Nine episodes. One story. Nine seconds that could change your life.

Scams are more common than most people think.

Take9's mission is clear: teach consumers to take a 9-second beat when they're confronted with situations that might be hidden scams. So the purpose of this series is heavy. How do you create behavior modification? That is our North Star. You asked for a 9-episode vertical microdrama that teaches the habit in a way people will actually watch. Here's what we know about the problem and the audience.

Most adults get scam attempts every day, and about 3 in 10 say they've already lost money or personal information to one. Many victims never report it, so the real number is likely higher.

And behind them, the parents they care for. Older Gen X and the youngest Boomers, many of them still caring for parents in their 80s and 90s, are among scammers' biggest targets: Americans 60 and older reported losing about $3 billion to fraud in a single year, according to the FTC.

We hide the lesson inside the story.

The best ideas have to entertain. People learn more when they're entertained than when they're told, so the lesson in this series lives inside the story, not in a lecture. Our mini study points the way: these parents see scams every day, suspense keeps them watching, and real stories pull them in. This generation grew up on Schoolhouse Rock. Few people remember the After School Special, but plenty can still sing "Conjunction Junction." You come for the story, and you leave knowing to take 9 seconds.

The series is one connected storyline with recurring characters and stakes that build from episode to episode. Each episode turns on a real, modern scam, and each ends on a cliffhanger that carries viewers into the next.

Here's our early thinking. It's a starting point, not the story.

The story itself comes after we listen. Once we're awarded, our writers will bring BPI three creative directions to choose from. Every episode will follow the shape you asked for:

How development works.

We listen before we write. Then BPI chooses from three creative directions before a single script is written, so there are no surprises later.

The Team

VERT is a director-led studio that makes vertical work with real craft. We bring together directors, writers and creators who know the format, and we back them with the client service a brand or cause needs to trust us with its message.

This bid brings together VERT's co-founders, a director with 830M+ microdrama views this year, and a writing team whose credits run from Frasier to PBS's Sid the Science Kid, a show that taught kids through entertainment, plus a think tank moderator and a casting director who specialize in real people.

Hope Farley

Co-Founder & CEO, VERT

25+years in the entertainment businessInc. Female Founders 500Shorty Award · 6x ADDY · Webby nominee

Hope Farley is an advertising and media executive and entrepreneur with more than 25 years in the entertainment business. She founded VERT to elevate vertical storytelling, pairing real craft with the client service a brand or cause needs to trust it with their message. She began her career at Radical Media and produced for companies including Smuggler and Partizan. In 2013 she co-founded Adolescent Content, which she led for over a decade as COO and Executive Producer, building award-winning campaigns for Target, Levi's, Chevy, Always and LG, including the Shorty Award-winning Life's Good campaign. Her public-interest work includes Power to Decide and the States of California and New Mexico. She serves on the board of 300 for 300, a nonprofit supporting Black girls in creative fields, and has written for Adweek, Campaign US and MediaPost.

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Chastity Dotson

Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer, VERT

Chastity Dotson is a writer, actress, creator and creative producer who leads development at VERT. She was a staff writer on AMC's Ultra City Smiths, wrote on Flipped for Echoverse, and co-created The Unbachelorette. As an actress, she has more than 40 TV credits, including HBO's DTF St. Louis. She also founded and runs the 300 for 300 foundation, a nonprofit that helps young girls through the arts.

Kristen Brancaccio

Director

830M+views across her last two microdramas, in 2026

Kristen Brancaccio is a writer-director who has directed more than 18 microdramas and is set to direct her first feature-length film for Dolphin Films in early 2027.

She most recently directed Issa Rae's debut vertical series Screen Time, which garnered over 250 million views in its first month on TikTok. Her Audible series Southern Belle Insults, starring Keke Palmer, Phaedra Parks, and Zachariah Parks, premiered in August 2026.

She also wrote and directed Hollywood Starlet for the new app aTwist, produced by Bradley Bell (The Bold and the Beautiful). Her series Heartstrings and Lies for Shorts won a Telly Award for Best Vertical Video Series this year. Her vertical work spans ReelShort, NetShort, and DramaShorts, among others. She is attached to direct both the microdrama and feature length adaptation of Clarence Hammond's original short-story Summer Session with Ancora Entertainment.

Before verticals, Kristen was a top-10 directing finalist on HBO's Project Greenlight for her short Day One, and wrote and directed the action-romance pilot Resistance for SYFY. She also has extensive music video credits.

Katy Garretson & Micah Goldman

Writers

As a team, Micah Goldman & Katy Garretson optioned their first two feature-length projects to Reckless Pictures and Basset Hound Distribution. They've also sold five vertical series in multiple genres (noir, period, comedy, drama, holiday) to Giovanni Entertainment, and have two YA vertical series, The Prom Revenge Pact and Senior Smear Campaign, in pre-production with Shorties Studios and CheraTV. They have multiple additional microseries currently being pitched.

Katy Garretson is a Los Angeles-based writer, director, producer, podcaster and professor. She began her award-winning directing career on the TV series Frasier and was nominated for a Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for her directorial debut. She has since directed over 100 episodes of television, including Two Broke Girls, Fuller House, School of Rock, and three seasons of the animated series Sid the Science Kid, for PBS. Katy is the recipient of the DGA's prestigious Frank Capra Career Achievement Award. Katy also developed and produced a series of sixteen hit movies, the Garage Sale Mysteries, for the Hallmark Channel, hosted the podcast Mojo Girl Madness, and for years was a Professor of Directing, Production and Storytelling to both graduate and undergraduate students of the School of Cinematic Arts at her alma mater, USC.

Micah Goldman is a Los Angeles-based writer and producer. He began his career as a writers' assistant on a TV Land sitcom before writing and producing Tease, a dramedy pilot for Fox Television Studios. He later produced the John Landis-executive-produced horror comedy Some Guy Who Kills People. As a former Creative Executive at Industry Arts, Micah provided development feedback for several years on high-profile projects, including Shia LaBeouf's Honey Boy and Netflix's The Wedding Season. He is also an Executive Producer on Stripper Boyz, a comedy feature streaming on Apple. Most recently, Micah wrote two vertical rom-com series for Refinery Media, distributed by FareFlow, and he currently works full-time as a vertical drama writer for DramaWave.

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Serenity Griffith

Think tank moderator

Serenity is a longtime talent manager and moderator who has led parent and youth think tanks with VERT's founder for years. She'll shape the discussion guide and guide the room, so parents feel safe sharing their real stories.

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Tiffany Persons

Casting director

Tiffany runs Tiffany Casting Company, casting real people for brands including American Express, Apple, Google, Nike, AT&T and Starbucks. Her casting has earned Cannes Lions, and she founded Shine On Sierra Leone, which earned her a UN Woman of the World honor.

Updated estimate.

Our production fee is fixed at $103,039 across every scenario. Talent depends on two open questions: whether the series includes a celebrity, and which SAG-AFTRA agreement applies once SAG-AFTRA reviews the scripts. Both likely union paths come in under our original union estimate, even with the added scope. Full terms are in the SOW.

• Parent survey and think tank, with a creative guide for the writers
• Three creative directions, series bible and 9 scripts with 3 rounds of notes
• Casting of supporting roles, with Zoom callbacks
• Director and full crew for a 1-day LA shoot, with stills on set
• Edit with 3 rounds of notes, color, mix, graphics
• 9 episodes and a series trailer, clean and captioned