Roku Long attends the Vertical Drama Love Fan Awards, where she receives the Romantic Drama of the Year 2025 award for How to Tame a Silver Fox, starring Tess Amelia and Jesse Morales
El Portal Theater, Los Angeles, 2026.
VERTICAL WEB SERIES
Roku specializes in vertical drama and premium short-form storytelling, with projects she has directed and creatively led generating over 750 million views worldwide and achieving a 60% hit rate across her vertical series. She previously served as Creative Director at Crazy Maple Studio, the studio behind the industry-leading platform ReelShort.
She emphasizes that directing vertical series is not easier than traditional film or television—if anything, it is more demanding. “Verticals aren’t just competing with horizontal-screen media,” she notes, “they’re also competing with the full spectrum of content audiences encounter across social platforms.”
For directors, this requires a heightened command of storytelling fundamentals: a deeper understanding of script structure, precise control over performance rhythm, and inventive visual strategies to sustain audience attention moment by moment. As she puts it, “It’s not an easy task—but it’s what makes the work exciting.”
WORK FEATURED IN
"Get to Know the Lead Stars of Popular ReelShort Dramas as They Ditch the Sexy to Spread Some Christmas Cheer ’"
Some fun BTS captured while working on the verticals
Photo by Roku Long
Roku is eager to see how the vertical web series industry will continue to evolve in the future. In the meantime, she genuinely enjoys—and feels proud of—every project that has found its way to her. 🫶
Roku sees a huge opportunity in vertical storytelling to open doors for the next generation of filmmakers. If you’d like to learn more or explore a collaboration, email her at rokujingwenlong@gmail.com
"I see the vertical drama industry as something like when the internet was first introduced to our parents’ generation— full of potential, and waiting to be explored. As audiences’ attention spans grow shorter and shorter, this format offers a fresh way of storytelling—compact, emotional, and deeply engaging."