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What's your question re: bottle episodes and animation?
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
Basically, would this actually count as misuse? As I have seen more examples like that where bottle episode is basically "takes place in a single location" instead of "is trying to save as much money as possible."
Edited by ElBuenCuate
So the question becomes: in animation, does setting an episode in a single setting actually reduce the budget?
I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.
I would think in animation if there are episodes in a single location (one background), little to no movement and one or two voice actors, those could legitimately be Bottle Episode tactics to keep costs down. Whenever I re-visit cartoons from my youth (the '80s) I'm always surprised by how little the characters move, how many backgrounds are re-used and even how many stock animations are re-used (I'm pretty sure they only animated He-Man walking once and just pasted that on top of various backgrounds).
I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
A better example of Bottle episode in Bojack Horseman would be Free Churro, which is just the title character monologuing against a static background for 22 minutes.
I agree that The View From Halfway Down is misuse. Yes it takes place in a limited space, but not as a cost-saving measure; the episode has at least as much visual variety as any other.
So I don't think a Bottle Episode necessarily is about cost saving reasons. That's more of a single explanation as to why these types of episodes are often done.
A bottle episode is more about the presentation of an episode (1 location) than it is about the reason, since bottle episodes are often done intentionally to hone in on character development, reducing costs being just a byproduct of that larger storytelling goal. Basically, a bottle episode can be a bottle episode even if it wasn't done to cut costs so long as it meets the main requirement for the trope (focusing on a single location).
That said, the definition certainly makes it seem like bottle episodes are all about cost. I recommend bringing this up to the Trope Description Improvement Drive
.
Yeah, I was going to ask if this has ever been in TRS or had a wick check done, because that description is really different from what Bottle Episode means in casual language, *and* invites speculation.
Old Enough to Be Your Absurdly Youthful Mother
I'll ask in the TNTRS thread about adding this.
TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup Of Complaining | Troper Wall
This discussion is more appropriate for Trope Talk, since it's talking about general trope usage/definition more than a specific example.
Edited by Synchronicity
^ Should we lock then?
EDIT: It's now on Tropes Needing TRS for the record.
Edited by themayorofsimpleton TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup Of Complaining | Troper Wall
^^^^^ The problem is that the current definition of the trope doesn't actually say that. In fact, it basically says the opposite, that it is an episode that is trying to cut money, with the character development actually a byproduct of this.
Also, I started a trhead in trope talk now here.
^^I did not lock it to give time for a thread to be made (so people following this discussion know where to go to continue it). Now that one's been made, locking.
So the definition of a Bottle Episode is that it is done spending as little money as possible, and one of the most common ways to do it is to set the episode in a single location. That seems to go hand in hand in most instances... Except one, animation, since depending on how you how you work it, the fact that it is a single location doesn't reduce costs, because you still have to draw how the background looks if there are different angles. I have seen it many times, most recently BoJack Horseman's episode "The View from Halfway Down
", which mentions bottle episode since it only happens on one house, and mostly in one room. Thing is, due to this being a dream sequence, and a really strong episode, there are many different angles and space changes that in no way could have reduced the budget at all, so this doesn't actually seem to be a bottle episode under the current definition. And like I said, I think this is a common confusion with many animation examples, that list a bottle episode just because it takes place in a single room without taking into account any other variables.
Edited by ElBuenCuate