The Vertical Reach Podcast

What if the story that’s been sitting in your drawer for years could become a finished show in a matter of weeks? Qiushi Zhang saw the shift coming before most of the industry did. AI video was still clunky and laughable then, but she recognized that a wave was about to hit filmmaking. She chose to build for it instead of waiting on the shore. Today she’s the founder and CEO of Leyline, an AI-nati...

What happens when the career you walked away from refuses to let you go? Luis Calvo-Ramos spent years building a filmmaking career in Spain. He wrote stand-up for public television, directed short films, and made his feature debut with Prime Time, a dystopian thriller that screened across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. After moving to the UK, he stepped away for the stability of a day job. It to...

What do you do when someone offers you $2 million to change what your story stands for? Mysti Cozart Smith walked away. In this episode of The Vertical Reach Podcast, Pauline Gray sits down with the award-winning writer, producer, director, actress, and songwriter behind COZY Faith & Family Films. Mysti's path runs from nearly two decades in the Nashville music scene to the Tisch School o...

What does "data" actually mean in the world of vertical dramas, and how do the apps behind these short, addictive video dramas decide what to make, where to launch, and how to get paid? Pankaj Uniyal is the Business Development Lead for India and the US at SocialPeta, a global advertising intelligence platform. He works with mobile app, gaming, and short drama companies. Before SocialPet...

Heading to LA this November? LAVDM 3.0, the LA Vertical Drama Market, runs November 5 to 7, 2026 in Los Angeles. Get your tickets here: https://ticketbud.com/events/48dd3234-a0c1-11f1-bba2-42010a717021 It started with about 15 people at a mixer. Now it's the first industry event dedicated entirely to vertical drama. Pauline's very first podcast guest is back. Dana Protsyshak, founder of...

From swinging a dolly on theater sets to directing some of the biggest vertical dramas on ReelShort — Jen Parkhill's path into this industry wasn't planned. It just took off. In this episode, award-winning filmmaker Jen Parkhill (JP, they/she) joins Pauline Gray to trace their journey from professional actor and Tisch School of the Arts theater training to becoming one of the most acclai...

Chris Wicke, founder and CEO of vertical drama studio Ember, joins The Vertical Reach Podcast to talk about vertical drama, micro drama, and how generative AI is reshaping the vertical storytelling industry almost overnight. Chris built Ember from a single $70,000 vertical drama film for Flex TV into a studio behind 22 vertical films with a combined audience approaching 2 billion views, working al...

Grace Gao graduated film school the same day a major industry strike was announced. Two years later, she runs her own studio. In this episode, Grace — founder of Celestine Pictures — talks about what it was like to watch her career stall right out of the gate, and how she built something new instead of waiting for the industry to recover. She and Pauline dig into the short, addictive video dramas...

What does it actually take to shoot 15–20 pages a day? Scott Di Lalla started out making backyard documentaries, directed a Super 8 horror thriller, and spent years as a reality TV camera operator — then walked into vertical micro-drama production almost by accident, when a friend needed help on a project he couldn't fully explain. Scott didn't understand it either, until he saw the comm...

What does it look like when a husband-and-wife team runs a set together — and runs a household together, too? Quinn and Morgan Gardner are that team. Quinn is a Showrunner and Director ("Bound by Blood"), a Producer and 1st AD (PocketFM's "Insta-Empire"), and an AD on Vigloo's "Shaping Soulmates" — alongside feature work like "Marriage Bites," &quo...

What happens when the biggest brands in the world hand you their playbook — and then you take it somewhere they never expected? Austin Herring did. As CEO of Snow Story Productions, the largest vertical-focused production company in North America, he's brought the white-glove standards of working with Disney, Walmart, and Fortune 500 clients into the wild, fast-moving world of vertical microd...

What happens when the biggest technology shift in history collides with the way we tell stories? Guy Gadney has spent his career at that intersection. He's the CEO and Founder of Charismatic.ai, a company at the forefront of Creative AI for over 15 years, and has built and led digital businesses across international media and telco organizations through three startups. With Charismatic.ai, Gu...

What does insurance and risk management have to do with producing hit vertical dramas? More than you'd think. Maryna Bogdan spent nearly a decade in insurance while writing scripts and shooting short films on nights, weekends, and vacation days. Today, she's a Los Angeles-based producer whose credits include narrative films, music videos, commercial campaigns, and vertical dramas for Fox...

What happens when the person integrating AI into an industry is also the person most worried about what it might replace? Bethany Thomson has been sitting with that question all year. As Creative Lead at Sea Star Productions, she's spent the past year and a half helping build one of the UK's leading vertical drama studios — after landing in the space almost by accident, as a social media...

Angelina Barbieri is a first-generation Latin American actress with a career spanning film, TV, and comedy, including Transporter 2 , HBO's Ballers , NCIS: Los Angeles , Anger Management , NBC's The Night Shift , Rosewood , and HBO's How to Make It in America . After an eight-year break from the industry, she returned two years ago and pivoted into vertical drama, booking eight role...

What if the most important person in vertical drama is the one no one's putting in the credits? Adrion Trujillo would argue that's exactly the case — and he'd know. An award-winning writer, Adrion has shaped standout series and format-defining experiments across Pocket FM, Drama Box, and Pine Drama, from top-performing male-frequency sagas to bold creative swings. His most recent sh...

What happens when the cop arresting the actors becomes one? That's the story Kyle Maddox tells on this episode of The Vertical Reach Podcast. While working as a sheriff's deputy in southern Utah, Kyle spent a night on shift — in uniform, real handcuffs, real squad car — arresting actors for a feature film shooting in his city. Six months later, he'd moved to LA to pursue acting. Tod...

Before she became one of the most in-demand directors in vertical comedy, Paige Compton spent the final four years of her US Army service as Audio Visual Director for President Barack Obama. In this episode, she traces an unlikely path — running live events for two administrations, graduating from AFI into the void of 2020, and arriving in vertical drama right as the format exploded. Paige has dir...

Here are the clean Buzzsprout show notes (matching the standard template format, with guest links kept as their own section rather than folded in): Doug Vermeeren: Building the Cannes of Vertical Drama in Las Vegas What happens when a lifelong love of movies turns into building the biggest event vertical storytelling has ever seen? Doug Vermeeren has been on movie sets since he was a kid — from ba...

Jessica Burkhart went from publishing 30 novels to writing full-time verticals in a year. She shares her pivot from books to games to screenwriting, how she learned to work within tight budgets, and why moving vertically—not horizontally—changed her entire definition of success. In this conversation, Jessica walks us through her creative journey: from middle-grade and YA novels to mobile games (Pi...

What does it look like to be inside a revolution before the rest of the world catches on? Daniel D. Newman found out — not by accident, but by spending 15 years living and working in China, where he watched vertical drama go from a niche format on metro screens to a global industry. Now back in the UK and fully embedded in the Western vertical space, he's leveraging everything he knows to bui...

He wrote the Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man in the World" campaign. Now he's one of the most interesting people writing verticals. Thom Woodley has spent twenty years showing up early — to scripted web series, to interactive mobile, to branded content, and now to micro drama. In 2006, he created The Berg, one of the first scripted online sitcoms. He wrote hundreds of episodes for E...

What does it take to direct a feature film's worth of pages in a single day? Thalia Kent-Egan would know. As one of London's earliest directors in the vertical drama space, she's been shooting at breakneck speeds since the format began booming in the city — where productions have tripled since January. In this episode, Thalia takes us inside the chaotic, bonding, sometimes brutal wo...

Carin Smolinski didn't wait for permission. She self-funded, wrote, directed, and produced Tides of Desire, a 50-episode vertical series shot on location in Costa Rica — making her one of the few women in the world independently bringing vertical microdrama from concept to distribution. In this episode, the WEC Films founder and ThirdWave Entertainment co-founder talks about rewriting the rul...

What does it take to become the go-to voice for an entire industry — right as the rest of the world is just catching on? Jen Cooper found out. What started as writing reviews over Christmas break has grown into Vertical Drama Love — a platform that now includes a website, YouTube channel, international fan awards with over 16,000 votes from around the world, and VertFest, a full online festival br...