Without trying to sound too New Age and business buzz-wordy, I’m a believer in the idea that constraints can aid creativity. In writing, constraint exercises force an author to find innovative ways to abide by the constraint while still creating a compelling and interesting work for readers. When done well, the result is successful on two levels – if you can write a good story, that’s great, but if you can write a good story while being constrained, that’s even more impressive.

I think this is the reason I’ve always loved bottle drama – even before I’d heard that term (not knowing any better I’ve always called them chamber films). I watched films like Tape, Don’s Plum and Secret Honor in my teens and marvelled at the creativity required to make something dramatic and compelling out of a small number of locations and characters. Bottle drama privileges excellent writing above all else, and I have immense respect for excellent writers.

Characteristics of bottle drama:

• Emerged from television, where budgetary constraints often forced producers to make episodes with restrictions on the number of sets and characters
• Secondary source is minimalist theatre, which by the nature of the form is restricted in the same way
• Bottle drama is a clash of high and low culture (theatre vs. television)
• Narrative is restricted to a single location – something (usually external) must contain characters in that location
• Minimal cast – usually a two-hander or small ensemble
• Focus on dialogue to establish character and carry the story – exposition needs to be metered out carefully to feel natural, story needs to keep moving and feel dynamic
• Small space requires cinematography and editing to be on-point
• Performances are crucially important, because so much focus is placed on the characters

Clearly, now, bottle drama has moved beyond being a budgetary necessity and has become a fully-fledged genre in its own right (at least with as much claim to being a genre as film noir). Breaking Bad and Community made bottle episodes not because they ran out of money but because they make for great TV. Films like Buried and Photo Booth used the tropes of bottle drama to heighten tension and achieve the concentrated emotional impact the genre is known for.

Coherence, the film we watched in class this week, and Rear Window are both outward-looking bottle dramas. Coherence is almost entirely set in a single lounge room, but the scope of the film encompasses multiple such lounge rooms across multiple dimensions of space-time, and characters are often walking to and between these different locations, making locations and actions outside of the location just as important as those inside it. The same can be said for Rear Window, where Jeff Jeffries (James Stewart) is confined to his bedroom but the “action” of the film actually all happens across the courtyard, and sometimes off-screen entirely. As Belton (1988) ¹ points out, the focus of Rear Window alternates from story-space to story-space, switching between Jeff’s bedroom and his neighbours’ apartments constantly, which maximises the scope of the story world even though Jeff is physically confined to one place.

This is very different to films like Richard Linklater’s Tape or Hitchcock’s own Rope, which are mostly concerned with the actions and interactions of characters within the film’s main location. These are inward-looking bottle dramas.

I’m going to tackle bottle drama for my Project Brief 4, and I’m going to attempt to merge both inward- and outward-looking characteristics. I may be biting off more than I can chew, since it will be the first time I’ve written a screenplay in any form, but I figure life’s too short not to shoot for the moon.