The Jay & Tony Show Show - Vertically Challenged

Kristen Brancaccio is back with Jay and Tony to talk about directing Screen Time for Issa Rae's company, navigating the sometimes bizarre demands of international microdrama platforms, and why a drunk guy drinking beer in a hospital might be exactly what audiences want. She also shares how Project Greenlight helped launch her career, reveals details about her upcoming horror film Crush Party , and...

Director Kristen Brancaccio has made roughly 21 vertical dramas, worked with Finneas, and survived enough chaotic productions to know a thing or two about getting stuff done. She joins Jay and Tony to talk about directing at breakneck speed, why the microdrama paywall might be doomed, and whether anyone actually understands how these platforms make money. Spoiler: Even the people making the shows...

Susan Rovner is back with Jay and Tony to explain why a little jankiness might actually be a good thing. They dig into A Twist's deals with BET and Kevin Hart, bringing stars like Paris Hilton and Mario Lopez into verticals, and why the next big Hollywood stars might already be on your phone. Plus, AI, zombie musicals, and why Susan would rather shut down her app than make the misogynistic garbage...

What happens when a Hollywood powerhouse decides to ditch the old playbook and jump into verticals? Jay and Tony sit down with former Warner Bros. and NBCUniversal executive Susan Rovner to talk about launching A Twist, why the microseries business model needs a rethink, and why good storytelling still beats chasing algorithms. Plus, Susan shares the wild story of how Netflix passed on a fan favor...

In this episode, Jay and Tony pull back the curtain on the chaotic realities of shooting vertical micro-dramas overseas, diving headfirst into the messy intersection of human production and artificial intelligence. After a disastrous experience with a newly hired assistant director forced them into a midnight crisis, Jay recounts how turning to an LLM to generate schedules, call sheets, and script...

Jay and Tony stagger back from a six-microdrama production bender spanning Northern California, Los Angeles, and Colombia with stories, scars, and a rapidly deteriorating relationship with logistics.   They compare the joys of shooting at home, and other uniquely LA ways to turn money into paperwork, with the sweat-soaked chaos of filming in South America, where the challenges are different but so...

As vertical micro-dramas lurch into the mainstream and everyone pretends they saw them coming, Jay and Tony are back to unpack the booming industry through the only lens that makes sense… production trauma. Well, that and the physical laws governing life. From Hofstadter's Law to The Dunning-Kruger Effect to The Pareto Principle , they break down the universal laws that govern indie sets, impossib...

Jay and Tony get into the chaos of directing actors in the microdrama trenches, where forgotten lines, phone distractions, and big movements can derail an entire day.   They break down how performers can actually survive fast-turnaround shoots, why vertical framing turns every eyebrow twitch into a backstory, and how the Kuleshov effect lets audiences project a whole reaction onto one controlled s...

Jay and Tony unpack the gold-rush nonsense currently flooding the microdrama business, where every headline has a higher number than the last, and everyone suddenly owns a calculator from Fantasyland.   They dig into the "$150 billion market" claim, how ad spend can shove AI-driven apps up the charts and make it look like a movement, and what is actual business versus beautifully packaged delusion...

  Instagram :  @vertically_challenged_pod_jtss It's late August, deep summer, and we're buried in production shooting a whole new slate of vertical micro-dramas. Since we didn't have time to record a brand-new episode this week, we're opening up the time capsule and taking you all the way back to September 2014. Long before AI, micro-dramas, and vertical video were things, we were just making TV a...

Jay and Tony crack open the production notebook for another unfiltered look at what actually happens when you shoot vertical micro-dramas on micro-budgets. One sick crew member triggers a full production domino effect, exposing just how fragile a skeleton crew can be. From there, things devolve into a brutally funny debate about set hygiene, communal crimes, catering politics, and the very real fu...

Recording on location from a sweltering Northern California ranch, Jay and Tony take you behind the scenes of shooting fast-paced vertical microdramas. Pulling direct observations from a pocket notebook on set, they break down the real-world mechanics of producing 9x16 content: why framing for vertical requires completely rethinking insert shots and cutaways, the logistical headache of turning lon...

Broadcasting straight from the rural trenches of Northern California in 100-degree heat, Jay and Tony give a raw, unfiltered look into the daily chaos of producing vertical micro-dramas. They dive deep into the unique production challenges, from wrestling with lighting to negotiating phone etiquette on set to the hilarious nightmare of extras raiding crew catering. They also explore whether genera...

Broadcasting straight from the rural trenches of Northern California in 100-degree heat, Jay and Tony give a raw, unfiltered look into the daily chaos of producing vertical micro-dramas. They dive deep into the unique production challenges, from wrestling with lighting to negotiating phone etiquette on set to the hilarious nightmare of extras raiding crew catering. They also explore whether genera...

Jay, Tony, and Meagan Johnson continue their deep dive into the evolving vertical drama landscape. In Part 2, they discuss the power of community reviews, the clash between audience demands and app data, and the subtle cultural differences in storytelling tropes between Eastern and Western markets. The conversation turns to the rise of AI in short-form media—exploring everything from Uncanny Valle...

Jay and Tony kick off the episode with a classic rant on digital burnout and technology fatigue before diving into a candid conversation with micro-drama "superfan" and audience liaison Meagan Johnson. Meagan shares her journey into the world of vertical short-form content—discovering it as a comforting escape during grief—and explains how micro-dramas satisfy a unique demand for tropey, heightene...

If Ai is the future of entertainment, who gets to decide what stories get told? In Part 2, Ali Albazaz dives into the future of Hollywood, why audiences—not executives—should be the ultimate gatekeepers, and how AI could unlock the next billion-dollar franchise. From A/B testing movies to building the next great entertainment company, this conversation explores where storytelling is headed and why...

Ai is changing entertainment faster than anyone expected—and Ali Albazaz is one of the people leading the charge. In Part 1, the CEO of Inkit, Galatea, Candy Jar, and the upcoming AI studio Ironblood explains how data-driven storytelling is helping discover the next generation of creators, why Hollywood's traditional gatekeepers are failing, and how his company became the largest American microdra...

This week, Jay and Tony try (and immediately fail) to avoid talking about AI, accidentally invent a drinking game, and then dive headfirst into one of the biggest questions facing vertical dramas: what happens next? Is the industry evolving into premium TV made for your phone, or is it doubling down on dopamine-driven, paywall-powered storytelling? Along the way they debate why "hot priests" are s...

Kai and Federico stick around to explain how creators might actually make money when AI starts eating the old entertainment model for breakfast. They break down Anamana's creator incubator, revenue-sharing approach, and vision for a world where one person with a laptop can operate like a tiny, deranged studio. Jay and Tony push on the uncomfortable stuff too. What happens to actors? What happens t...

Jay and Tony sit down with Kai and Federico from Anamana, an AI-native storytelling platform trying to drag entertainment into its next weird and potentially awesome era. They talk AI-generated microdramas, fan fiction turning into real shows, creators building worlds without waiting for permission, and why Hollywood may be dramatically underestimating how fast this is all moving. It is part tech...

Jay returns from a microdrama conference in Mallorca, Spain with tales of Hollywood's fading influence. He and Tony get into the global vertical drama boom, America's fading grip on entertainment, AI demos that somehow still need a human to stand next to them and apologize, and a K-pop dance reenactment that Jay refused to do. Meanwhile, Tony does what Tony does best and turns a serious conversati...

Part 2 In Part 2, Jay and Tony venture with Tommy into the wonderfully unhinged business of vertical drama, because apparently producing billion-dollar franchises was not stressful enough. Tommy breaks down why he launched VU, what Hollywood veterans still do not understand about verticals, how budgets, marketing, influencers, AI, and audience behavior are reshaping the game, and why the next grea...

Jay and Tony sit down with Tommy Harper, a guy who somehow went from wrangling extras as a PA on  Showgirls  to producing  Top Gun: Maverick ,  Mission: Impossible ,  Star Trek ,  Wednesday , and basically half the movies that make the rest of us feel professionally inadequate.   In Part 1, Tommy walks through the accidental, slightly insane path from PA-ing alongside Hollywood legends to building...

Jay and Tony continue their conversation with Eddie Yoon as they dive into AI actors, infinity contracts, dead celebrity licensing, fake movie trailers, and the very real possibility that Hollywood may eventually decide physical reality is simply too expensive.   They debate whether AI actually democratizes creativity or just hands the keys to a new class of gatekeepers wearing Patagonia vests. Ed...