AI drama made for TikTok and Reels

What works in a vertical feed

A feed gives you a second or two before the thumb moves. Vertical drama that holds attention opens on a face and a line, stays close, cuts fast and ends every episode on a question. Many viewers watch muted, so captions carry the dialogue when the sound is off.

It also means framing for 9:16 from the start. Footage composed for 16:9 and cropped to vertical loses whatever was staged at the edges of the frame. ShowMaker draws vertical frames from the start. A Hybrid project can also make a separate 16:9 version of the same story, framed for that shape.

Inside the vertical frame, compose for faces. Close-ups and medium close-ups read on a small screen. A wide with five small figures does not. Use wides sparingly, to show where a scene is, then move in and stay in.

• Hook in the first three seconds
• Close sizes, with faces over scenery
• Captions for muted viewing
• A cliffhanger on the last beat

A cast the audience recognizes

Serialized drama on social works when viewers come back for the people. If the lead looks different in part four, the series stops reading as a series. In ShowMaker a series shares its cast and assets across every episode: character sheets, wardrobe, voices, locations. Shots cite them as @references, so the same face is sent to the video model every time.

Voices matter as much as faces here. Each character has one fixed voice, so a returning viewer hears the same person they heard last time. That familiarity is a large part of why people follow a serialized drama from post to post.

The world around them should hold, too. Recurring locations have reference stills, so the boardroom, the apartment and the hospital corridor look the same in every episode. When places change from post to post, viewers start to feel they're watching unrelated clips rather than a story.

Making episodes at feed pace

Posting regularly means each episode has to be quick and affordable. Choose the video model per shot: premium for dialogue close-ups, cheaper for wides and cutaways. Multishot panels cover several shots of a scene in one take, cut on dialogue. A full 67-second vertical episode with a consistent cast and 8 multishot panels cost under $7 in credits.

Watch each episode as a free narrated animatic first. If the hook and the cliffhanger don't work as stills and voices, they won't work as video either.

Plan the season before you post the first episode. Drama Builder builds a premise, a series skeleton and an episode outline, so you know where the cliffhangers fall and what each episode promises. Posting regularly is far easier when the next five episodes are already written.

Posting it

The Editor assembles the timeline with captions in several styles, music score and sound. From there you can download the final cut or publish to social. For the specifics of vertical framing and safe areas, see the vertical AI video article on the blog.

Before you post, watch the episode on a phone, muted, at full screen. Check that the first frame reads at a glance, that captions sit clear of faces and of the platform's own buttons, and that the final beat leaves a question. Those three checks catch most of what makes viewers scroll away.

Shorter cuts have a use too. A 15- to 30-second cut built around an episode's strongest moment can work as a trailer that points viewers to the full series. Because every shot is already made, cutting one is just an edit.