This week we discussed bottle dramas, they are not recognised academically as their own genre, however Dan used them as one of the genres this week because they have a unique format.

Bottle dramas are easy to recognise but hard to produce. They are dialogue heavy, which means that the writers have to be skilled in scriptwriting. They have a minimalist cast and are based in a single location. However there are no signifying conventions of tropes past these that restrain it from being it’s own genre. This may make it difficult to create and adhere to any rules.

Bottle drama’s are usually the result of producing companies running out of money but still needing to produce something. The producers are forced to rely on existing sets and focus on dialogue. ‘rather than limit a show’s creative potential a bottle episode can unleash it’ (New York Magazine 2015).

Bottle dramas provide great viewing experiences because they rely entirely on the skills of the cinematographers, editors and actors performances. They have to prove their skills and originality. Dinner parties are common in bottle dramas, such as in the film we watched this week, Coherence (2013). I loved this film and thought it was so innovative. It shows you don’t need a multimillion-dollar budget to produce good content.

Personally, I don’t think of bottle dramas a genre so much but more a convention, it is recognisable predominantly in TV shows and can be used as a style within any kind of genre.

References:

New York Magazine 2015, Bottle Episodes: “Vulture’s Secret History of Television” Episode 2, online video, 8 July, YouTube, viewed 22 October 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usql12uOUVg>.