Brydan Meredith
s3547569
Exploding Genre. Final Exegesis. Project Brief 4
Before we get into my core ideas on how Bottle Film functions I must lay out what I believe a Bottle film is. The term ‘Bottle’ comes from episodes of television that are set in a single, minimalistic location. These Bottle Episodes generally come about when the shows budget has dried up, for popular shows they come after a high-budget storyline has been produced and the series is running out of money. The only difference between Bottle Film and Bottle Episodes is that Bottle Film does not necessarily spawn from the economic constraints, aside from that they both abide by the same conventions: Single Location, Dialogue Heavy Script, Small Cast with an emphasis on performance and character growth. In my essay I will discuss the long shot, realism and space within the Bottle Genre whilst contending that unlike other genres the constraints of Bottle lead to innately interesting, subversive filmmaking.
Bottle films, unlike contemporary Hollywood films, use different editing techniques in order to immerse the audience in the films narrative. In her essay The Action Sequence (2011) Lisa Purse cites David Bordwells writings on contemporary editing. Bordwell suggests that due to the inexpensive nature of editing “todays films are on average cut more rapidly than at any other time in US studio filmmaking”. Later in her essay Purse references Geoff King who talks of Impact Aesthetic, a mode of filmmaking characterised by: objects being hurled towards the camera, shaky cam, loud noises and quick paced editing. This mode of filmmaking immerses the audience by assaulting their senses- it’s designed to unsettle yet entertain viewers in a similar fashion to riding a rollercoaster at a theme park would. The experience is more reliant on cheap filmic thrills as opposed to thought provoking narrative. This paradigm shift has meant that many contemporary films do not have a narrative punctuated by moments of action, instead the narrative is derived from many fluid action sequences. This unfortunate trend of rapid fire editing can be attributed to the Western Worlds broader media environment, where advertisements, ‘flash’ Facebook videos and paragraph length articles dominate. Bottle film in its very nature subverts this type of film making. Instead of maintaining audience interest through quick cutting it instead uses the confines of its single location. The genre requires a slow edit in order to draw the audience into its space. In the creation of my piece I discovered that the single location setting when mixed with the long take creates an unparalleled sense of realism that is reminiscent of being at the theatre. In editing my Media piece I found that the scenes shot as long takes were the most interesting because a) the actors have more to do, they didn’t have the opportunity to quickly turn off and on a character like in a short take B) There was more information in the frame, at times all actors were doing interesting things and C) The long take grounds Bottle Drama in realism, when the camera is fixed in the one shot for a long time the viewer gets a fly on the wall perspective which has the effect of making the viewer feel like they are really there and that the scene is actually happening. Unlike other genres where the quick cut is often used to disorientate the viewer within the filmic space, the long take in Bottle film subversively presents “space and time uninterrupted by the cinematic cut” which, in a day and age where the correlation between film and theatre gets exponentially smaller, is far more interesting.
I have already established that the Bottle Drama is a canvas for realism. I now want to talk about how my Bottle Drama, as a naturalistic film, opened itself up for hybridity and self-reflexivity. In his essay chapter ‘A Plague of Frogs: Expressionism and Naturalism in the 1990’s’ Steven Dillon talks about naturalism as being the perfect canvas for a filmmaker to subvert audience expectations. At the beginning of the chapter he talks of Paul Thomas Anderson’s decision to have characters (towards the end of the film) unexpectedly sing along with an Aimee Man song (non-diegetic) from Magnolias soundtrack. This decision from Anderson has been questioned by critics due its refusal to abide by the naturalism he set up earlier in the film. Dillon later defends Anderson by stating “So if the scene does not make sense, it is because of our generic expectations. It must be that we are reading Magnolia as basically realistic, expecting the physical rules of our known world to obtain”. In reference to Anderson’s decision he then ironically states “surely the genre train has fallen off its tracks”. I believe one of the most significant affordances of films that are grounded in realism is that they provide an unsuspecting canvas for the filmmaker to puncture with either self-reflexivity or metaphysical elements, which Anderson did twice in Magnolia (the second time being with a frog storm). In my film I explored this by having established Western Genre tropes seep into the realism. One of the main ways I did this was by having the outsider (Victor) infiltrate the established relationship (Jack and Sarah). It’s a convention of the Western for the outsider to be a symbol of progress upsetting the traditional ways of the community. In my film I wanted to turn this convention on its head by writing Victor as a symbol of the past. Victor wore a tweed jacket, he spoke with a light old English accent and alluded to the past with lines such as: ‘How times have changed’ and ‘A woman never used to speak to a man like that’. Victor was the source of all conflict, however true to Western convention I had the relationship be restored at the end; stronger due to the challenge it overcome. Joel portrayed Victor in a stylised, theatrical fashion because I wanted the absurdity of the character to juxtapose with the realism that other elements in the film created. The overly theatrical piano chords that occurred at the end of each ‘act’ were another self-referential nod to the theatrical elements of Bottle, they served to remind the audience that they were watching a film. In a similar way to what Paul Thomas Anderson did with Magnolia, these stylistic flourishes were jarring, yet interesting.
In this paragraph I intend to focus less on how Bottle Genre functions and more on the restrictions that can come through abiding genre conventions. John Belton, in his essay The Space of Rear Window states “The figure most frequently identified with the notion of “pure cinema” within classical Hollywood filmmaking is Alfred Hitchcock”. Belton contends that cinematic storytelling is distinguishable from other modes of storytelling due to its ability to show, not tell and that Hitchcock is the master of this. When writing my Bottle film I knew that dialogue was the key to its success, I had mentioned to me that (for a good Bottle Drama) if I was to take out the vision and play the audio it should work as a radio play, so I knew if I had good dialogue, I would have an interesting film. Unfortunately when watching the final product I realised their wasn’t enough silence in my film, though there were moments of good visual story telling (for example when Sarah cuts her Finger and the final shot where Victor looks through the window) it was for the most part too dialogue heavy, which is a constraint of Bottle film. Hitchcock however, in Rear Window, masterfully avoids this constraint through the use of space. Hitchcock uses two seperate spaces in one location to tell his story. The first space is the interior of Jeff’s apartment where (true to quintessential Bottle film) a dialogue heavy drama (this time in the shape of a love story) unfolds. The second is from Jeffries perspective, where a murder mystery unravels before him. Ingeniously this aspect of the story is told completely visually which gives the audience respite from the talkative drama. The juxtaposition between the two spaces is also profound, with the vibrant, colourful courtyard (a melting pot of life) contrasting with the dull, lifeless interior of Jeffries room. Hitchcock uses these alternating spaces within the one location as an antidote to the restrictive nature of traditionally dialogue heavy Bottle films. There is one moment in my own film that alludes to Rear Window which is the final shot of Victor looking through the window at the happy couple. Perhaps, if I had my time again I could have utilised that outside space more, it would have been beneficial for the overall film if I told the story of what Victor does when he is alone in that space.
In conclusion perceived “constraints” of Bottle Film: single location, the long take, a small cast- conventions that lend themselves to naturalistic filmmaking, appear to be constraints at first, however these conventions, all innate to the genre, lend themselves to subversive and ultimately interesting filmmaking.
By Brydan Meredith, s3547569, Project Brief 4
Academic Bibliography
Belton, John. The Space of Rear Window The John Hopkins University Press. 1988.
Dillon, Steven. ‘A Plague of Frogs: Expressionism and Naturalism in the 1990’s’ From his book The Solaris Effect, University of Texas Press, 2002.
Purse, Lisa. Contemporary Action Sequence, University of Edinburgh, 2011
Films Cited
Paul Thomas Anderson, Magnolia, 1998.
Alfred Hitchcock, Read Window, 1954.