A fire kills the most loved man in the park. Five people are each holding a different piece of what really happened. One fact comes out per episode.
// frames from the finished episodes. not concept art, not a lookbook.
Thirty episodes are complete. Season one is finishing production. More seasons are planned.
That sentence is the reason this page exists. Most of what gets shown around this format is a bible, a deck and ninety seconds of proof. This is thirty finished episodes, graded and scored, that run end to end.
Season one, finishing production now.
Vertical 9:16, built in 30-second chunks.
Every episode reveals exactly one new piece.
The engine is built to keep running.
Vertical, ninety seconds to two minutes, and engineered so that stopping is harder than continuing.
Every episode runs the same grammar: a hook in the first seconds, a twist at the turn, a cliff at the end. Every episode releases exactly one new fact. The facts assemble, in order, into the answer, and the audience gets there before the characters do.
The fire is the spine. It returns a few seconds at a time, from a different vantage each time, until late in the season when the whole night finally assembles. That is the engine, and it is built to keep running past the first answer.
Action happens on screen. The dialogue is compressed and it sits between things happening, because this is a format people watch with their thumb already moving.
The hard part of this format is not making one good episode. It is making sixty.
Vertical drama lives or dies on whether a studio can deliver a full season repeatably, in English, at a cost that works. We are an AI film studio built around that problem rather than retrofitted to it, with a slate of original titles and a production system that has now put thirty finished episodes of one show on the shelf.
Written and directed by Steve Mudd, who wrote, produced and directed a feature before any of this existed. Generated production, human writing, human edit, a person on every frame.
A vertical scripted series. A fire kills the most loved man in a trailer park, and five people are each carrying a different piece of what really happened that night. One fact comes out per episode. The series is built so that the audience assembles the truth before any character does, and so that every episode ends somewhere you cannot leave.
Thirty episodes are complete and season one is finishing production. This is not a bible and a sizzle. There are finished, graded, scored episodes you can watch end to end, and the stills on this page are frames from them rather than concept art.
Vertical 9:16, ninety seconds to two minutes an episode, built in thirty-second chunks with a fixed grammar: hook, twist, cliff. Every episode carries one reveal and ends on a turn. It is designed for a phone and for a feed, and it is paced so that stopping is harder than continuing.
Yes. The structure was built to extend, with additional seasons planned. The engine underneath it, five people with five pieces of one night, generates story past the first answer rather than exhausting itself on it.
Talentless AI, an AI film studio in Austin, Texas, under the Backlot74 original slate. Written and directed by Steve Mudd, who wrote, produced and directed a feature before any of this existed. Generated production, human writing, human edit, every frame reviewed.
Platform licensing, co-production, and distribution conversations. We are an independent studio that can deliver English-native vertical drama at volume and repeatably, which is the part most of this category cannot do. If you are commissioning or acquiring in the format, Steve takes those conversations directly.
Yes, for a serious inquiry. Get in touch and we will arrange a screener. The series bible and season architecture are available under NDA.
If you are commissioning or acquiring in vertical drama, the conversation is a short one: we have thirty finished episodes and a system that makes more. Screeners available on a serious inquiry, bible and season architecture under NDA. Steve takes these directly.
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