Micro Drama Summit 2026 Schedule

Wednesday, November 11, 2026, 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM ET

Story Architecture & IP

Some of the greatest stories ever told have never had a vertical episode.

For thousands of years, civilizations passed their myths and histories down through spoken word and then through books. A generation raised on reels and short episodes watches differently. It decides in seconds whether a story earns its next minute.

Shantanu Tungare is a filmmaker, educator and co-founder of Bulb Chamka Studios. He builds original story worlds rooted in Indian culture and uses AI-powered production to bring them to the screen.

In this session Shantanu shows how he takes ancient civilizational stories and turns them into reels and micro dramas that young viewers pick up on their own. You will see how a story that lives in a book or in spoken word gets reshaped for the phone, and what it takes to keep its meaning intact along the way.

If your culture holds stories the world has not seen on a screen yet, bring them. This session is for you.

What you'll take away

• How to turn spoken and written traditions into micro drama episodes.
• How audiences with new viewing habits decide what to watch, and how to earn their next minute.
• How to build an original story world rooted in a specific culture.
• Where AI-powered production fits when you tell culturally rooted stories.
• How to keep a story faithful to its source after it is cut down to a reel.

Wednesday, November 11, 2026, 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM ET

Creator Economics & Monetization

Who captures the value when an African story goes global?

African stories are commercially viable intellectual property with a global audience. Demand for them is expanding across the microdrama market, and the people who built the stories should share in what they earn.

Ifeoma ‘Oma’ Areh is a creative business strategist, filmmaker and entrepreneur with nearly 20 years across film, media, marketing and communications. She founded Digital Creator Africa Academy, a training, development and commissioning pipeline for African vertical storytellers, and she advises global brands entering Africa's microdrama and AI filmmaking industries.

In this session Oma makes the investment case. She walks through audience demand, production economics, international licensing and what it takes to build African IP that competes anywhere in the world, using her microdrama Billion Naira Bride, which has passed 100 million views, as the case study.

If you fund, license, produce or distribute stories, this session shows you where the opportunity sits.

What you'll take away

• Why audience demand for African stories is expanding in the global microdrama market.
• What production economics look like when you build African IP.
• How international licensing works for African microdramas.
• What Billion Naira Bride shows about reach and commercial potential.
• How African creators can capture more of the value their stories generate.

Wednesday, November 11, 2026, 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM ET

Speed Production at Scale

Everyone says AI has made animation accessible. Austin Zartman actually proved it.

ASHES is a 15-episode sci-fi animated vertical series. It has a complete story arc, consistent characters, original music, professional sound design, and a production value that would have required a full studio team two years ago. Austin made it alone. For under $1,000. In 500 hours. Using generative AI tools that anyone in this room can access today.

That is not a flex. That is a blueprint.

In this session Austin walks through the exact end-to-end workflow he built to take ASHES from concept to completed series, breaking down every stage of the process with the precision of someone who learned what works and what does not by actually doing it. No theory. No speculation. Just the specific decisions, tools, and systems that turned a $1,000 budget into a finished 15-episode animated series.

If you have a story you want to tell and you have been waiting for proof that you can actually make it without a studio, a crew, or a six-figure budget, this is your session.

What you'll take away

• The complete six-stage production workflow Austin used to create ASHES, from concept development and writing through image generation, video generation, editing, and sound design.
• How to maintain visual consistency across characters and episodes using generative AI tools.
• The 80 percent rule that keeps production moving instead of chasing perfect generations.
• How to separate action from camera movement to get cleaner, more controllable AI video outputs.
• The exact tools that delivered the best results at the lowest cost.
• The mindset that lets a solo creator finish a 15-episode series without burning out or blowing the budget.

Thursday, November 12, 2026, 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM ET

Creator Economics & Monetization

AI took a five-minute film from $200 million and four years down to a laptop and two weeks. It changed nothing about what happens next.

Making a film costs you once. Showing it costs you every time somebody presses play.

Right now you never see that cost. Post on YouTube or TikTok and they pay to send your video out to viewers. In exchange, they own the audience, they set the prices, and they write the rules. Owning your characters is only half of ownership. The other half is owning where people watch, and that half you pay for yourself.

Most creators find out what it costs after a hit. Not before.

Johny Duval is the guy who shows up after you hit publish. A former AWS professional and co-founder of Sudden, which runs on streaming platforms today and is built for the moment thousands of people press play at once, he has seen the invoice from the inside. He will tell you upfront that he is not an animator. What he knows is the bill that arrives after the work is made and the audience shows up, which almost nobody plans for.

This session follows the money after you hit publish. Three ways to put your work in front of an audience, what each one really costs, what happens when everyone shows up at the same time, and how big you need to get before going out on your own is worth it.

What you'll take away

• The three ways to reach an audience: free on YouTube or TikTok, your own app with a roughly 30 percent store cut, or your own website, and what each one really costs you.
• Why the cost of showing your work keeps growing as more people watch it.
• What happens to that cost the day an episode drops and everyone watches at once.
• How big your audience needs to be before running your own platform beats staying on someone else's.
• A calculator you can run on your own numbers before you bet a franchise on the answer.

Thursday, November 12, 2026

Vertical & Animation Writing

Right now, vertical platforms are in love with AI. Budgets are loosening. Experiments are getting greenlit. Ideas that would have been rejected on sight eighteen months ago are making it to production.

Adrion Trujillo has a message for every storyteller watching this happen: this window will not stay open forever. Use it.

Adrion knows something about getting unconventional stories past the gatekeepers. His titles include Bussy and the Beast, Chained to My Nemesis, National Lampoon's Alpha Academy, and Jacked Janitor VS Goldenboy. Not exactly the standard billionaire romance playbook. And yet his projects have hit number one on platforms, earned awards recognition, and generated more than 150 million views on TikTok. He has spent his career proving that vertical audiences are hungrier and stranger than the trope machine gives them credit for.

In this session he makes the case that the AI honeymoon phase is the single best moment in vertical drama history to tell fuller, broader, more ambitious stories. The platforms are open to experimentation in a way they have never been before and may never be again. The creators who understand that right now will define what this medium becomes. The ones who keep playing it safe will spend the next decade writing the same secret baby story while someone else builds the future.

What you'll take away

• Why the AI honeymoon phase has temporarily suspended the usual creative gatekeeping and how long that window is likely to last.
• How to pitch and build unconventional stories that platforms will actually greenlight right now.
• What Adrion learned taking genre-bending titles to number one across Pocket FM, DramaBox, DramaWave, Shorts, and Vigloo.
• How to use the full range of the vertical medium instead of the narrow slice most creators settle for.
• How to position yourself as the storyteller platforms turn to when they want something bigger than the trope machine can deliver.

Thursday, November 12, 2026, 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM ET

Careers, Hiring & Distribution

Finishing your first AI series feels like the end. It is the starting line.

Once the last episode is exported, the questions change. Who will hire you for your next job? How do you bring on a crew to finish your own show? And how does the series actually get distributed and seen?

Qiushi (Q) Zhang is the founder and CEO of LeyLine, an AI-native studio system that trains creators to make vertical drama, distributes their shows, and connects them to paid production work. She spent six years as a film and television producer and screenwriter in Hollywood before building LeyLine, and she started her career as an investment banker with HSBC and Citi, so she reads a creative business with a producer's eye and a banker's discipline.

In this session Q shares what LeyLine has learned distributing independent AI series and launching a hiring marketplace where AI artists get paid to produce. She plays short clips from creators' shows along the way, so you see the work, not just the theory.

If you have made something with AI and are wondering how it turns into a career, this is your session.

What you'll take away

• How AI filmmakers get hired onto other people's productions.
• How to hire a crew to finish your own series.
• What LeyLine has learned distributing independent AI series.
• How a hiring marketplace for AI artists works, and how creators get paid to produce.
• The steps that take you from one finished series to a sustainable career.

Friday, November 13, 2026, 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM ET

Platform Strategy & Distribution

Making content with AI is no longer the hard part. The tools are here. The pipelines are being built. Creators are producing vertical drama faster and cheaper than anyone thought possible two years ago. But here is the question nobody is answering clearly enough: once you have made it, how do you actually get paid for it?

Shu Dai has figured it out. As Co-Founder and CEO of Gleam Media Studios, she has built a fully AI-powered production pipeline that delivers platform-ready vertical drama in 30 days, with million-view launches on DramaWave and ReelShort. She has directed campaigns for Apple, TikTok, Rolls-Royce, and Samsung, so she knows what premium content looks like and exactly how to move it across multiple channels and turn it into revenue.

In this session she breaks down the complete distribution and monetization strategy for AI vertical drama, from drama apps to TikTok to YouTube, showing creators and studios how to build a multi-platform revenue machine around content they are already making. This is the session that turns your production investment into a business.

What you'll take away

• The multi-channel distribution strategy that maximizes reach and revenue for AI vertical drama content.
• How drama apps, TikTok, and YouTube each require a completely different approach, and how to build for all three at once.
• The monetization models that are actually working right now for AI-generated vertical content.
• How Gleam Media Studios achieved million-view launches with a 30-day AI production turnaround.
• The mindset shift that separates creators who make content from creators who build content businesses.

Friday, November 13, 2026, 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM ET

AI & Hybrid Filmmaking

Most people using AI to make films are not making films. They are generating footage. There is a difference, and Aaron Avont Johnson has spent years on the right side of that line.

Aaron is an award-winning filmmaker, author, and producer who started his creative career at nine years old. His work spans film, television, theater, and youth advocacy. His AI projects include the ABFF-selected film The Haunting, Goodbye Daddy, and the original animated series Adventures With Aaron. He is not a technologist who wandered into storytelling. He is a storyteller who learned to direct the machine.

This is a hands-on masterclass that walks through the complete AI filmmaking workflow from script to screen: scripting and script breakdown, visual inspiration, character and location development, character reference creation, storyboarding and shot design, AI video generation, editing, sound, and final polish. Aaron builds an original suspense scene live in the room using Higgsfield, Seedance, Cosmos, and ChatGPT, so you see every decision in real time.

The focus throughout is filmmaking, not prompt engineering. Storytelling, consistency, cinematography, performance, continuity, and directing the generation rather than accepting whatever comes out. If you want to understand what separates AI-generated footage from an AI-made film, this is your session.

What you'll take away

• The complete AI filmmaking workflow from scripting through final polish, demonstrated live from scratch.
• How to maintain character consistency, continuity, and cinematic performance across AI-generated footage.
• How Aaron uses Higgsfield, Seedance, Cosmos, and ChatGPT together and why he chose each one.
• How to direct the generation rather than accept whatever the tools produce.
• What separates AI-generated footage from a real AI-made film, using examples from The Haunting, Goodbye Daddy, and Adventures With Aaron.

Friday, November 13, 2026, 4:00 PM ET

The summit signs off with an open mixer. Exchange contacts, lock in collaborations, and keep the momentum going after the last session. The people you meet here are building the same thing you are.