Episode 2. Kristen Brancaccio on Why Verticals Are Hollywood's New Playground

What happens when a filmmaker stops waiting for Hollywood to call—and builds her own lane on a phone screen?

Kristen Brancaccio found out. In just 18 months, she's directed 19+ vertical micro dramas, landed the #1 show on Shorts for all of 2025 with Surrender to My Ex's Dad, and built a reputation as one of the most in-demand directors in the space.

In this episode, Kristen breaks down her journey from YouTube and music videos to becoming a vertical powerhouse. We talk about why narrative on your phone actually works now (when Quibi and YouTube Red couldn't crack it), how data-driven tech companies are reshaping storytelling, and what it really takes to direct a full movie in two to three weeks of prep.

Kristen also shares why she sees verticals as Hollywood's new playground—a cheap, fast IP incubator where today's micro drama could become tomorrow's feature film. Plus, practical advice for anyone looking to break in: get on set, stay flexible, and don't wait for permission.

Whether you're a filmmaker exploring verticals or just curious about what's next in entertainment, this one's a roadmap.

🔗 Connect with Kristen Brancaccio:
Instagram
Watch Heartstrings and Lies on DramaShorts
Watch Surrender to My Ex's Dad on Shorts


🎙️ The Vertical Reach Podcast
Hosted by Pauline Gray | Pauline Gray Studios

Let's tell stories that connect.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome to the Vertical Reach Podcast. This is where storytelling meets strategy. I'm Pauline Gray, and each week I sit down with the creators, innovators, and voices shaping the world of vertical storytellers. Let's go stories that connect. Hi everyone, this is Pauline Gray. I'm your host of the Vertical Reach Podcast. In the guest chair today, we have Miss Kristen Brancaccio. She's a real maverick trailblazer in the vertical micro drama space. A little bit about the show. The vertical reach is really a metaphor for that moment when you reach upward, when you decide to go up and upwards in your life, whether physically, professionally, just to really look over the horizon and see what exists above where where you're staying right now, because you don't want to be at the same level. Vertical Reach is about the act of rising to meet what's higher, whether with your body, your work, or your ambition. And so the Vertical Reach is a podcast about people who didn't just pivot careers. It's about people who really changed altitude across the board. This season, season one, focuses on filmmakers and creators entering the vertical micro drama space as part of a larger integrational reinvention. The goal is to document real-time transitions, not something polished in hindsight. We're in real working in real time. And a little bit about Ms. Kristen Brancaccio. Brancaccio. Brancaccio. And Kristen has directed over 16 vertical microdramas for a range of streaming apps. She has the number one shit show on Real Short, The Senator's Son, and also Summer Situationship, another number one. Other microdramas she's directed have received press from the Hollywood Reporter and The Rap. She's now also writing microdramas, has worked with almost pushing a dozen clients. Most recently, she wrote and directed The Secret Agent Romance, Heartstrings and Lies, which I love for drama shorts. Thank you. My personal favorite. Kristen's non-vertical credits include from the four the four vertical explosion occurred in our universe. She was a top directing finalist on HBO's Project Greenlight. She's writing and directing a digital action romance pilot for Sci-Fi Network. She's selling a feature screenplay to Major Studio. She began her career on YouTube as a series regular on the comedy show The Key of Awesome. 3 billion views on that channel. And of course, has a long track record of writing, directing, and producing for major YouTubers and digital companies. And just her notable vertical credits, wrote and directed Heart Strings and Lies for Drama Shorts. She directed Surrender to My Ex's Dad for Shorts, and which starred Adam Huss from General Hospital.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

And was their number one show last year, actually.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Come again?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Come again? That show was Shorts' number one show of all of 2025.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

So I'm gonna you had a brain. So tell us a little bit more about the success of Surrender to My Dad's Ex for Shorts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Um, so Surrender to My Ex's Dad was actually number one on shorts in 2025. So I'm very proud of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

And she directed and rewrote the CEO trap for drama shorts. And that poster is just on all the industry press right now. Yeah. She directed Mafia Daddy's Surprise Sex Templates, which is a huge number one hit for Net Short. Yeah. And that was given a shout out to the Hollywood Reporter. And yeah, so Kristen, before I jump into my questions, why don't you give us a little sort of like bird's eye view of uh this whirlwind success tour you've been on, and and then we'll hop into my queries.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

I was very fortunate to get a phone call in early 2024 about one of the first sort of real short projects. Um I'd never heard of verticals and neither had the production company. Really early, you know. I think verticals showed up in the US in late 2023, but they were very niche. And so I got the call early 2024. Um, actually wasn't available for the shoot. And then uh this was from uh Austin Herring, the EP at Snowstory Productions, one of the EPs over there. And he gave me a second call and uh it worked out. I had no idea what I was signing up for. I knew it was multicam, I knew we were shooting horizontally, but then cropping vertically. Nowadays, most uh verticals we we just shoot it uh vertically, but it does vary. Really just saw the script. I was like, this is a lot of fun. It was uh the first show I did was Billionaire's Borrowed Bride, and uh just kind of fell in love with the medium, fell in love with the cruise, just the I think the novelty of it was so fun. And I was getting to direct narrative, which I love doing and haven't been able to do as regularly. Um, I'd been directing a lot of unscripted, I'd been producing a lot, so was very excited for the opportunity. And I I think right away I saw that this this was an opportunity to consistently be directing narrative. And then in 2025, uh was when more and more apps were popping up. They needed writers more and more. And so I have a background as a writer, and by that point, I think I directed like seven or eight verticals. So I knew the pacing, I knew this type of storytelling, and uh started pitching myself as a writer, and the rest is history.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Wow, wow, very amazing storied history. You tapped into the desire to direct more narrative, but I'm curious, what do you feel carried over from your work in the in the in the um unscripted area and everything else you were doing as far as writing longer format, more drama? Do you feel the drama is more heightened and saturated? Or what do you feel are the bridges between the two sort of mediums?

SPEAKER_01 6:34

So I started my career, so there's like I have a kind of multi-pronged answer to that. So every sort of phase of my career, I feel like I've gone through many shifts and lived many lives as a creative and as a filmmaker. And so I think from the YouTube world that I came from, that open-mindedness, that understanding that like not that it's a bad thing, but there is a rigidity that comes from when when all you've done is more traditional movies and TV, there's rules that you follow in terms of storytelling, in terms of how you shoot something. But because I was coming from YouTube, I think I had a little bit more flexibility, a little bit more open-mindedness when it came to filming. Um, and and it was, it was not I I was not thrown off by the fact that these shows, especially in the beginning, it was less about the production value. It's purely about the acting, it's purely about the chemistry. You're not reinventing the wheel with how you're shooting these, right? It's multicam. So that didn't really throw me. And I think just coming from digital, it was very helpful. I was very open-minded. This is new. What are the new rules? Okay, sometimes there are no rules, and we need to establish, we're the ones establishing the rules. And so that was a space I was very comfortable in. Um, sort of that like tried out and experimentation, totally down for that. And then I ran a music video production company for several years and produced a lot of music videos, directed a lot of music videos as well. And so the pacing from that world and sort of hand in hand with music videos are commercials. So a lot of the, you know, a lot of the production companies I'm working with, maybe I do some music videos for them, maybe I do some commercials. I've produced a lot of commercials. And so, in both cases, music videos and commercials, that pace is very, very fast, especially on music videos. So the ability to sort of just make decisions quickly, you know, have a lot going on and still be able to just make a definitive decision to, you know, get exactly what we need. So I think in terms of the nuts and bolts of how these are filmed, the music video background really helped. So the reason I got that first ever phone call to direct one of these was I had written and directed a pilot for the sci-fi network in 2018. Wow. Sci-fi was was experimenting and like considering going into the digital space. So they had a an IP, a property from Wattpad, which nowadays there's so many movies and TV shows adapted from Wattpad novels. At the time, this was still very new and novel, exactly what Wattpad was. And so I pitched my vision of adapting adapting this Wattpad story called Expiration Date for television, for digital streaming, and uh ended up writing and directing the pilot for them. It was an action romance. And then SyFi never went forward with a digital arm. They never really took that anywhere. It's funny because I think they sort of had the idea for verticals before verticals came along, because you know, it's the type of story that does so well in the vertical space. It's romance, it's a little camp, but it's the stakes are really high. It's, you know, the rich guy and the poor girl, and you know, it just so happened they're in this dystopian futuristic society. But it just happens to be that way. Yeah. Yeah, you know, well, science fiction. Yeah. So that pilot, someone who worked on that pilot, Paul Bianchi, who was my production designer, referred me for this vertical job because they were looking for directors with romance experience. That was that romance was one of the primary categories on that. So that literally is what sort of best prepared me to jump into verticals. But also, I was already familiar with online web fiction publishing, which a lot of these vertical shows are based on web novels or inspired by romance novels. Um, so it was a space I was already generally familiar with.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Amazing, amazing. So you were the perfect storm and the perfect candidate for this kind of work.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yeah, yeah. Couldn't have planned it. You know what I mean? I mean, it really is that that what is the saying? It's like like preparedness meets opportunity. I mean, it's, you know, luck. Obviously, I had the skills, and and that took a many, many years to develop those skills. Um, so I'm not like disparaging the hard work that myself and everyone else in this space has put in, but it just the timing was incredibly lucky.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

So amazing. Question. What surprised you most though about vertical storytelling? Like what was sort of this is a fundamentally different modality with echoes of everything I've learned up to this point. I'm just curious about that.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

I think what surprised me was the popularity and people's willingness to watch narrative on their phone. YouTube launched YouTube Red Most like a decade ago. I I mean, everyone has tried to figure out can narrative exist on the phone screen? Can narrative exist in the social media space? And the answer up until no largely has been no. We saw that also with Quibi. Quibi was also trying different types of entertainment in a little like better produced, actually worked on a Quibi show, better produced content for your phone. No one could really figure it out. And so then to see that these were full-on scripted narrative movies that people were watching, people were willing to watch and excited to watch on their phone screen, I think it it made me very, very optimistic about the future of entertainment, to be honest, and like my future as a filmmaker, because attention is going to the phone screen and it's going to social media. And if Hollywood wants to compete, we need to be there. And the reality is like we're getting beat out by TikTokers, you know. So with film crews of three people that just run around and film funny, you know, sketches or funny interactive videos or whatever, you know. So if if if I as a filmmaker want to keep my job and continue working in narrative, I better hope that there's an avenue in the digital, like a specifically mobile space. And verticals have proved that there is.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Amazing. I love that. The popularity. That's true. I mean, I totally agree that you know, having been in the industry quite some time, you know, that there's been sort of this sort of tweaking around in this quick, digestible moment-to-moment market. And you know, even the commercial space where you and I both have a history, the the purpose of a commercial, and what I've learned as a pitch writer for commercials and having directed a bit and done many things in that space, is that there's a skill of telling a whole story with three acts in 30 seconds.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

And the idea that now we have this vehicle where you can tell an entire story on your phone. Entertainment. And one thing I'd like to touch and I'm really curious about I was at the vertical market where you spoke earlier this year, and big ups to Dana, who put that amazing event together. And one of the speakers mentioned that we're in this pivot to where as artists, up until this sort of inflection point, the artist dictated the taste of the audience. Steve Jobs said it best, I think, when he said people don't know what they want to show it to them. And I feel like now we're kind of flipping that narrative. Yeah. And one thing this gentleman said was that artists work for production companies. Artists are not allowed to work for a tech company. And so because tech companies are run on data, are are fueled by data, responsive to data. It really comes a question of the audience driving the taste and making demands on the artists. Can you tap into that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 15:05

I I think those are like almost two different topics of conversation. So I'm gonna address both because I think those are both really great points. Um so, yes, we already have seen that audiences want to dictate what they consume through social media and through online web pub publishing. It's no it's no surprise to me that the genres that are doing best in the vertical space are the same genres that do best in the online pub publishing space. So people have published romance novels on Amazon, Wattpad, fan fiction. These tropes and genres, primarily romance, do really well. And those are those are entirely dictated. The popularity of those web novels is entirely dictated by audiences, by fans, right? So when you self-publish a novel on Amazon, the only way to be successful, right? You don't have a publishing house behind you, is if the fans are like, yes, I want another hockey romance. Yes, I want another love triangle that is too trashy for Hollywood to touch it with itsistant romance, right? So, so yes, audiences are dictating what they want. And I think Hollywood, A, doesn't have the desire to make content at the rate at which these fans consume it. And then B, I think they also don't fundamentally understand this audience because a lot of what's popular in these genres goes against conventional Hollywood wisdom in a lot of ways, right? It breaks the rules of like what good storytelling is or what a marketable or like a good concept would be or what a prestige concept is. Hallmark has tapped into it a little bit, wherein we've audiences are willing to show up again and again 40 times every every Christmas for another Christmas movie. The same story rebranded just again and again and again. And people are willing to show up for it, but I don't think there was the realization that that that's not the only genre that people will continuously show up for, and especially women. Like as a woman, if I love something, I'm just gonna keep, I want more of it. I want the same thing, a new fresh take, but the same thing, right? And I don't know if that is just because it's romance in particular, and it just like hits those certain dopamine spots again and again every time. I suspect that's what it is, but that's not true of every single genre. So to come back to the original question of audiences dictating what they want, yes. I mean, this is very much we have tech companies determining, looking at the data and saying, oh, okay, we can we can see exactly where the audience drop-off was, we can see exactly where the audience uptick was, we can see exactly which episodes and which storylines and which plot points audiences really resonated with. Let's just do that again. It's not perfect. I think, you know, if that model and that approach was truly the best modality, then we would see way more success than we see. Because the but the reality is it's successful, I think, slightly more often than Hollywood is successful. It's not a end all be all, we figured it out. As much as I think these data, these, these data-driven tech companies wished that it was the secret sauce. If that if they really had the secret sauce, every single show they made would be a massive hit, and they're not. And it's the same with Hollywood. Hollywood does the best they can, dictated primarily by taste, taste of their creators, and taste in the executives, green lighting productions. And Hollywood does the best they can. And if that was a perfect system, then every single movie Hollywood made would be a massive hit, and it's not. So, you know, we have two imperfect systems and approaches. And so what I'm hoping the next evolution of vertical storytelling, I hope kind of combines those two. Because I don't think that purely going off of what the data says is going to necessarily always churn out stories and shows that hit with audiences every time. And I don't think that purely going off of the taste of a few select decision makers is going to turn out hits every time, right? So, what does it look like if we combine? And then your other point to, you know, working with a tech company, you know, I think honestly, coming from the commercial world like we do, you're working very used to working with a client that maybe just has different objectives than you have and or a different approach. And so that was not scary to me. That does not offend me. I'm very used to working with a client that says, this is this is what's important to us and this is what we want to see. And me saying as a filmmaker, like, oh, that's not what's important to me, that's not what I think works, but you're the client. So let's work together and let me learn from you what your product needs to be and look like. I tell filmmakers, I tell directors that are interested in this space, if you've never been on a commercial film, uh commercial set, you need to talk to people that have been on commercial sets because if you've only ever been on narrative sets as a director, you're used to being the head honcho, you're used to being like the creative taste maker and the final say on all the creative decisions. It's not the case on a lot of these verticals. Sometimes it is, depends on the client, but not always. Love it, love it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Question Have you just in this late, this last 18-month arc, have you in any way shifted your definition of success? Or has it remained the same? Or sort of where do you see yourself in your trajectory now as an artist?

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Well, I, you know, anyone who has tried to make a living in the film industry, success is paying your rent every month. I mean, I am so, so thankful that I am able to pay my bills, and uh I'm so thankful I've been I've been able to stay freelanced my entire career. So by that metric, I've been successful. I continue to be successful, and uh I'm very, very thankful for it. In terms of holistically, like bird's eye view where I want my career to go. I think I'm making the moves that I need to be making to sort of find opportunities in this space to do something new, to do something a little different. I feel like I, you know, I have now worked with a lot of different companies. I've seen a lot of different approaches. Now I'm writing these. I am very excited. I wrote and directed um Heart Strings and Lies, being able to be like sort of the sole creative voice throughout the entire process. Yeah, it just it honestly makes the most sense and is the most sustainable way to make these. Because as a director, you really only have what, two to three weeks to prep an entire movie. If I'm also writing it, that prep can begin a month earlier. So probably in your sleep and your dreams and your subconscious. I'm fixing it. I'm not even fixing it in pre. I'm fixing it at the script level. So many of so many of these vertical shows really struggle just because the writer wrote something that maybe wasn't achievable to film, or they had a vision that they didn't correctly convey, or that maybe the director misinterpreted, right? So it's like you can fix all those problems from page one. And it's a single holistic approach that makes this sustainable. So I'm looking to write and direct consistently, not always. And like some of the scripts I'm writing right now, I'm like, I will not be directing them, and that's totally fine. I'm still directing projects I didn't write. Also, totally fine. Variety is the spice of life for me. But I very much am looking to be writing and directing these. And then when I think not at this stage, but I think in the next few years, we'll start to see that some of these shows are going to be very successful or they're going to attract attention in a way that makes other people that are experts in other areas, like in the feature space or in the television space, say, hey, what if we take this thing that was popular and did really well and resonated? And then what does that look like adapted for a miniseries? What does that look like adapted for streaming for the horizontal world? I call them zonnies. What does it look like look like as a zonny? Um I stole that from um Enzo Simmons at uh Vertical Romance. He he calls them zonnies, so I cannot take credit for that. But yeah, so um so that's I think that's where that's the journey I want to go on. I want, I want uh to be making really great vertical shows that stand on their own two legs, and then I I want to travel with those vertical shows when they then go on to have like another life, whether that's a sequel or being made into a feature or a miniseries or a TV show or whatever it is. Um, I see, I see the vertical space being because it is so cheap compared to making normal films, um, it's it's sort of a uh an IP incubator. It's a playground. It's being able to say, hey, for the price of one regular movie, you could make five vertical shows and just seeing what hits, what resonates, what do I want to make more of as like a studio executive? So I think I see the potential in this space, and that's very exciting to me. And uh my goal would be to just travel with it. And I have experience on the more traditional Hollywood side. I've worked with major studios, I've written screenplays and sold them for for major studios. I've worked in on feature films and that got Lart, you know, wide theatrical releases. So I I think those two worlds will just continue to get closer and closer.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Amazing. Okay. My overall tag or vision is that every one of us needs to keep swiping up in our lives, in our work, in whatever aspect we're reaching the next vertical reach. So, based on your experience, how would you define swiping up for yourself? And how would you encourage someone who's kind of hit pause on their own personal drama to press play and swipe up?

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Uh, I love I love that this is sort of the like underlying message of your of your podcast, Pauline. I have found an immense amount of sort of freedom in making this like career switch into verticals. And I think that it is a space where you can experiment and try something, maybe a job position that you haven't been afforded the opportunity to like work in. I there's so many, I can think of like several producers and DPs who are now directing because they couldn't break out of the mold that they had been placed in in traditional Hollywood. But now in the vertical space, there's there's just like a little bit more openness. The barrier to entry is a little lower. There are barriers, unfortunately, the space now in 2026, it's it is a tougher industry to break into versus in 2024. Um, but compared to traditional Hollywood, it's still a much lower barrier to entry. And so my encouragement for people that are interested in the space is like jump in feet first, do anything you can to get on a vertical set. It's it's so much about relationships. And honestly, it's a really small corner of the biz. It's much more approachable, it's much more manageable. It can feel so overwhelming to enter just classic traditional Hollywood because it's so massive and it can feel like you miss the boat on so many things. But this is really a new industry. It's still super small. Just getting on set, even if it's as a PA, like when I think about the number of PAs that I worked with in 2024 who are now department heads, like it took two years to become a department head in the vertical space versus traditional Hollywood, where you're stuck as a at that PA level for five years, 10 years. Like it's just a very different space. And it rewards, if you hustle and you work hard and you bring your A game, you do get rewarded for that. And so it's it's very exciting. I think there's a lot of opportunities, not only on the creative side, but for the crew, especially for actors. I call it like I jokingly will call it the villain to lead pipeline of like so many of the actors now who are booking leads started out as, you know, day player villains. And if you just keep showing up, you prove that you can memorize these pages and you hit your mark. And I just like that good quality work. It can be rewarded in this space in a way that I don't think it's often rewarded in more traditional areas.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Amazing. Okay, so what's coming on the horizon we can look out for? And where can we find you? I want to have everything in the show notes, but is there anything you want us to keep an eye out for in the next little quarter or just want to pop in here and there and let us know here and there?

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Or yeah, I wish that I could uh give more teasers for the things I have coming up, but I respect the NDA. And so what I would say is I've got some very exciting projects that should be coming out in the next two months, but I can't talk about any of them. So follow me on uh on Instagram at Kristen's Reality, and then I'll I certainly like to be in touch with people and I'll update everyone there. But for shows and projects that have already come out, Heartstrings and Lies is on drama shorts. I wrote and directed that. Surrender to my ex's dad is on shorts.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Go give that one a piece. Sorry. We're gonna edit that. Okay. Kristen, thank you so much. So we know you got a lot going on, all under NBA, of course. But um, where can we find you on socials? Where can we follow you, tag you? Let us know what what you got coming up down the pipeline that you can share, and we'll just follow you and find you as things reveal themselves.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Yeah, please follow me on Instagram. That's where I'm most active at Kristen's Reality. I've got some very exciting projects coming out soon. Can't share what they are yet, but once they're out, um, that is where I will be sharing them. Go give Heartstrings and Lies some love on drama shorts. I just am so proud of that cast and crew. Everyone really brought their A game on that show. And uh it's very, very near and dear to me because it is the first one that I wrote and directed. So um, and then uh let me think. If you haven't seen uh Surrender to My Ex's Dad yet, I'm very proud of my directing work on that one. And it's on shorts, it's the number one show on there from 2025, I think I mentioned. Um, but it the reason that show did so well because it's a concept that has been done before. It's it's a classic vertical concept, age gap. You know, she's falling in love with her boss, who's also her ex's dad, right? We've seen that before, but the approach and like how seriously, you know, Kylie and Adam, that my lead actors took that, took those roles, how how seriously um Will, my cinematographer, took, you know, we really all of us were just collaborating. I'm so proud of that show. It's it's really, really good. And then yeah, just come say hi. I love connecting with people in the space. Everyone's so friendly. So all right.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Thank you so much, Kristen. Um, thank you for coming. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Vertical Reach Podcast. If you enjoyed the conversation, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If it sparked something for you, please share it with 12 storyteller. Until next time, let's call stories that can.