Vertical Format: The New Telenovela? Veronica Angeles-Franco's Vision [video]

At the event organized by the Studio Phocéen association on June 14, 2025, Veronica Angeles-Franco offered an insightful look at the rise of vertical fiction in Latin America. Between the legacy of telenovelas and new writing dynamics, this Mexican producer and screenwriter drew on more than twenty years of experience in the audiovisual industry to share a rich and inspired vision.

For someone who has worked in Mexico, the United States, and South America, the vertical format is a revolution in continuity. "Mexico is famous for its telenovelas ," she recalls, but mobile storytelling imposes a different rhythm. Where traditional television installs a twist every fifteen or thirty minutes, vertical fiction demands suspense every two minutes and not just a change of tone, but a real reversal.

This constraint disrupts the script construction: the episodes must hook from the first second, surprise regularly, and maintain attention until the end. "It's a new way of writing ," she explains, which requires integrating editing, staging and dramaturgy into an ultra-condensed format.

Between tradition and innovation

Veronica Angeles-Franco sees the vertical format as a reinvented telenovela: the same emotional and narrative elements, but condensed to appeal to an audience watching on smartphones, in a fast-paced and competitive stream. This shift, far from impoverishing the writing, opens up a new creative field, she says. Drawing on her heritage in popular soap operas, the Latin American expertise she champions constitutes a strategic asset for excelling in this new language.

Intervention to be discovered below.

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