Film-lover champions viral mobile movie format

Jen Cooper has been hooked on vertical dramas since discovering them a year ago

A film-lover from Kent believes a new format of movie designed for mobile phones could soon be as big as traditional Hollywood blockbusters.

Vertical dramas are movies of roughly 90 minutes broken into episodes of about a minute, which Jen Cooper, from Tunbridge Wells, says is perfect for people who cannot focus for long periods.

Jen has created Vertical Drama Love, a website for sharing news and reviews about mobile short films, a format she says is at the forefront of modern storytelling.

And with the most popular episodes getting between 200 and 350 million views worldwide, Jen believes they will soon begin to rival the biggest names in the business.

"There are new short film apps coming out all the time and I think these will sit alongside traditional films, as for many actors it provides them with a huge amount of work due to the frequency the episodes film," she said.

"You've now got people from Hollywood coming over to make them and it means the quality is improving as well."

Jen explained that as each episode is so short, a series will only take about a week to film.

"In Hollywood you're lucky if you get one film a year, where vertical dramas only take seven to 10 days to shoot," she said. "You've got 20 or 30 projects a year to watch.

"The content is brilliant. There's a lot of cliff-hangers and fast pace, they hook you in."

Jen said the format originated from China and that it was "growing enormously" and "really exploded in the UK this year".