The Highly Addictive World of Chinese Micro-Dramas

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

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1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. There's a new kind of show coming out of China right now, and it's not on Netflix. It's not on Prime, and it's not even on YouTube. micro dramas very very short video stories this is an addictive story with an addictive technology it's like so bad it's good i can't stop watching they're called micro dramas short vertical two minute episodes think soap operas but built for the tiktok era millions of people especially in the u.s are downloading the apps binging the shows and paying to watch i watched the whole thing they're just so entertaining for no reason i eat them up and they're paying a lot revenue from microdrama apps passed$6.9 billion in China last year.

2:02The movies are cheap to produce and they generate a ton of revenue. I'm very aware that some of my movies have made over$30 million and we've made it for$200 ,000. And now U.S. studios are getting involved as well. One of the most popular apps is called Real Short. And I'm going to read you right now some of the most watched movies of the past year. Number one, found a homeless billionaire husband for Christmas. What? That's number one. How to Tame a Silver Fox. This one is tagged Age Gap and Enemies to Lovers. Dr. Boss is My Baby Daddy. Dr. Boss is My Baby Daddy. Yeah, have you seen that one?

2:38I did watch one of these. All right, I'm about to download this app. It's called Real Short. But it was like, it was more football and cheerleader related. I felt loved in their kindness. We were inseparable. And I kind of got into it. Happy birthday, Lord. Wait, what? It's just kind of good. So I know that these titles sound ridiculous, but truly there is something much bigger happening. The micro drama craze represents really the next frontier of media and entertainment right now. There's also a story about China's creative export strategy. Like with TikTok being just the beginning, that kind of rewired the way our whole attention span has worked.

3:19We had never seen anything and still to this day have not seen anything like TikTok. And now we're seeing it, but within the world of scripted content. And that's been something we've been talking about for a long time. One of our big explorations has been how does scripted content come to YouTube? What's the economic model of scripted content on YouTube? And that's how we fell into this world of biker dramas. And what we found out is insane, especially when it comes to the economics of how these work. Yes. So this is something that keeps on coming up. We're increasingly fascinated by it. So we decided to speak to someone on the inside.

3:50and we connected with a director, a guy named Danny Farber, who this is what he does for a living. He has Hollywood experience, but now he is pretty much exclusively making these micro dramas. And we ask him first, what are they? How do they get made? We get into those truly unprecedented economics and talk to him about what this means for the future of scripted storytelling, not just on YouTube, but across the entire industry. After you hear from Danny, we'll be back here, debrief our thoughts and give you our takeaways. All right, Danny. What's up, man? Hey, guys. How are you doing? Thanks for having me on the show.

4:25So you are right now in Istanbul, and you are in the middle of shooting a microdrama, or what exactly are you doing over there? Yeah, I'm here to shoot two, we call them vertical series or vertical soaps or microdramas. We're here to shoot two different series. We start the first one on Tuesday. So we're recording on Friday. So we have four days to get started, basically. Could you explain what this format is? I think from a glance, people could probably think, okay, it's just a soap opera for TikTok. You know, you see headlines like that. But I think there's actually more to like the dynamics of how you write these, how they come together, and what makes them different than, you know, maybe historically like what Quibi was making years ago.

5:09Yeah, and I think Quibi is a really fair comparison. Basically, what we're doing here is we affectionately call them vertical soaps, V-soaps, or just verticals. But what it is, is it's narrative TikTok, basically, on its own streaming service for different platforms. So it's a full-length feature film cut into anywhere between 60 and 90 episodes to make an episodic series of vertical TV. Now, each episode runs, you know, about 90 seconds apiece. So as you're scrolling through each series, you end up consuming about an hour and a half, maybe two hours worth of content, enough for a feature film.

5:52And you're doing it in like a really like, I think a really progressive, digestible way that people are consuming media nowadays. days. So, you know, as we go about shooting these things and the production side of things, it's a completely, it's a really condensed schedule. You know, we'll shoot a hundred pages, 120 pages in eight, nine, 10 days sometimes. So we're, we're taking these, you know, feature length films that take, you know, usually filmmakers months to make in, you know, the course of a little over a week. So, uh, right now, as I mentioned, I'm currently in Istanbul doing two back-to-back.

6:29And what I've recognized is it is kind of the best game in town, in every town across the globe right now. It is a new niche phenomenon that's really kind of taken precedent in the forefront of a lot of, like, filmmakers' careers right now. And so from, like, just a, like, getting paid perspective, do you feel like it's, like, this is a better gig in terms of getting paid? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's great. It's definitely changed my life in a way that I wasn't expecting at this point. Yeah, these apps are making a ton of money on these movies. And I don't know that the creatives, the writers, the actors, the directors, the producers, all the crew, I think there's room for all of us to be making more money in the space.

7:21That being said, I'm pretty stoked with where I'm at right now. and I'm happy to be a part of the ether, really. Wow. One of the core components of the experience of watching a microdrama or vertical is the cliffhanger. Because obviously you're now dealing with, like cliffhangers are classic when it comes to TV and, you know, streaming. And like to get you to the next episode, you need a cliffhanger. You guys are doing that at a 90 second cycle, right? like 60 to 90 second cycle, you have to create enough of a cliffhanger for me to now want to swipe and watch the next one. So when, when the writing happens or even from a director's perspective, is everything cliffhanger first?

8:07Like, are you, are you exploring 90 cliffhangers if you're looking at 90 episodes or 60 episodes? Like, how do you approach that? Yeah. And it's a great question. Cause like, it sounds like a lot, right. It feels like it's too much, but like, that is kind of what movies are. That's what TV is. Like it's constantly, it's this roller coaster. It's the up and down and up and down. And I think, you know, as we're approaching it from a production perspective, as well as in pre-production, as we're developing these scripts as well, if you just write a linear story, if you write a feature film, you're going to have the ups and downs to it.

8:44And you can clearly spot like when the scene is done, you're like, let me give it a little bit more juice here. And I think on the directing side of things too, that's a pretty big thing that I ask myself pretty often on set is like, ooh, that's an episode break. Okay. All right. Well, we need a little bit extra and maybe that's just emphasizing a line, emphasizing a look. It doesn't always have to be this like crazy big attention seeking thing because at a certain point, an audience is going to be hooked onto the story or hooked onto the relationship and the dynamic of the characters. So like you can rely on just the story working or the, the relationship, the chemistry working.

9:21Um, oftentimes too, it's like, uh, it happens in the middle of a conversation. So like, you know, you don't need the scene to even be over. You just gotta be like, you slept with my husband. You know what I mean? Like, that's great. Cool. Cool. One more time. And we're going to start the next episode starts with you slept with my husband. You know what I mean? Like you'll give those two different line inflections. And it's like, you just watch an episode of TV and then the sitcom comes back on where you left it. So a lot of these are written in a way that it's for like a long form narrative project.

9:53And then on set, it's our job sometimes to shape it or in post, it's their job to, okay, here's enough angles. Here's enough takes, you know, where did we think the best cut point is, you know, from a production standpoint, uh, given that you have experience working in LA and working in Hollywood on features. And what's different about what you're doing in terms of budget, number of people, timeline, use of new tech, AI? Like, how different is it what you guys are doing? Dude, it is, like, I don't want to say one for one the exact same, but it is shocking how similar this is. And I think this is, like, a huge thing.

10:34Yeah, like, because I understand people's, like, they, like, laugh at, oh, ha, ha, ha, like you're doing like the horny soap operas. You're like, all right, all right, calm down. Like what we're doing is we're making movies, we're making TV. And maybe not at first, but at least my approach to making these things has always been like as close to the real thing as possible. I'll always say to actors too, when they're like, should I get into it? It's like the people on set are filmmakers. Like we're all, we've all done other things before verticals. We're all just now finding, you know, work in this space and we're trying to elevate what we're doing while we're here.

11:08So I think the main difference is the time, right? So shooting 90 pages in nine days is crazy. Shooting 90 pages in seven days is crazier, and sometimes we've done both. But if you look at, like, a Hallmark movie or a Lifetime movie, those typically shoot on, like, 14 days versus some films, you know, I've worked on TV for 10 months. and you know but when you're working on a network tv show for 10 months those 65 page episodes they shoot those in eight days so like even the pace of it is starting to feel there have been some crazy can i i can custom this for youtube right there's been like some some shit fuck days where it's like 15 20 page days and you're just like how am i going to do it and then you realize that Okay, so 85 % of your frame is a person's body.

11:58So if I need nine scenes to happen in this one room because I need to do 19 pages today, great. Okay, here's what I'm going to do. This wall and then that wall is going to be one room. Turn 30 degrees, this wall and that wall with a sheet behind you of a different color. Keep it out of focus. That's a different room. so much of the difference on like a filmmaking perspective is like your scope of work is larger but your frame is smaller so when you're talking about shooting vertically you're not talking about shooting on phones you guys are using like like like real cameras like fx3s or oh yeah we use uh high-end cinema cameras for all these productions so it's like we'll use an alexa we'll use a red we'll tip the whole thing 90 degrees so we're natively shooting 9 by 16 Could you explain who's the audience for what you're making?

12:49Because I know this started a few years ago in China. It became a$7 billion business. Obviously, there's lots of people watching it over there. It's a little bit later. It's something that's coming to the US much later, but I'm curious, who's watching? yeah totally so and paying as well you know i think and we have such dedicated fans dude it is like it is rad to see interact you know i like almost a slightly less than a parasocial dynamic with some of these fans but predominantly it is um you know 25 to 55 year old english-speaking women globally so english might not always be the first language uh oftentimes people think that that's like, you know, housewives from the Midwest.

13:29And like, yeah, that is some of who it is for sure. But a lot of our audience are people that are interested in romance movies or romance novels, Lifetime Hallmark, that kind of demographic of people that watch those films typically tend to bleed into the vertical space. That overlap is pretty consistent. I do, though, think that, like, some of these verticals are becoming so dynamic and creative, like boundary pushing that like, I could tell that the apps are looking to try and expand that reach to, uh, you know, a wider scope of women, as well as bringing in a male perspective and a male dominated audience as well.

14:10I think, you know, the formula that everybody's found success in though is having romance at the core of what these stories are. Um, and that typically translates better with a female audience I think, than with a male audience. You know, the audience you describe, and obviously these are very similar to soap operas, right? Like I think somebody, some press outlet called it like soap operas on steroids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But soap operas have always, soap operas are called soap operas because they were concepted monetization first, right? They are called soap operas because they were built for that exact same audience, kind of the housewife that was available in the middle of the day looking for content because they wanted to sell soap.

14:58Sure. That's cool. I had no idea. I had no idea. That's a good way to say it. That is why they're called soap operas, because the soap brands were like, if we're going to advertise on TV, we need content that's going to reach our target market. And I think when it comes to this industry, one of the most interesting concepts is the monetization. So from what I can see from downloading the apps and playing around in real short, there's kind of, they all have their own currency system where you're essentially making micropayments to continue watching. You can either buy a blanket subscription to be able to watch everything, or if you get into a show, you swipe and watch 10 episodes, which is like 90 second bits.

15:42and then to continue watching, you are making a small payment. Is that correct? Yeah, so there's, I mean, microtransactions have absolutely taken over gaming and we've now found a way to like commodify watching TV. And oftentimes too, people are gonna spend, I think on average, it's like somewhere between 30 and 40 bucks a movie. Have you ever spent$40 on one movie? Wow. Whoa, that's crazy. And that's why this model is so successful. And that's why I think internationally, markets are like, okay, not we've lost what we've lost in the normal ticket price, what we've lost in cable services and that, that package we're, we're making up for in a, in a space where, uh, people are spending a majority of their time.

16:25It's like, I'm having this interview on my phone right now, you know? So like that kind of stuff is like, you know, I think it's a really forward thinking way to approach having a career in media is exactly how you guys are doing it too. It's like YouTube. Like that is your, that is bigger than Netflix. And that is bigger than Hulu. And I believe Hulu and Netflix are both bigger than Warner brothers right now. So like, yeah, not everybody knows about it yet, but it's like the numbers are, you know, the, the, the currency behind this thing is it's real. And it's, it's affording people, you know, a healthy career in a time when this industry was otherwise dead and dying.

17:01All right. So this song that's playing right now is two minutes and 22 seconds long, but there's a problem. What's the problem? This ad read is only 60 seconds long. That is a problem. Well, the sponsor of this episode, Epidemic Sound, just launched a new feature called Adapt. It uses AI to shape songs to match your edit. You can also adapt the mood. So this song that's playing right now is more of like an old school hip hop vibe, and I want it to be more lo-fi and chill hop. So I can just type that in and then I get this version of the song. What if we're cutting a microdrama and we need it to be kind of tense and dramatic.

17:35We can do that too. You just type that in. I need it to be tense and dramatic. And here we are. Honestly, after listening to Danny, I might just start making micro dramas. Epidemic Sound is the best music library for creators. They have over 50 ,000 tracks and 200 ,000 sound effects. In the lifetime of our channel, we've downloaded almost 3 ,000 songs from Epidemic Sound. Now we've spent a lot of time with the Epidemic Sound team. And one thing I love is they're very artist first. So every time an artist's song gets used or adapted, they get paid more. Now, when you adapt a song, that new version of the song is covered within your Epidemic license.

18:07So if you already use Epidemic, Adapt is live right now in the Epidemic Sound labs for pro and creator plans. And if you haven't tried it yet, then check out a free trial. The link is in our description and you can use code Colin and Samir to get 50 % off your next two months. All right. And now back to our conversation with Danny. Do you have a sense for how many people watch your work? Like, do you get data around that of like, okay, like X million people have seen this or? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, it's not always the most transparent, I feel like, but I mean, I've seen tens of millions of people have seen supposedly I've gotten, you know, tens of millions of not, I think aggregate it's over like somewhere North of a hundred million views across all of my verticals.

18:52And I've done, I've made 20 feature films in the last under two years. So that's a little insane to say out loud and understands, you know, that helps me understand why I'm so exhausted all the time. But like, right across these platforms, you know, some have fire signs, some have heart signs, some have just straight up view counts. And then if you go to the desktop version, it has what feels like probably a more accurate view count and like what they're pushing on the in mobile app so you know it's hard to know for sure um but you know north of you know each project hopefully is getting a couple million views if not tens of millions of views if not hundreds of millions of views do you have a sense of like total budget to make one and like like if you're suggesting that maybe one to ten million people are watching one of these and there's some people who spend 30 bucks to watch in micropayments like you are talking about a potential like 30 million dollar outcome from one oh i'm i'm i'm very i'm very aware that some of my movies have made over 30 million dollars and we've made it for 200 000 you know what i mean so it's like you know yeah there needs to be you know some equitable solutions here between all the creatives you know that that are involved in this um and at the same time too it's like yeah just just how do we how do we just keep that as transparent as as possible so who's hiring you like who who's behind all this like there's a i'm assuming there's like a production company but then are the platforms the studios like is real short the studio kind of like netflix and then who are they are they is that a chinese company or like who are they who's real short yeah i'm not going to speak too specifically about any anybody uh generally just with ndas and all that stuff but But I will say that I am a freelance contract, a gun-for-hire director at this point.

20:50But what's interesting about that is in this space, it almost acts sort of like a showrunner in addition to a director. It's like in episodic TV, a director is like very interchangeable, but because these are also serialized, your director's, you're like, it's a feature film director who's like captain of the vision for the whole thing on each show as it happens. Obviously, we're given scripts from studios and all that stuff. But to go back to your question of like, who is hiring me? Sometimes you'll get approached by an app. Sometimes you get approached by a production company. I'm at a position now because I started and I was initially approached by a production company.

21:26And then I got to know some of the creative executives on the app really well. Now some of these apps approach me directly. Sometimes I'll have CEOs from these apps approach me directly. You could be hired by a production company. You could be hired directly by the app or you could be hired by a CEO. and then you got to figure it all out. What's the post turnaround? So like you said, you guys can shoot in like seven to 10 days. How long until that's on the app? So the fastest one that I've ever seen, I did this one called, when we shot it, it was called when she strikes when the smoke clears. And I was like, that's a cool ass name.

22:04They changed it to smile my cheating husband, you're on camera. And I was like, that's not really as cool. And it looks so good. And it feels like a medical drama. It doesn't feel like a vertical. It's really proud of the way that one came out. It's on an app called Good Short. And that we shot in June. And within three weeks, it was out. It was the fastest I've ever seen this thing. And there's all this VFX in there. Usually, I have at least one to three passes at post. and I'll do notes and I'll say, here's the thing. That one was crazy because it was like, it only had the first 40 out of 60 episodes.

22:44So I missed the last act of the movie. And I was like, oh, where's that? And then I turned around and I'm like, oh, it's out. And I was like, it's out. What about, all right. And you've kind of got to be like, you got to be okay with that. Cause like, it's not my money and it's not, you know, it's somebody else's money. So it's like, I can really only push so hard for like, the sound is off or the, how would you do different music? Or the color feels too dark. or why do we use this take? We should use this take or don't end the episode there and the episode there. It's like, I have these ideas because we shoot it in a way that's like, okay, here's the idea to how you assemble this together.

23:17And you just kind of got to be okay with like somebody, you know, cutting it differently. Luckily in that movie, I'm really stoked with the way that one came out. But there's been movies where I've been like, yeah, all of that's not how I would have cut it, but it's not my movie. So I hope people enjoy it. And then, you know, I'm on to the next one and I'm working over there. So yeah. Do you have a POV on why this micro drama craze started first in China? Because I feel like even as we talk to people who use TikTok, they compare it to the other short form platforms and they all know that TikTok is different and understand something about our attention spans that some of the other apps don't.

23:57I'm curious if you have a POV on why this new format started first three, four years ago or whatever it was in China. I mean, TikTok's a big fan. TikTok's a Chinese company. So it's like ByteDance is originated there too. So I think inherently there's something about, you know, the attention economy that they've cracked and they understand, like, where people are looking at things. Because it's not just 25 to 50-year-old English-speaking women in China. It's men, women, children, teens. It is a, it is, everybody watches these micro dramas. Everybody's kind of hooked on it. And I think when the media you consume is, from an early age, you understand that the media you should consume is censored to a degree.

24:45You are a little bit maybe more perceptive to some of these really enticing dramatic stories because it falls cleanly within the censorship, but also pushes it maybe to about as far as it can go. And then the dopamine hit of like, okay, well, all these tech companies that originate in Silicon Valley then get distributed across the world. I think they're seeing what works, what doesn't, and what's holding people's attention. So maybe there's something within that framework of like this is an addictive story with an addictive technology. There's got to be some synergy in here. So what do you think then about how this format has kind of exported now to obviously English speaking audiences, but now we're seeing like New York Times headlines about Hollywood studios saying like we're popping up and we're going to be a vertical drama studio now.

25:42Like, is it going to work in Hollywood or does Hollywood not get it? I don't think Hollywood gets it, but I don't think Hollywood gets a lot of things. And I think that's kind of the problem, right? I think part of the reason that Quibi failed was that an audience is looking for something to satiate their appetite. And that could either be a full meal or empty calories. And I think as much as we love these verticals, the fan base is acutely aware that these are empty calories. Filmmakers are aware that these are. This is, it's the same reason that NCIS 14, you know, works just as well as NCIS Los Angeles 92.

26:23You know what I mean? All of these things are, it's serialized content. So it's like, these are our empty calories. These are the fillers. People want to go to bigger screens for bigger stories, I think. I don't think people would want to see Barbenheimer on a phone. You know, they're going to want to see that on a big screen. So I think Hollywood will do the thing that Hollywood does. And it's like, well, if we just throw all the money on it, maybe it'll work. And it's like, well, maybe, but also like, let's also consider what we're making, who we're making it for and how people are going to digest it.

26:52I have heard that like, they're going to start to Netflix. And I know that Disney just signed with drama boxes, which is one of our big apps in the vertical space to create an accelerator program. So out of the, there's four companies that are part of this new accelerator program. Three of them are AI companies. And the fourth one is drama box, which is a vertical micro drama series. and I don't know what this accelerated program is going to become, but having this be Disney-affiliated is crazy. I don't think that we're going to lose Netflix. I think Netflix is going to exist, and I think also verticals are going to exist maybe within Netflix.

27:26And what that would look like is it's almost like 13 Reasons Why or any CW show. These are already soap operas. People just either don't want to label it as such or they just accept that like, yes, CW shows are kind of soap operatic. It's not that far off from what we're doing. It's just the framing is different. So if we can just intentionally frame for as people are going to watch it here, opposed to shoot it 16 by 9 and pan and scan or crop in or do other things, it's like, no, let's be just a little bit more, you know, cognizant of like how people are consuming this. I think these studios might find a little bit more success, but you have to kind of break your brain as a screenwriter.