At My Drama — the top vertical streaming platform among American and European companies — our goal with Brace Face Betty was to expand what vertical series can be and demonstrate that the format can deliver cinematic, premium young-adult storytelling.
The core objectives driving the project were:
1/ Redefine genre expectations by proving that vertical series can thrive beyond familiar romance tropes and succeed in more traditional film/TV genres such as school romance, comedy, thrillers and more.
2/ Showcase cinematic craft in a mobile-native format, using deliberate choices in framing, lighting, color, and pacing to create a visually polished series designed specifically for vertical viewing.
3/ Demonstrate the production model of the future — fast, data-driven, and creator-focused — showing how vertical series can be made efficiently while maintaining storytelling depth and visual quality.
Brace Face Betty was developed as a proof point for HOLYWATER’s larger mission: to define the future of entertainment by meeting audiences where they already watch — on their phones — and elevating vertical storytelling into a globally recognized format. The project also supports our broader vision of making My Drama a home for creators, filmmakers, and studios who want to experiment with innovative formats and reach massive mobile audiences.
The production of Brace Face Betty is rooted in HOLYWATER’s technology-driven content ecosystem — an integrated pipeline that allows us to create, test, and scale vertical series with exceptional speed and precision. My Drama operates alongside two other platforms: My Passion, the #1 independent digital book publishing platform among non-Chinese companies, and My Muse, the leading vertical streaming app for AI-generated series. This ecosystem enables us to identify high-potential stories early, refine them through iterative testing and audience feedback and bring only the strongest concepts into full live-action production.
Our content pipeline works in three stages:
1. Story Discovery on My Passion: we test hundreds of exclusive books and analyze real-time viewer behavior to understand which themes, characters, and emotional arcs resonate most. Stories that exceed performance benchmarks advance to the next stage.
2. AI Pre-Production on My Muse: selected stories usually become AI-generated pilots or short-form series. This allows us to test the script, pacing, and visual direction before committing to live-action production. Audience reactions help shape everything from character presentation to cliffhanger structures.
3. Cinematic Live-Action Production for My Drama: concepts validated by data and user engagement move into full production.
Brace Face Betty followed this exact process, informed by audience insights at every development stage.
Brace Face Betty is a young adult drama following shy, braces-wearing Betty, who becomes the target of her ruthless stepsister. When Marcus — the school's charismatic bad boy — unexpectedly takes interest, Betty is thrust into a whirlwind of secrets, power plays, and unexpected romance. As betrayals escalate, she must decide whether to fight back or be crushed. This heightened emotional landscape made it an ideal candidate for the fast-paced vertical format.
For Brace Face Betty, we focused on transforming classic YA tropes into a fast-paced vertical feature film. Our team crafted mobile-first compositions, dynamic lighting, and color grading optimized for small screens. Each 1–2 minute episode was engineered for maximum engagement—clear emotional beats, rapid pacing, and structurally strong cliffhangers—creating a feature-length story designed specifically for vertical viewing.
This combination of data-driven development, AI-supported pre-production, and cinematic execution is what makes Brace Face Betty — and the HOLYWATER pipeline behind it — distinctive in the vertical entertainment landscape.
Brace Face Betty delivered exceptional results and quickly became one of My Drama’s top-performing titles. The series recorded a record-breaking premiere, generated 824 million impressions through its marketing campaign, and ranked among the most-watched vertical series globally in Q2 2025 (SocialPeta).
The title proved that school romance — a genre previously underexplored in vertical storytelling — has strong audience demand. Viewer behavior showed high replay rates and strong emotional engagement, validating early insights from My Passion’s data testing.
The series also earned industry recognition, receiving the Audience Favorite Award at the Vertical Shorts Festival and becoming a semi-finalist at the Canada Shorts Festival, further cementing its impact.
Overall, Brace Face Betty demonstrated that cinematic, mobile-native storytelling can resonate at scale and helped solidify HOLYWATER’s position as a leader in the rapidly growing vertical entertainment space.
