Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Nov 24, 2018 10:00:01 GMT -8
I've been thinking about this recently - bottle episodes and clip shows both exist to cut down on production costs, but the former are usually regarded has high points and the latter are universal targets of derision.
It's got to be possible to make a good clip show, right?
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Nov 24, 2018 10:33:56 GMT -8
I've been thinking about this recently - bottle episodes and clip shows both exist to cut down on production costs, but the former are usually regarded has high points and the latter are universal targets of derision. It's got to be possible to make a good clip show, right? Only if it's fake. Bottle episodes are different-good ones have to solely rely on great writing. So great writers can pull it off. It's still new material. Clip shows are just re-using old material. I'm not sure if it's possible to make something great out of that. |
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Nov 24, 2018 14:38:10 GMT -8
I've been thinking about this recently - bottle episodes and clip shows both exist to cut down on production costs, but the former are usually regarded has high points and the latter are universal targets of derision. It's got to be possible to make a good clip show, right? Only if it's fake. Bottle episodes are different-good ones have to solely rely on great writing. So great writers can pull it off. It's still new material. Clip shows are just re-using old material. I'm not sure if it's possible to make something great out of that. But like, editing is just as much of an art as writing is. Change the incidental music, cut the shots slightly differently, and you can draw out an entirely different meaning from a scene. I could totally see a show like Jane the Virgin doing a clip show that works perfectly - hell, just have Anthony Mendez do forty-five minutes of voiceover and you don't even need new footage for the framing device. |
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 24, 2018 15:49:37 GMT -8
As you say, it depends on context. A clip show that pointlessly contrives a reason for characters to reflect on previous episodes will probably feel forced and boring. ("Shades of Grey," for instance, may be the worst Star Trek: TNG episode ever.) A clip show that reveals something new, or serves some kind of non-filler purpose, may be successful. The problem is that it's really difficult to say new things when you're recycling old clips.
My favorite clip show episode is probably "Q&A" from the first season of Alias. That's a good example of a clip show that actually does serve a purpose to the overall storyline (the clips put Sydney's character arc into more context), and edits the clips into some pretty entertaining montages. It also has a lot of story development beyond the clippy scenes. Not a brilliant episode, but probably the best of its type.
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Post by otherscott on Nov 26, 2018 7:28:59 GMT -8
I have to admit some ignorance here. Are clip shows still a thing? I know they used to be in the 90s and early 2000s, but I don't think I've seen an actual clip show episode in my life (except for maybe some children/ teen television back in the day.)
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 26, 2018 11:19:15 GMT -8
No, they're not really a thing anymore. Cable/streaming shows don't have to worry too much about padding seasons or meeting deadlines, and even broadcast networks have more than enough programming slots to fill the time. Besides, in the age of YouTube, popular TV clips are readily accessible to anyone, so there's even less novelty to clip show episodes than there used to be.
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Post by Zarnium on Nov 26, 2018 12:52:33 GMT -8
There's the Legend of Korra clip show, which did come about due to budget cuts. It's got some points of interest where one of the characters embellishes past events and a couple scenes are humorously redubbed, but it's mostly boring recap filler.
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 26, 2018 14:01:46 GMT -8
Yeah, nowadays, if a series does do a clip episode, it's usually a subversion of the typical formula. The clips might be all-new scenes (Community), or old scenes recreated from different perspectives (Frasier). Those tend to be better than the recycled-clips variety.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 6, 2018 6:49:08 GMT -8
So I was just watching "Devil's Feud Cake," a Bugs Bunny cartoon from the 1960s. It's a clip show episode - over 80% of the 7-minute film is recycled from previous Looney Tunes shorts. What's strange is that the episode never references the fact that it's reusing old clips - it pretends that this is all-new footage, trying to stitch together pieces of three different cartoons into a coherent new whole. (Unsurprisingly, it fails.)
I've... never seen a clip show like this. Presumably, a TV series could not get away with it because old episodes re-aired all the time. But Looney Tunes shorts back then were designed to be shown in theaters for a few weeks and then never seen again. So they were perhaps counting on the fact that people wouldn't recall the older shorts and realize they were watching a Frankenstein version of older cartoons.
(Also, "Devil's Feud Cake" is the episode which officially kills off Yosemite Sam. Kinda sucks that his final episode is a flimsy clip show.)
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Dec 7, 2018 10:06:22 GMT -8
So I was just watching "Devil's Feud Cake," a Bugs Bunny cartoon from the 1960s. It's a clip show episode - over 80% of the 7-minute film is recycled from previous Looney Tunes shorts. What's strange is that the episode never references the fact that it's reusing old clips - it pretends that this is all-new footage, trying to stitch together pieces of three different cartoons into a coherent new whole. (Unsurprisingly, it fails.) I've... never seen a clip show like this. Presumably, a TV series could not get away with it because old episodes re-aired all the time. But Looney Tunes shorts back then were designed to be shown in theaters for a few weeks and then never seen again. So they were perhaps counting on the fact that people wouldn't recall the older shorts and realize they were watching a Frankenstein version of older cartoons. (Also, "Devil's Feud Cake" is the episode which officially kills off Yosemite Sam. Kinda sucks that his final episode is a flimsy clip show.) See, this isn't new to me. I watched a lot of YouTube poop as a teenager, a lot of which was funnier than the source material. If "The Fesh Pince of Blair" could do it, why not a show with actual editors? Or, if you want a more professional example, consider Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily? That's a film consisting entirely of redubbed and respliced footage. I think this is almost certainly possible, and probably cheaper than a regular clip show - curious why no one's tried it on television before. |
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 7, 2018 12:26:06 GMT -8
That actually has been done in television, in a sense - Adult Swim shows like Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Sealab 2021 used recycled and redubbed footage of old Hanna-Barbera shows. But those shows at least make it apparent that they're just reedited versions of old Space Ghost and Sealab 2020 episodes.
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Post by Jay on Dec 7, 2018 13:03:54 GMT -8
Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law also used some old clips and (mostly) character designs from Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, among other H-B standards (basically, the whole library was available for them to play with).
I'd also note as the guy with the Space Ghost icon that Cartoon Planet also used SG footage and that the "interviews" aired on SG:C2C were often recorded with the guest speaking to a camera in a dark room, instructed to address the voice as "Space Ghost" and the footage was often heavily-edited and re-scripted, as you can see when comparing "Table Read" to "Fire Ant" You get the impression that the Conan O'Brien interview had already be recorded by the time of "Fire Ant" (some guests were in on the joke, some weren't, much like early Colbert Report), but not all of the footage from the final product matches one-to-one.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Aug 30, 2020 7:57:10 GMT -8
Had a 2 a.m. thought that modern Family Guy is basically a clip show, and that it is also an extremely popular show that will never die because of that structure.
(And by clip show, I mean that the cutaway gags are framed in exactly the same way as scenes in a clip show.)
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Post by Jeremy on Aug 30, 2020 19:10:53 GMT -8
Technically it follows a similar framework of a clip show, but (1) the clips are new to the episodes and (2) oftentimes the humor is derived from the contrast with the surrounding story. Whereas most clip show episodes try to feature a running theme between the clips and the framework, roughly 90% of Family Guy cutaways are meant to be amusing simply because of how little they connect to the story itself.
This becomes more apparent when the framework gets removed entirely. While I did enjoy Family Guy quite a bit as a teenager, I found MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy to be unfunny and irritating. That series is nothing but cutaways, and once you remove the surrounding framework, the shorts can only stand or fall on their own merits. Needless to say... many fell.
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Post by Jay on Sept 16, 2020 17:35:56 GMT -8
A few episodes of The Simpsons were okay clip shows, the "Paint Your Wagon" one sticks out to me but then that was built out of the musical episodes and those are inherently good.
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