ReelShort is an American-based company owned by Crazy Maple Studio. It is a short-form video streaming app specializing in serialized dramas designed for mobile viewing, often referred to as vertical entertainment. [1]
ReelShort's shows emphasize rapid plot twists, heightened emotional conflicts, and minimal character development. [2] [1] The production values are notably low, with simple sets, costumes, and a cast of predominantly unknown actors. [1]
Despite the failure of similar short-format television platforms in the United States, such as the closure of Quibi in 2020, it has become a popular format in China. [1] Initially filling a void created by movie theater closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, the format became popular with Chinese viewers seeking quick entertainment. [3] [1] ReelShort was founded in August 2022 to introduce this format to an international audience. [1] [4] [5]
Crazy Maple Studio, the production company behind ReelShort, it was founded with the intention of introducing short dramas to an international audience. [1] The studio maintains an additional office in Shenzhen, China. [1]
ReelShort uses a virtual currency system where users can purchase coins to unlock additional episodes of their shows. [6] These coins can be acquired by watching advertisements within the app or by purchasing them directly. [6] [5]
Reelshort has seen a 992% increase in downloads between 2023 and 2024, from 3.4 million in Q1 2023 to 37 million in early 2024. [7]
A soap opera is typically a long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term soap opera originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored by soap manufacturers. The term was preceded by horse opera, a derogatory term for low-budget Westerns.
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story: "It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension." Radio drama includes plays specifically written for radio, docudrama, dramatized works of fiction, as well as plays originally written for the theatre, including musical theatre, and opera.
A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious situation, facing a difficult dilemma or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction or before a commercial break in a television programme. A cliffhanger is intended to incentivize the audience to return to see how the characters resolve the dilemma.
The Young and the Restless is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in the fictional Genoa City. First broadcast on March 26, 1973, The Young and the Restless was originally broadcast as half-hour episodes, five times a week. The show expanded to one-hour episodes on February 4, 1980. On March 17, 2006, the series began airing previous episodes weeknights on Soapnet until its closure on December 31, 2013, after which the series moved to TVGN. From July 1, 2013 until 2019, Pop aired previous episodes on weeknights. The series is also syndicated internationally.
Guiding Light is an American radio and television soap opera. Guiding Light aired on CBS for 57 years between June 30, 1952, and September 18, 2009, overlapping a 19-year broadcast on radio between January 25, 1937, and June 29, 1956. With 72 years of radio and television runs, Guiding Light is the longest-running American soap opera, ahead of General Hospital.
A cold open is a narrative technique used in television and films. It is the practice of jumping directly into a story at the beginning of the show before the title sequence or opening credits are shown. In North American television, this is often done on the theory that involving the audience in the plot as soon as possible will reduce the likelihood of their switching from a show during the opening commercial. A cold open may also be used to recap events in previous episodes or storylines that will be revisited during the current episode.
Santa Barbara is an American television soap opera that aired on NBC from July 30, 1984, to January 15, 1993. The show revolves around the eventful lives of the wealthy Capwell family of Santa Barbara, California. Other prominent families featured on the soap were the rival Lockridge family, and the more modest Andrade and Perkins families.
General Hospital is an American daytime television soap opera. It is listed in Guinness World Records as the longest-running American soap opera in production, and the second in American history after Guiding Light. Concurrently, it is the world's third-longest-running scripted drama series in production after British serials The Archers and Coronation Street, as well as the world's second-longest-running televised soap opera still in production. General Hospital premiered on the ABC television network on April 1, 1963. General Hospital is the longest-running serial produced in Hollywood, and the longest-running entertainment program in ABC television history. It holds the record for most Daytime Emmy Awards for Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, with 14 wins.
Soaps In Depth was an American entertainment magazine, formerly published as a series of biweekly print publications and currently as an online-exclusive publication, that is dedicated to coverage of daytime soap operas. Founded in 1997 by Bauer Publications, it covers current and upcoming soap opera storylines, and features news and feature articles, interviews with performers and principal production staff, and, as a print publication, crossword puzzles.
A supercouple or super couple is a popular and/or wealthy pairing that intrigues and fascinates the public in an intense or obsessive fashion. The term originated in the United States, and it was coined in the early 1980s when intense public interest in fictional soap opera couple Luke Spencer and Laura Webber, from General Hospital, made the pair a popular culture phenomenon.
Lakorn or lakhon is a popular genre of fiction in Thai television known in Thai as ละครโทรทัศน์ RTGS: lakhon thorathat. They are shown generally at prime-time on Thai television channels, starting usually on, before or approximately at 20:25-20:30 hrs local time. An episode of a prime-time drama is between 45 minutes to two hours long including commercials. Each series is a finished story, unlike Western "cliffhanger" dramas, but rather like Hispanic telenovelas.
The double feature is a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theaters would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which the presentation of one feature film would be followed by various short subject reels.
Korean drama, also known as K-drama or Koreanovela, refers to Korean-language television shows made in South Korea. These shows began to be produced around the early 1960s, but were mostly consumed domestically until the rise of the Korean Wave in the 1990s. They have since achieved significant international popularity, with millions of viewers across the world.
A web series is a series of short scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet, which first emerged in the late 1990s and became more prominent in the early 2000s. A single instance of a web series program can be called an episode or a webisode. The scale of a web series is small and a typical episode can be anywhere from three to fifteen minutes in length. Web series are distributed online on video sharing websites and apps, such as YouTube, Vimeo and TikTok, and can be watched on devices such as smartphones, tablets, desktops, laptops, and Smart TVs. They can also be released on social media platforms. Because of the nature of the Internet, a web series may be interactive and immersive. Web series are classified as new media.
A telenovela is a type of a television serial drama or soap opera produced primarily in Latin America. The word combines tele and novela. Similar drama genres around the world include dizi (Turkey), serial (India), teleserye (Philippines), lakorn (Thailand), teleromanzo (Italy), téléroman, K-drama, J-drama (Japan), C-drama (China) and sinetron (Indonesia).
Days of Our Lives is an American television soap opera that aired on the network NBC from November 8, 1965, to September 9, 2022; the soap has streamed new episodes on Peacock since September 12, 2022. The soap is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday since November 8, 1965. A co-production of Corday Productions and Sony Pictures Television, the series was created by husband-and-wife team Ted Corday and Betty Corday. During Days of Our Lives' early years, Irna Phillips served as a story editor for the program and many of the show's earliest storylines were written by William J. Bell, who would depart the series in 1975 to focus full-time on The Young and the Restless, which he created for CBS in 1973. Following the 2007 cancellation of Passions, Days of Our Lives remained the only soap opera airing on NBC. On August 3, 2022, NBCUniversal announced that it would relocate the series exclusively to its Peacock streaming service beginning September 12, after 57 years on the network, leaving NBC as the only Big Three network without a daytime serial.
Flipnote Studio 3D, known in Japan as Moving Notepad 3D and originally announced as the working title/codename, Flipnote Memo, is a 2D animation application developed by Nintendo EAD Tokyo and released in 2013 for the Nintendo 3DS as a successor to Flipnote Studio and Flipnote Hatena.
Quibi was an American short-form streaming platform that generated content for viewing on mobile devices. It was founded in Los Angeles in August 2018 as NewTV by Jeffrey Katzenberg and was led by Meg Whitman as CEO. The service raised $1.75 billion from investors. It launched in April 2020, but shut down in December 2020 after falling short of its subscriber projections. In January 2021, Quibi's content library was sold to Roku, Inc. for less than $100 million. The platform's concepts and failure inspired widespread mockery.
COL Group Co Ltd, formerly COL Digital Publishing Group Co Ltd, is a digital publishing company based in China. It produces digital content, such as short and medium dramas, animations, films and television, and owns video app ReelShort. It also provides the animation product Spotlight and the romance novel platform Kiss for international clients.
Duanju also called Chinese micro-dramas, Chinese short dramas, ultra-short dramas, or TikTok short dramas, are a type of web series that has gained popularity in China. These series are mostly adapted from web fictions and are released on new media platforms such as TikTok. Each episode is very short, lasting only around one minute with anywhere from 60-100 episodes per show. The total duration is comparable to that of a movie. To facilitate viewing on mobile devices, Duanju are directly produced in a vertical screen. Short dramas are sometimes adapted into interactive movie games.