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Film Industry

Writing for microdramas, aka verticals

September 24, 2025 Film Industry, Follow Up, Los Angeles, Television

Over the last six months, we’ve discussed microdramas (aka verticals) several times on Scriptnotes. For readers who don’t know, microdramas are a format originating in Asia in which a filmed narrative is broken into very short episodes intended to be watched on your phone. They’re often called verticals because they’re shot to be watched on […]

Something’s Coming

January 6, 2025 Film Industry, Geek Alert, General, Psych 101, Tools

Last week, Dwarkesh Patel put words to an uneasy feeling that resonated with me: I think we’re at what late February 2020 was for Covid, but for AI. If you can remember back to February 2020, both the media and the general public were still in normal-times mode, discussing Trump’s impeachment, the Democratic primaries and […]

Movies We Haven’t Seen

March 30, 2024 Film Industry

I’ve seen 54 out of the 100 films on AFI’s list of all-time greatest American films. Of the ones I’ve missed, there are a few I do genuinely want to see. But will my life or career be negatively impacted if I never see Intolerance (1916)? I doubt it. In episode 637 of Scriptnotes, Craig […]

A few thoughts on Sora

February 16, 2024 Film Industry, Geek Alert, WGA

Yesterday, OpenAI announced Sora, a new product that generates realistic video from text prompts. ((Sora is a great name, btw. It doesn’t mean anything, and doesn’t have any specific connotation, yet feels like something that should exist.)) The examples are remarkable. A TV writer friend texted me to ask “is it time to be petrified?” […]

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