Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1541330
MOTIONPICTUREC O S T U M E R S .O R G 7 A New Era? A New Era? Who among us hasn't spent hours upon hours scrolling through their phones, squinting at tiny text and watching tiny videos, made tinier by being a horizontal format on a vertical screen and refusing to rotate their screen to make the videos larger? Enter the vertical: a new solution for modern times. Sort of. Verticals, also known as vertical shorts, micro dramas, or vertical features, have swept the film industry since their inception. Filmed in a vertical format, they're made exclusively for watching on the phone—an on the go entertainment system that allows anyone to watch A C T I V I S M By Kathleen Qiu up shots. "Wide" shots are a full head-to-toe frame, but they're rarely used. All the action happens in very close range, and actors have a much smaller space for their dramatic actions. Background can be sporadic or even left out at times—even three or four extras can make a scene feel crowded. This changes the way a Costumer thinks. Another anonymous Costumer, "Blake," said, "I don't really focus on shoes at all. Like for the women, it's maybe one or two pairs of shoes for all her outfits, and for the men, it's maybe a pair of black shoes. There's a lot of character tropes. The female ingénue is often in soft pastel colors, the villain is in brighter colors and tighter dresses, so you have to play into that." Originating in China, verticals have now taken over the nonunion film industry, particularly since the downturn in traditional horizontal work, and despite the difficulties in the productions, many actors and crew are thankful for the work. Verticals are, after all, the only way they can continue to pay their bills among the work shortages. Many of these production companies are Chinese, and they value speed over quality. Many scripts contain grammatical errors and read like an AI translation of a foreign script into broken English. These verticals are shot in 10 days or less to produce anywhere between 20 to 100 episodes, adding up to a feature length film. Nonunion crews are worked ragged to meet these timelines and, despite the constant cries of exploitation, continue to their favorite romantasy (fantasy romance) anywhere they'd like. Each vertical series is a feature-length film broken up into short episodes, usually between one to three minutes. Every short little episode ends on a cliffhanger, enticing the viewer to watch the next episode, and the next, and the next. While the first few episodes are normally free, the remaining episodes must be purchased, creating a natural revenue stream. Currently, verticals dominate the romance genre. Targeted toward "midwestern housewives" who only have a few minutes at a time to consume entertainment, they follow similar storylines: a billionaire man must pretend to be poor to find a woman to marry who won't love only his money, a woman infiltrates the mafia to avenge a murder only to fall for the mob boss, a werewolf leader falls in love with a low-ranking werewolf in a rival pack. Twists, turns, and plot holes abound. "Verticals have very specific aesthetics." A 705 Costumer who spoke on condition of anonymity (let's call them Taylor) told me. "Like the poor lady/love interest: She can't be too sexy, she needs to be relatable, like a housewife from the Midwest. The guys are usually hot guys/model types. The villain can be super hot, but the leading lady can't be. It's very stereotypical." By nature of the vertical format, scenes are made mostly of close- Camera setup to film in a vertical format.