Montage and Style: BOJACK HORSEMAN
The visual gag a mere few seconds earlier doesn’t exactly tell the audience “a visual smorgasbord cometh!” but it does prime us for some fun camera movements and expect visual gags.
And boy does it deliver.
High Impact
BoJack Horseman is no stranger to stylistic deviations. This a kaleidoscopic, gun-barrel-camera-entering trick is something perhaps ‘easier’ to accomplish in animation than live action.
By which I mean mostly, it’s cheaper, and you have more control over how the lighting and colour flow together than you would in live action. Certainly neither is ‘easy’ . . . but then, everybody would be doing it!
Devil in the Details
BoJack Horseman is one of the all time, most-rewatchable greats in part because of its attention to details.
Note the overkill hanging in the background, the little depression on Diane’s thumb as she cocks the hammer, the custom bullet etching, the paper poofs and smoke aftermath, Diane’s eyes squeezed shut as she fires.
Related
Animation has fewer limits on things like “what can the camera fit inside?” sooooo what might this look like in live action?
So glad you asked!
The ‘pulling out of the gun barrel’ shot (below) reminds me of this one in Bound!
Takeaways
BoJack Horseman constantly using camera angles in clever ways — to set up jokes, hide background gags for more serious moments, make emotionally impactive reveals, etc. — also means sequences which do more ridiculous things like ‘pull the camera back from inside a revolver’ or ‘follow a rotating bullet like a James Bond title sequence’ doesn’t feel out of place at all.
So remember:
style is everything.
consistency is style.
regularly changing things up is consistency.