Here's a question we get a lot: "Do you also do horizontal?"
No. We don't. Not branded content, not corporate videos, not "we can do both" as a line item on a pitch deck. Phenom Pictures produces vertical short-form content. That's the whole menu.
It sounds limiting. It's actually the opposite.
The production world is full of companies that do everything. Commercials, corporate video, social content, branded docs, the occasional music video, and sure, they can probably figure out vertical too. These are talented teams. But when a format is one line on a long list of capabilities, it doesn't get the kind of focused attention that produces exceptional work.
We looked at the microdrama space and saw a format that was growing faster than the production infrastructure supporting it. Platforms were scaling their content slates aggressively. Audiences were showing up in numbers that rivaled traditional streaming. But the production side was still catching up. A lot of content was being made by teams that were either learning the vertical format on the fly or treating it like a minor variation on work they were already doing.
We saw an opportunity to go all in. So we did.
When we say "vertical-only," we don't just mean we shoot in 9:16. We mean every creative and operational decision we make is designed around the format.
Framing and composition. Horizontal production puts characters side by side, uses wide establishing shots, and relies on the width of the frame to convey spatial relationships. Vertical throws all of that out. Your frame is tall and narrow. Close-ups dominate. Blocking has to work in a portrait orientation, which changes how actors move, how scenes are staged, and how visual information is layered. If you've ever watched a vertical video where the characters feel weirdly crammed together or the locations look flat, you're probably watching something that was shot by a team thinking horizontally and hoping the vertical crop would sort itself out.
Pacing and editing. Microdrama audiences decide whether to keep watching in the first second or two. Not the first scene. The first second. That changes how you structure an episode, how quickly you cut, and where you place beats within a 60 to 90-second runtime. The editing rhythm of a microdrama has more in common with a great movie trailer than it does with episodic television.
Sound design. Your audience is watching on a phone. Maybe with earbuds, maybe with the phone speaker, maybe in a noisy subway car. Sound has to be mixed for all of those scenarios. Dialogue clarity, music levels, sound effects that land on small speakers. A theatrical sound mix doesn't translate here.
Performance. Vertical framing puts faces front and center. There's nowhere to hide on a phone screen. Performances have to be expressive and immediate, but not stagey. It's a specific register, and actors who've done a lot of vertical work understand it intuitively. Actors encountering the format for the first time often need to recalibrate.
These aren't minor technical adjustments. They're fundamental differences in how content is conceived, produced, and delivered. And they're the kinds of things you only internalize by doing this work every day, across hundreds of episodes, for multiple platforms.
There's nothing wrong with being a versatile production company. But versatility has a cost in a format that rewards deep specialization.
When a platform is evaluating production partners, they're looking for teams that can deliver at speed without sacrificing quality, that understand what makes content perform on their specific platform, and that don't need to be onboarded to the format's fundamentals. They want a partner who's already solved the problems they're about to encounter, because that partner has encountered them a hundred times before.
We've produced over 2,000 episodes and counting. We know what works in the format because we've tested it, learned from it, and refined our approach across dozens of productions. That kind of pattern recognition only comes from sustained focus.
The microdrama format is still early. Platforms are multiplying. Audiences are growing. Production approaches are evolving. AI is changing what's possible in post-production and pre-visualization. Hollywood is paying attention.
In a market that's moving this fast, we think the advantage goes to teams with deep expertise in the format, not teams that dabble. The companies that will define what great vertical content looks like are the ones doing the work to figure it out every single day.
That's what vertical-only means to us. Not a limitation. A commitment.