If you’re a filmmaker today, you already feel it. The squeeze of the vertical frame. The pressure to keep feeding the feed. The fatigue of endless scroll that leaves your mind buzzing but your vision dimmed. This isn’t ordinary burnout; it’s something structural. A new kind of fatigue that comes not from the act of creation itself, but from the platforms that claim to showcase it.

Vertical Fatigue: Storytelling in a Straitjacket

The vertical revolution- TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts didn’t just flip the screen. It rewrote the grammar of cinema, forcing decades of visual language into a box built for swipes, not stories. Shots that breathe, characters that evolve, tension that takes time, all feel smothered when the expectation is fifteen seconds of shock or spectacle.

Filmmakers admit the frame now dictates the narrative. Wide shots collapse into close-ups. Arcs flatten into fragments. Originality gets traded for trend-chasing. Creativity becomes performance for an algorithm rather than an exploration of vision. The joy of building something deliberate, textured, and meaningful is replaced by the gnawing urgency to “feed the feed.

The result is vertical fatigue: the slow erosion of stamina when quantity takes precedence over quality, and the format itself acts like a straitjacket on narrative ambition.

The Rise of Vertical Dramas

And yet, here’s the complication. Vertical isn’t always a curse. In the last two years, vertical dramas have surged as a format in their own right. Designed natively for the phone screen, these short web-series embrace the constraints of portrait orientation and turn them into storytelling devices.

Think of it as cinema at eye-level.

The vertical frame mimics a FaceTime call, a video diary, or a private chat window. Intimate stories, personal confessions, late-night arguments, and character POVs often feel more immediate, even more authentic, in vertical. The same framing that suffocates an ensemble scene can amplify intimacy and urgency, making the viewer feel like they’re peering into someone’s private life.

This rise signals an important truth: not every story belongs on a wide canvas. Some narratives demand the closeness and subjectivity of vertical. The danger lies not in the format itself, but in mistaking the algorithm’s appetite for universality. Just because vertical dominates attention does not mean it should dominate all storytelling.

Oxygen (2021), Directed by Alexandre Aja

Dopamine Drain: The Hijacked Brain

There’s also the neuroscience. Shortform content is engineered like a slot machine. Every swipe is a chance at dopamine, every hit a momentary spark. But the cycle erodes the deep-focus muscle that filmmaking requires. What once thrilled you layered dialogue, slow-building tension, character arcs that unfold with patience starts to feel dull compared to the immediate payoff of the scroll.

Over time, this loop rewires the brain. Novelty becomes addictive; substance feels heavy. Creative stamina withers, replaced by craving for the next quick hit. Filmmakers who spend too much time in the loop often describe the same thing: an inability to sit with a blank page or a quiet edit without reaching for the phone.

Endless Scroll: The New Attention Economy

The endless scroll doesn’t just devour time; it trains us to distrust patience. It conditions audiences to expect rapid-fire cuts and instant gratification, making it harder to engage with work that demands stillness or sustained attention.

The impact on creators is profound. Filmmakers face a shrinking window to “hook or vanish.” Three-hour epics and complex narratives suddenly look like relics in a culture that equates value with immediacy. The tragedy isn’t simply that shortform exists, it’s that longform begins to look obsolete in its shadow.

A Double-Edged Future

So where does this leave us? Shortform and vertical aren’t inherently destructive. In fact, many creators use them as sketchbooks places to test rhythms, refine instincts, and reach audiences at scale. Vertical dramas prove the form can even bloom into a legitimate art space.

The danger lies in imbalance. When the scroll dictates your creative rhythm, stamina erodes. When dopamine hijacks your focus, originality suffers. When trends define taste, vision narrows. The opportunity lies in reclaiming choice deciding when to use vertical as a tool and when to step back into the wider canvas cinema was built for.

Breaking the Curse

The antidote is discipline, not withdrawal:

• Set boundaries. Protect deep work with ruthless focus. Turn off notifications. Guard your editing sessions.
• Reclaim longform. Commit to projects that demand patience, nuance, and time. Let them breathe.
• Curate your intake. Seek inspiration beyond what the algorithm serves. Read novels. Watch old films. Attend theatre.
• Build community. Surround yourself with peers who understand that stamina matters more than virality.

The Bigger Picture

The curse of shortform is real, but it isn’t destiny. Cinema has survived the arrival of sound, the rise of television, the dominance of streaming. It will survive this too, if creators recognise the traps and choose their tools intentionally.

Because storytelling is not a swipe. Some tales whisper best in vertical, others demand the sprawl of widescreen. The craft deserves both. But what it cannot survive is surrendering choice to an algorithm.

Storytelling needs time, space, and silence to breathe. It always has.