GoKawiil
Tech News
Alza, founded by former Tribeca Festival COO Pete Torres, ran October 16-18 in New York as the city's first festival dedicated to vertical-format microdramas, featuring film premieres and industry panels. Attendance at screenings was modest, drawing largely middle-aged women, even as platforms like Instagram, Vurt, and major streamers experiment with vertical video features for TV.
RoseBerry Media is re-editing two early-2000s storylines from the Australian soap Neighbours, including footage featuring Margot Robbie, into short vertical-video clips for the Epis streaming app. The company says it used an AI-assisted production workflow to adapt the classic footage for mobile viewing, despite the original show running for 41 seasons from 1985 to 2025.
YouTube announced at its Made On YouTube event that creators can now organize short, vertical video clips into serialized microdrama-style series. The feature mirrors the format popularized by standalone microdrama apps, which use brief, cliffhanger-driven episodes shot for phone screens.
YouTube unveiled 'Shorts Series' at its Made On YouTube event, a tool letting creators group Shorts into seasons and episodes with custom thumbnails on their channel pages. The feature is rolling out to YouTube Partner Program members across web, mobile and connected TVs.