The titles alone tell you something. Crashing Into My Magnate Ex. The Billionaire’s Second Wife. Return of the Alpha’s Unclaimed Queen. These are not prestige dramas competing for TIFF slots. They are vertical films — short-form mobile series shot in portrait mode, released in two-to-three-minute episodes on phone apps, and consumed by audiences that grew up on TikTok and Hallmark Channel in roughly equal measure. And right now, they are keeping a significant portion of Vancouver’s acting community employed.
The format arrived in Canada around 2023, carried over by Chinese production companies that had built a billion-dollar industry in Asia before government regulation pushed them west. By July 2025, an estimated twenty vertical productions were filming in Vancouver every single month. For context: that is more active productions than most of the traditional TV pilot seasons the city has seen. For Canadian actors navigating a market still recovering from the Writers Guild strike and the ongoing contraction of American scripted television, the timing was not accidental. It was, for many, the difference between paying rent and not. The situation has something in common with the logic behind https://ringospincasino.org — when the main game slows down, you find the table that is still running.
What the Production Model Actually Looks Like
A vertical production budget runs at roughly one-tenth of a low-grade TV movie. The shoots are fast — a feature-length script in a week is standard, not exceptional. Crews are small, departments are consolidated, and everyone does more than one job. A director might also function as a location manager. A producer might handle casting support. The pace is relentless: three to five takes per setup, twelve-hour days, and an assembly-line workflow where crew members cycle from one production to the next with minimal downtime.
The content skews heavily toward romance, wealth fantasy, and supernatural drama — billionaire CEOs, secret babies, werewolf plots, forbidden love. The stories originate almost entirely from translated Chinese scripts, recreated for North American audiences. This matters for actors because the material rarely demands the kind of character development or emotional range that a six-episode indie series would. What it demands instead is speed, physical presence, and the ability to hit your mark cleanly on take two. Actors with soap opera backgrounds have found this transition particularly natural.
One Vancouver-based director who has booked nineteen vertical productions described the work as genuinely fun — efficient sets, clear expectations, and steady bookings. That experience is not universal. Other accounts from producers and crew describe non-union shoots with minimal safety oversight, low wages for below-the-line workers, and contracts that gave production companies broad rights over footage for minimal compensation. The format contains both realities simultaneously.
The Pay Question, Answered Carefully
The financial picture for actors depends almost entirely on whether the production falls under a union agreement or not. Most vertical productions in Canada operate outside union coverage. Lead performers on non-union verticals earn approximately $500 per day of shooting, according to figures reported in the US market where the format is equally active. For a non-union actor who has not yet accumulated enough credits to qualify for UBCP/ACTRA membership, that rate is considerably higher than most independent work available in the current market.
For union members, the picture is more complicated. The UBCP/ACTRA — the union representing roughly 8,000 performers in British Columbia — reached its first-ever agreement with a vertical production in July 2025. That single deal was treated as a milestone. Advocates working in the space have stated openly that they would be surprised if even half of all vertical productions ever reach union coverage. The economics of the format make unionization structurally difficult: budgets under $300,000, compressed schedules, and production companies that have historically required entirely non-union crews as a condition of filming.
Here is how vertical production compares to other common work formats for Canadian actors:
| Format | Typical daily rate | Union coverage | Resume value |
| US studio TV (Vancouver) | UBCP scale (~$900+) | Yes | High |
| Canadian indie film | Variable, often low | Sometimes | Medium–High |
| Vertical film (non-union) | ~$500 (lead) | Rarely | Emerging |
| Student / short film | Deferred or zero | No | Low–Medium |
What It Has Done to the Vancouver Market
Vancouver’s traditional production economy runs on American studio and streamer work. When that pipeline contracts — as it did sharply during the strikes of 2023 and the broader restructuring of streaming budgets afterward — the local acting and crew market feels it fast. Verticals arrived into exactly that gap. They do not pay the same rates as a Netflix series, and they do not carry the same career cachet, but they generate volume.
The global microdrama market was projected to reach $9.4 billion USD in 2025. In the US alone, revenues hit $819 million in 2024 with projections pointing toward $3.8 billion by 2030. Vancouver sits at the centre of the North American production activity for this format, partly because of existing crew infrastructure, partly because of provincial tax credits that lower costs, and partly because the city already had a workforce that knew how to film quickly and professionally. The format found that workforce ready.
For actors specifically, the volume of work has been significant enough that some have shifted their focus entirely. The pay is lower than a union booking on a major series, but the frequency of work is higher and the barrier to entry is lower. Actors who have been working verticals consistently report something that has become increasingly rare in the traditional market: a full schedule.
Where the Format Is Going
The short-term trajectory points upward. Major entertainment companies have begun paying attention — Disney’s accelerator program partnered with a vertical production company in 2025, and industry analysts predict that larger streamers will move into the format within the next few years. If that happens, the budgets will increase, union coverage will expand, and the economics for actors will shift. The first UBCP deal in July 2025 was, by most accounts, a test case for what a more structured relationship between verticals and Canadian performers might look like.
The longer-term questions are harder. Several aspects of the current vertical model in Canada raise concerns that advocates and industry observers have begun to articulate:
- Most vertical productions operate without union oversight, which means actors working on them have no guaranteed minimum rates, no mandated rest periods, and no access to health and retirement contributions built into union agreements.
- The translated-script model means that almost none of the writing work on verticals currently goes to Canadian writers, limiting the development pipeline that would otherwise feed actors into better-compensated narrative roles.
- The format’s reliance on non-union labour creates a structural incentive for producers to keep productions off union agreements, since union rates would significantly raise per-episode costs at the current budget levels.
- Pay disparity between male and female lead performers has been reported in the US vertical market, with female leads — who carry a disproportionate share of the storyline weight — earning less than their male counterparts on the same productions.
- The speed of the format provides minimal rehearsal time, which some actors describe as a creative limitation and others describe as exactly the kind of rapid-fire training that builds instinct and screen presence.
None of these concerns have slowed the format down. What they have done is push the conversation about what verticals mean for the Canadian film industry into the open. The format is not a temporary correction or a stopgap. It is a structural addition to the market. Whether it develops with the kind of worker protections that Canadian film labour has spent decades building — that is the question the next two years will answer.