Notes From The Field
Lately, I’ve been working on a “vertical” micro-series. If you aren’t familiar, they’re 1-2 minute episodic narratives that are made to watch on social media and are framed at 9:16 (vertically). They’re (apparently) a big trend in Asia, and are supposed to be catching on in a bunch of different genres.
I thought I’d give this format a go, especially after seeing people “not quite ready” for long-form AI content. I also think that short-form vertical content works VERY well with AI for a few different reasons;
- 9:16 shot framing means more one-character portraits and less multi-character group shots. Have you ever been bummed out while trying to lip-sync a shot with more than one character in the frame? Yeah, me too. If you’re telling your story vertically, this is inherently less of an issue.
- Vertical films are predicated on click-bait style drama to keep you engaged. That could be a cliffhanger, a WTF scenario or visual, or some radical twist. Well, hello there! AI does all of those things well. If this is dopamine-hit based filmmaking, AI is a plus.
- That being the case, vertical films aren’t known for deep plots or great acting. Again, we’re playing to AI’s strengths here. If you don’t believe me, look up some actual vertical series’ titles. I’m embarrassed to repeat half of them.
- Making a 90 second narrative that’s amazing is something that’s totally within reach for all of us. Bro, the tools are here.
As far as production, I was able to complete 5 episodes a week, from start to finish. That was kind of taking my time, too. However, I’m able to do most of the “pre production” mentally, without actually story boarding anything or even scripting a lot of it, which saves even more time on top of using AI.
The general process here is to start by just recording lines. I pretty much know what all the dialogue is going to be, so I’ll just record all of it. Then most of the characters get a voice-to-voice transfer. After than I’ll just start generating scenes and editing them together. Sound FX and music get added afterwards. Audio actually probably takes up more time than the video, TBH.
