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In this exclusive Duanju interview, we speak with Playback producers Scott Brown and Stacy Howard about the making of the first and their award-winning vertical musical.
The conversation explores the emotional depth behind Playback, the evolution of vertical storytelling, cinematic influences, creative risks, and what winning six Telly Awards means for the future of digitally native entertainment.
Interview by Blessing Azugama for Duanju.
The conversation explores the emotional depth behind Playback, the evolution of vertical storytelling, cinematic influences, creative risks, and what winning six Telly Awards means for the future of digitally native entertainment.
Interview by Blessing Azugama for Duanju.
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Art et designTranscription
00:00Hello, everyone. Today, I am joined by the producers behind the first ever Vertical Musical, Playback, Scott Brown and Stacey
00:10Howard.
00:11First of all, congratulations on Playback and Diamond Rose winning six Telly Awards. That is really awesome.
00:20Well, before we dive in, I would love for both of you to briefly introduce yourselves and talk a little
00:27bit about your roles on Playback.
00:30Of course. Well, Stacey, why don't you go first?
00:34Of course. Thank you so much. Hello. My name is Stacey Howard. I'm executive producer of Playback as well as
00:41the Diamond Rose.
00:43And I'm also head of development at Second Radio Productions, which put out Playback.
00:48And Stacey was also instrumental in crafting the story of Playback.
00:52Whoa. Yes. Yes.
00:55Yeah. And hey, I'm Scott Brown. I was the executive producer, one of the writers and the director of Playback.
01:03I also was one of its editors.
01:08Background on me is I have been working at the intersection of legacy and digital entertainment for almost 20 years
01:14now.
01:14Some highlights are I directed Larry King's talk show when he made his digital comeback on Hulu.
01:20I was the executive producer and lead writer director of Dwayne The Rock Johnson's YouTube channel.
01:26And I also worked with Mr. Beast in 2023 and was a lead producer on two of his largest videos,
01:35including Train vs. Giant Pit, which has over 250 million views.
01:39And I also served as the director and one of the writers of our other vertical playback.
01:47And our goal at Second Rodeo is to continue to make verticals that not only elevate what verticals can be
01:54when it comes to a craft and execution perspective,
01:57but still get a lot of views and generate a lot of business and making sure that we're making great
02:04verticals, not television in a vertical aspect ratio.
02:09That's wonderful. It's really nice to have you both here.
02:13Okay. So after watching playback, I realized that what really stood out to me was the emotional depth and the
02:23cinematic quality of the storytelling.
02:26And it really felt very intentional and immersive.
02:30And it was very different from a lot of vertical dramas currently in this space.
02:35So this brings me to my first question, because we know a lot of vertical dramas are usually built around
02:41speed and retention first.
02:44But with playback, it genuinely felt like the emotion and the cinematic quality were just as important as keeping the
02:52viewers hooked.
02:53So I really wanted to talk about this. This question is for Scott.
02:57Was that intentional from day one?
03:00Oh, yeah. I mean, it was intentional from day minus 500, really.
03:05So that's been our thesis for both of our series.
03:08And I think you nailed really the right wording, just as important, right?
03:15Retention, speed, pacing, hooks are extremely important.
03:22But the depth of emotion, storytelling and of plot can complement those important qualities.
03:31I think what's really happening is that verticals can, if they really focus primarily on those first things that we
03:41talk about, speed, retention, the hooks.
03:45However, the ideas of character and emotion only add to the impact and power of those things.
03:52There is not a false, I would call it a false choice to think that you have to have either
03:57or.
03:58And something that we really worked on for both of the series and all the series that we're working on
04:02in the future is maximizing every second to be hooking the audience with every tool in our toolbox.
04:09Something I learned at Mr. Beast was the power of emotion as a mechanism of retention.
04:16And so we are looking to elevate all of the important marketing tools that make verticals great while also using
04:25cinematic vocabulary to complement those.
04:29That's wonderful, nicely said.
04:31Okay, this question is for Stacey now.
04:37I noticed the cinematic texture to playbook that honestly didn't really feel very typical to most verticals right now.
04:45So were there like specific themes or musicals or even a traditional TV drama that influenced the visual and the
04:53emotional tone of the project?
04:56Oh, of course.
04:57I mean, you know, everyone at Second Rodeo, we're really theater nerds at heart.
05:01We love music.
05:03We love impactful storytelling.
05:05I grew up on musicals.
05:07You know, my mom would show me Annie Get Your Gun or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
05:11Both Scott and I were in musicals in high school.
05:14It's definitely been a part of our journey as producers and as creatives.
05:19So I was very inspired by, you know, movies like A Star is Born or, you know, all the great
05:24musicals that, you know, has has come out in Hollywood for decades.
05:28And I'm very inspired by the story of young people, of people overcoming adversity, trying to find themselves, trying to
05:39find their inner strength and trying to get over those obstacles and ultimately succeed in the end.
05:45I think that that is a story that many people in the world can relate to.
05:49And so we wanted to make something that was inspiring, that was warm, that was heartfelt and that really just,
05:55you know, kind of hit you in the emotional gut punch when you were watching it.
05:59So that that theme brought us through, you know, playback as a story that we're very much very proud of.
06:07That's nice.
06:08That's nice.
06:08It actually hits me too because I watched it so I can relate to what you are saying.
06:14Yeah.
06:14For the next question, one thing that genuinely surprised me because I watched it from a writer's lens was how
06:23emotionally patient some of the scenes we are in playback.
06:28And I know that I couldn't notice because I know that, you know, and it was so wonderful because, you
06:35know, it didn't have to be so fast-paced, but it still kept me hooked like I was still watching.
06:41So did you ever, like, when you were creating this, did you ever, like, worry about slowing down the scenes
06:47emotionally?
06:48Like, because I know that this is a format that is built around retention.
06:51So I just had to ask, like, did you, Scott?
06:59So this is something that's very important to me, this idea of retention.
07:03Retention is very important.
07:05I've been on YouTube my whole career.
07:07The value of retention is something we talk about a lot.
07:11But retention and the urgency and intensity of retention mechanics can vary along the videos.
07:19I'll go back to Mr. Beast because I used a lot of the things I learned there in our verticals.
07:24One of the things they talk about at Mr. Beast is how you really need to be maximizing your retention
07:29in the first 20% of a video.
07:33However, after the first 20%, there are ways, specific ways, that you can slow down that will allow to plant
07:46things that will pay off in a much more powerful emotional way at the end, which will drive organic shares.
07:55When we talk about movies, we talk about this idea of catharsis in the third act.
08:01Catharsis is an excellent artistic goal to pursue.
08:06However, it is also a really powerful marketing tool.
08:10When you finish and give the audience a very powerful emotional impact at the end that you have earned over
08:18the course of the story, they are much more likely to share organically.
08:23In fact, I'd like to share a few points that were given to me by Holy Water to share.
08:31And I'll read them verbatim because I want to make sure that I get these right.
08:35But as of today, we just learn these things.
08:38So, the peak engagement of Playback landed on day five, not day one.
08:45That's word of mouth, not a paid push.
08:47Half of the audience found it organically, making Playback the top organic series of MyDrama's recent launches.
08:55It's completion.
08:57Once viewers commit, they finish.
08:58Playback delivers the highest paid viewer completion rate among MyDrama's 2026 slate.
09:05The retention curve.
09:07Viewers who reach Playback's midpoint almost universally stage the finale, one of the strongest second-half retention profiles of any
09:15MyDrama 2026 launch.
09:17A hallmark of narrative payoff.
09:21So, with this data and these findings, we can see that slowing down at very clear moments, once you have
09:30earned the audience's time and gotten them through the paywall, is absolutely possible.
09:35But the key is to make sure you do it once you've gotten the audience committed to the story.
09:40That's the key, though.
09:41That's the key, though.
09:41You have to understand the digital part.
09:44I say to my teams, we all say to our teams, like, we're not trying to make TV in a
09:52vertical frame.
09:53We're trying to make a great microdrama.
09:56And it's really important to make sure you're doing that second thing, because that's what can work.
10:04Okay.
10:05This is nice.
10:06Thank you very much for that answer.
10:09Okay.
10:10For the next question, when we are shooting this, like, you know, because I know that some vertical storytelling is
10:17still very new, and it's evolving creatively.
10:20Like, we don't, like, as much as people, like, write a lot of books and all and all that, I
10:25just feel like we still don't have that fixed, you know, rules or set of, like, you know, guides to
10:32follow, apart from the whole retention, hooks, and cliffhangers.
10:36So, when you were creating this, when you were producing this, were there moments where you invented new rules during
10:44the production process?
10:49You know, I'm not sure if it would, if I would use the phrase inventing rules.
10:54What I would say is that we've taken all the lessons we have learned about retention and all the value,
11:02and the value of retention, especially with Scott coming from the digital background, and tried to weave that within a
11:09story that still made sense, that was very moving, that was very, very intriguing,
11:15and still followed kind of the playback of verticals.
11:18And so, what you want to do is marriage the two.
11:20You want to combine them in a way that makes sense, because you want to give the audience something that
11:24they are familiar with, and then try to plus it in some way.
11:28You know, you don't want to change too much of what they may expect, but you do want to give
11:32them something that would excite them, and maybe you're giving them what they wanted in a new way that they
11:36haven't seen before.
11:38And so, you know, we really tried to be very inventive with the filming format.
11:43Scott is really good about shooting things from multiple angles, using different cameras, and really encouraging the crew to get
11:50the coverage that he needs to have those moments shine while we're editing something.
11:55And so, as long as you have a great director that plans for those kinds of shots, and for that
12:00kind of story, that can move and be very retentive, you can follow the rules and have all the options
12:05in front of you to meet those rules in an inventive way.
12:09So, yeah, we always want to give the audience what they want and something that's familiar, but something that feels
12:15inventive to us as creatives.
12:17And it feels good to achieve that and feel like we came up with something different and interesting.
12:23Thank you very much for that.
12:26Okay, for Scott, while producing this, did you ever feel the pressure of compromising some of the slower emotional beats
12:35in favor of, like, you know, pacing and all?
12:38Well, compromise isn't the right word, because I don't think that we, no, no, I think that there's great ways
12:46to tell stories at very high speeds.
12:48You know, if I think about the early episodes of Playback, right, I don't think that they are, like, fast
12:56in a bad way.
12:57First of all, I'm from YouTube, not television and film.
12:59So, I love digital cadence and storytelling.
13:03But also, you know, I think Playback's early episodes have the pacing of more like a third act in most
13:10movies, which I love the third acts of movies.
13:13Because this idea that for pacing, I think that there are challenges and there's certain types of scene work that
13:22is not as well done at a fast pace.
13:26But that's just, you know, in the same way that if I'm making, you know, Mexican cuisine, I may not
13:34be able to use certain ingredients, right?
13:36It doesn't mean I can't make a wonderful dish.
13:39So, you know, it's simply about a different set of ingredients, but that doesn't mean we cannot make the best
13:45food in the world.
13:46And that's how I look at it.
13:47I never thought that I was compromising.
13:49I thought that I had a wonderful creative challenge in front of me.
13:52And it was my job and our team's job to just fill that mandate with as much great storytelling as
14:00we could.
14:01That's nice.
14:02Okay, so this question is for the two of you, and this is the final question.
14:06What do you hope that skeptics of vertical storytelling, like, what do you hope that they'll understand after experiencing your
14:14project?
14:16I'll say, so you should start with that.
14:17I hope that they see that when it comes to verticals, there is, there are real meat of potatoes storytelling
14:24happening.
14:25A format does not need to dictate whether something feels impactful or, you know, cinematic or like there's great storytelling.
14:33As long as you tell something that an audience can connect with, you know, the format can be many different
14:42things.
14:43So I hope that they see that we told a good story, however small it looks, that it feels big
14:48in your heart.
14:50That's nice.
14:51That's nice.
14:52Okay.
14:52Yeah, and you know, I would say that I just hope that, oh yeah, I think that, you know, I
14:59think it's really important that we understand that we are just getting started when it comes to verticals.
15:05Um, I think that, um, verticals represent a new medium, uh, in the same way that film is a medium
15:12and television is a medium.
15:14I actually want to borrow something that someone else said, uh, this, this guy that, you know, I, I follow
15:20named Hernan Lopez.
15:22He made a really good point on Matt Bellany's podcast.
15:25Um, when television came around, one of the early successes on television was what we know as a soap opera,
15:32right?
15:32Um, and when people were watching soap operas on this new box in their homes called television, it probably would
15:41have been really hard for them to understand that Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones and the Super Bowl and
15:46all these incredible pieces of art and commerce would be in that little box.
15:53Eventually, we are in very early days and micro dramas as we currently know them are one of just the
16:00early formats that are coming out of this new medium.
16:03And I think when you look at our show and what we are finding, I think when you look at
16:10the work of people like Issa Rae and Kristen Brancaccio on, on, on, on, on, on screen time, right?
16:18I think if you look at, um, there are examples of how this really can fit any story, but what
16:27I would say is look at the people who understand who had to tell those stories on the terms of
16:35the medium that they're in, right?
16:38And one of the reasons why I think this moment is working so well is the contents being made by
16:45people who really understand digital audiences.
16:48And, and, and that is what I would say to them is we're just getting started.
16:53We're learning.
16:54Yeah, we're going to fail along the way, but it's the positives, you know, look to the positive things.
17:00I think that will really tell you where all this is headed.
17:03Yeah.
17:04Well, thank you again.
17:06Um, honestly, this has been a very insightful conversation.
17:10Um, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with Dwanju News and for sharing this creative process
17:18behind, um, Playback.
17:20And it's genuinely exciting to see projects like this pushing the boundaries of what vertical storytelling can become.
17:27And to everyone that's watching this interview, thank you for joining us.
17:31And be sure to keep an eye for playback on my drama and for more conversations covering the future of
17:38the global vertical storytelling here at Dwanju.
17:41Yeah.
17:42Bye.
17:44Awesome.
17:45Bye.
17:46Thank you so much.
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