The next frontier is sixty seconds tall

First Flights has always had one job: find new storytellers and put real support behind them. That's what the Short Film Fund has done for years, and it's why films we backed have gone on to win

BAFTAs and an Oscar. But every so often the question changes from "who are the new storytellers?" to "where is the new storytelling?" And right now, the answer is sitting in your pocket.

Vertical video, sometimes called microdrama, is scripted series built for the phone: 9:16 frame, episodes of sixty to ninety seconds, a hook at the end of every one. A full show is fifty or sixty episodes, which is roughly a feature-length script cut into minute-long pieces. If that sounds like a gimmick, the numbers disagree. Audiences in the millions, platforms commissioning at a pace the traditional industry can't fathom, and a market analysts expect to be worth billions within a couple of years.

Last week we ran a webinar with director Dan Lowenstein, who has shot thirty of these things, more than anyone else in the UK, including a recent dual-format drama for a major broadcaster. Something he said stuck with us. The scripts he's getting now are braver, more local, more sophisticated than the format's soapy beginnings. The delivery mechanism changed. The craft didn't. Music didn't get worse when it moved from vinyl to streaming, and storytelling doesn't get worse because the frame turned sideways.

Why we're behind it

Here's the honest version of our thinking. Formats come and go, and plenty of gold rushes leave people holding shovels. But our job was never to predict winners. It's to make sure that when new storytelling appears, new storytellers can reach it. The vertical boom has a gap in it: the platforms need writing that understands the format, and almost nobody teaches it, funds it, or gives first-timers a route in. In traditional film and TV, the gatekeepers took decades to build. In vertical, they haven't been built yet. That's exactly the moment a fund like ours exists for.

And the craft is real. Writing a vertical pilot is not writing a short film faster. You establish your leads in thirty seconds. You land a turn at the end of every episode. You write a tenth-episode hook strong enough that stopping feels impossible, because that's where the paywall sits and the whole commercial model hangs on it. It goes against most instincts a traditionally trained writer has, which is exactly what makes it a skill worth learning early. The writers who master this format now will be the ones commissioning decisions get built around later.

The Vertical Pilot Fund

So we're doing what we do, in the new format. Together with Vortex - Vertically, the vertical arm of the venture studio co-founded by producer Emma Louise Smith, we've launched The Vertical Pilot Fund.

The idea is simple. You write the pilot; we make it. Submit a logline, a synopsis of your full series arc, and your first ten episodes in scripted format, roughly sixty seconds each. The winning script gets produced as a ten-episode vertical pilot, directed by Dan Lowenstein, and pitched to studios and platforms as part of a slate. If a platform doesn't pick it up, it still goes out on social channels, where previous pilots from this kind of process have reached hundreds of thousands of views. Writers keep their IP. And this isn't just for writers: if you're a writer-director looking to break into vertical, you'll be on set throughout the shoot, collaborating with the director and producers as your pilot comes to life. There's no better way to learn a format than watching your own script get made in it.

Genres: comedy, romance, drama/thriller, fantasy, horror. Set your story anywhere you like. Entry is £20 until July 24 and £30 until the final deadline on July 31, and you can enter as many series as you have ideas for.

If you're new to the format, start with our free guide, The Vertical Pilot: A Writer's 101, built from Dan's webinar advice. It covers the structure, the hooks, the ten-episode beat map and the mistakes readers spot on page one.

The way people watch stories has changed. The people writing them should change too, and we'd rather back you now than read about you later.

Submissions are open at https://vertical.first-flights.com/ until July 31.