Scrolling through TikTok, you may have noticed what appears to be an episode of a TV show with no notable actors, filmed entirely vertically and clocking in at only a minute long. That is because entertainment has been moving from the big screen to the small screen in the form of microdramas. These shows are consumed in multiple parts and meant to be viewed on a cell phone. Their growing popularity is creating new opportunities in the entertainment industry.
Pocket pictures
Microdramas are similar to soap operas, focusing on common tropes and over-the-top theatrics. Their total duration can be the length of a feature film, but split into 80 parts. The episodes “often end on cliffhangers, making viewers want to binge the whole thing,” said Hello!. A person can come across one episode and “then the next thing you know, a half an hour or two hours went by, and you just watched a whole movie,” said Marc Herrmann, an actor in several microdramas, including “Billionaire CEO’s Secret Obsession” and “My Sugar-Coated Mafia Boss,” to NPR.
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While these shorts appear on TikTok and Instagram, platforms like ReelShort and DramaBox are growing in popularity as apps dedicated to microdramas. It can be quite profitable, as while the “first few episodes are typically free to watch,” but “once you want to see more, you’ll have to pay up,” said NPR. This could “cost viewers $10 to $20 a week or up to $80 a month.” Microdramas are cheaper to create, too, banking on “little-known actors, tight budgets and accelerated production timelines to churn out content drawing in millions of viewers and dollars.”
Big business
Microdramas are “sort of the ‘Triple Crown’ of the modern entertainment industry,” Tomm Polos, the director of creator arts at the University of Southern California, said to NBC News. “They’re social-friendly, they’re cost-effective and they’re data-driven. That is what everyone wants.” The potential microdrama profit prompted the Los Angeles City Council to vote to consider a $5 million subsidy for their production. “There are a lot of empty sound stages in Hollywood. There are a lot of empty studio spaces in Hollywood,” Polos said. “It should not surprise anyone if, in the coming quarters or years, those studio spaces get converted to be laboratories for microdramas, and that’s going to really help the economy of Los Angeles.”
Most microdramas are non-union productions, but that may soon change, as one studio in LA is “producing what has been termed one of the first ever SAG microdramas, which features an Oscar-nominated actor,” said Deadline. This could impact the industry, “proving that new formats can deliver top-tier creative work while upholding strong labor standards,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director of SAG-AFTRA, to the outlet.
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