room, and slicing them into ultra-short segments rarely serves the content.
The forced narrowness of the vertical frame also works against how we naturally see the world. Our field of vision is inherently widescreen: we take in broad horizontal landscapes and wide contextual cues. A 16:9 frame captures this far better than the tall, cramped proportions of vertical video. Sweeping vistas, dynamic action, and multi-character scenes simply don’t translate well into a format designed around narrowness.
What’s more puzzling is that phones rotate. The hardware already supports horizontal viewing, yet vertical shorts persist. It’s a format better suited to a single talking head—like a news anchor or a vlog—than to any content that benefits from spatial depth or cinematic composition.
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I'm going to give that webinar a try; I want to learn more about this new form of storytelling just so I can understand it better.