Phantom Sheep Productions LaughCrafters Holiday DVD Special

2007 EDITION
ONLINE COMMENTARY
TRIVIAL TRIVIA BITS!

On our Best of 05-06 special, we recorded a bonus troupe commentary.
As a special bonus to everyone who bought our 2007 DVD, we are releasing a bunch of notes here
that give you a bunch of fun and useless things to look for when you watch. Enjoy!
If you don't have your own copy yet, order one now while supplies last!

Tommy uses a toy “merlin” as the remote control in the teaser open
SeaQuest Christmas Special was actually a written sketch that was scrapped for technical reasons. The Mythbusters sketch was cut too because we couldn’t explode a reindeer off the roof.
Tommy never saw Charlie Brown Christmas before this year and with it being aired every week, we had to parody it nearly word for word as our cold-open. It was a toss up between this and the Mayhem Mistletoe, so we just did both together leaking the Mayhem one first as a teaser trailer.

There is a boom mic in the shot during the Charlie Brown parody.
When Seymour and Eric enter the building, the shot was flipped so that they travel the same direction.
Part of Eric’s arm was seen during the Sheep scene, so Seymour added thin black bars to the top and bottom of the shot in post to hide them.
CSPUN was the original open and ending of the Democratic Christmas Party that was scrapped due to make-up malfunctions and time constraints. There is an existing script that wasn’t going to be funny in a month after primaries anyway.

The news anchor bit (seen in the Advent Laughin and Trailer) was a quick nod to “Rubber Room News” and used the same exact map background from that show that was the first “Phantom Sheep Production” written and performed by Eric and Zippy in 1996.
The newscaster was originally filmed for the opening teaser but turned out to be funnier than expected so was moved into the Advent Calendar scene to make it more like “Laugh-in”. The headline scroll was also added here after Democratic party was scapped. A “reoccurring character restaurant” sketch was also combined into Advent Calendar. Many of the jokes on the news ticker scroll are gags and jokes from the initial pitch that never made it into full sketches.
The opening shots are of Easthampton for another project Seymour worked on but have been used each Holiday show since 2005 inserting new action shots each year.

The Advent Calendar was an idea that came from our first night of pitches. We were making so many bad jokes, someone said “why don’t we just pop out of lockers” in homage to “You can’t do that on television”, then we said “what if we pop out of presents”…then we went to the original source that inspired the lockers….Laugh-in! And somehow it became an advent calendar joke wall. It took us several days to come up with ideas until Jeff proposed having an unseen person open the doors for us unlike Laugh-in where we would open our own doors, but like an advent Calendar.
Jeff drew the art for the Advent joke wall. Originally Jeff and Seymour were going to do an animation inspired by a Dimento gag Eric wrote years ago where the birth of Jesus was done ala The Lion King opening. The animation got scrapped for time and music rights, but it remained the inspiration for Jeff’s advent mural.
The Advent Calendar only has 20 boxes, not 24 despite it being called “24 days of laughin’”.
Only 15 of those 20 boxes are used. We also had to assign who was in which box on paper even though everyone was shot in front of the same backdrop to keep track of the editting so that the right people were looking in the right direction.
That is Seymour’s hand opening and closing the boxes.
We originally shot it with green paper behind each door, but the yellow star was too close messing up the chroma key. So Seymour used photoshop to manually change all the green to blue and had to do frame by frame (for a total of over 1000 frames) each time a hand came in and out of the screen.
The cop and criminal caroler gag was dreamed up years ago as something Eric and his brothers always wanted to do for real, along with the trick or treaters.

The Carolers and the alternate scrooge endings were cooked up from playing improv games like “world’s worst”. The Fat Tuesday ending was written on the set while shooting the other 2 and needing another gag…but we had to wait another day to shoot the beach wear shot since we didn’t have the clothes. Its also shot in Eric’s backyard from his bathroom window while everything else in those scenes are from a street location in Springfield.
Seymour squeeze Zippy’s fake boobs in the Money Matters sketch when the grandparents enter at the beginning.
The box Tommy gets as a gift in the Money Matters sketch from grandma has been used in almost every Holiday show for at least 5 years. It has a false bottom so that the Phantom Sheep puppet can pop out if needed.

The Cash Cab interiors were filmed in a garage since it was raining outside. Black sheets were hung around the windows.
Tommy layed down in the back trunk during Cash Cab to manually hit the disco lights for correct answers…which stop after the first minute, but he’s still stuck back there sleeping for the rest of the taping.
The exterior shots when Santa and Punky get picked up and dropped off were done outside a church high on a hill.
The exterior car driving shots were done by Seymour riding along in the other lane with Tommy driving while Eric drove around with Jeff as Santa and a dummy dressed as Seymour’s elf character chatting away as if they were still asking questions.
You can see Jeff fixing his beard towards the end of cash cab several times.
Internet research was done for the Jewish and Kwanza questions, and we probably still pronounced them wrong. This sketch was also written to poke fun at ourselves and aknowledge that we really don’t know anything about the holidays except for Christmas traditions, hence why we only feel comfy making fun of our own religion.

The wiseguy sketch was inspired by Zippy playing with words while waiting for Seymour’s flat tire to be fixed. Later that night we trapped ourselves to play and write until 2AM. It was almost a mafia sketch until we started bouncing ideas around and developed it into the vaudevillian bit o’comedy it is. It also became one of our favorite sketches to write and perform with some of our favorite lines. All the choreography was created and rehearsed an hour before shooting inside so that we were ready and consistent once we went out in the cold.

Suggestions were picked randomly from fan and friend online submissions for the improvised game/scenes “Continous Authors” (The story Rudolph and the author styles were givens), “Should’ve Said” (interview for a mall job at Christmas), Rant (The 3 pet peeves), and “Challenge”…we were each given a topic to be debated at dinner and Jeff chose randomly which one we were to discuss live on camera. We did have to re-tape the set-up several time and ate a lot of stuffing because we kept laughing at simple things like “pass the butter”. Otherwise once we start rolling, we don’t stop and its completely improvised as you see it without rehearsal off camera prior unlike the sketches. We did tape a few different topics and almost included the others as bonus footage.

The whore that appears in the advent joke wall is Tommy’s character “Christmas Carol”. Unfortunately, she appears in full sketches (one too hot for TV) in the past two years. Fortunately she was wearing a bathrobe this year and not her usual pleathor and fishnets.
Every sketch in the feature was written brand new this year and never performed before. Other dvd specials we picked a few sketches that we had done live in past holiday shows and reworked them for video (ie: Law and Order, Sellvation Army, Dear Santas, What did you Get me….). This year, we almost redid the Secret Service sketch, but decided to just put the video of the live show from 2000 as a bonus feature.

The Stamos” always ends every single Mayhem Mistletoe with Slappy Von Slime since the first one in 2003.
Very often no one is behind the camera and therefore it barely moves, adding to a more voyeuristic style as if you are just dropping in on these random scenes in their natural locations.
We rarely play Continous Story Authors in rehearsal nor show, but wanted to put it in the dvd because not many of our fans have seen it done before. Rant is a popular game we play in over half our shows usually as a closing or encore.

The Soccer Mom’s sketch was taped in Southwick and we had to move the benches to a spot that did not have snow. We bumped up the schedule 2 days and thankfully so as the original scheduled day ended up being the first major blizzard of the year. Luckily we had all footage on tape by then and used the snow-in to get some editing done.
In Soccer Moms, Eric is wearing his wife’s bra under his sweatshirt but over his other shirts and stuffed them with his daughter’s diapers. For Rachel Ray, Jeff duct taped a sofa pillow, which Seymour also did for Julia’s back hump.
In Soccer Moms, the kids voices were added in later; however Tommy’s voice is done live.

The Gecko ad, the voice is done live by Eric. After each take, he would have to turn away so he didn’t laugh at Seymour and Greg. This sketch took long to tape as it had to perfect in one take with no cutaways.
Most Voice-overs are done separately on camera and then the audio track alone is moved over. IE: CSPUN, Invisible Mariachi Band, Scream Caroler, Jeff's Trunk, Guitar Heroes.

During the Julia and Rachel fight, the clutter on top of the fridge was staged empty boxes. We took a digital photo of the arrangement for continuity when we had to reset for additional shots and angles. Sndfx were added in later to make it seem like they were breaking more things then they really were.
Julia and Rachel appeared in last year’s Mayhem Mistletoe. So this is sort of a Spin-off sketch. Julia was added in 2005 as Slappy was bringing back dead celebrities (such as Elvis as a PSP’s Dead Legends Live tie-in) and somehow just became a resident of the lab.
The box of “Rotz” crackers was really a cereal box with an image Seymour photo-shopped and taped on.
The Cheri bottle Julia smashes is a breakaway prop Eric made by pre-slicing a water-bottle, taping it together, and spraypainting the whole thing…add a glass sound effect and the bitch is ready to rumble.

The first two Scrooge POV street shots were done from the same window Jeff appears in as Scrooge where his scenes were shot for the gags....However the third one (Fat Tuesday) street shot was done in a backyard miles away. Beads had to be thrown in both locations. And yes, it was quite cold. This third gag was also written/improvised as we were setting up and shooting the other two Scrooge gags which were written during an improv rehearsal days prior.
This is the first video that Krista Brueno does not make a cameo in. Normally she plays the part of a random shopper. However, Krista did keep us company and offered feedback during the post-production process.
Brian was away in Eastern MA during the taping and unable to appear, however his stocking is still seen in the opening montage and photo is seen in the cast bios.
As a gift, Eric gave the troupe members each a personalized ornament of a fireplace mantle that says “Phantom Sheep LaughCrafters” with stockings hung, each with a cast member’s name on it inspired by the opening montage and main menu photo. Whenever possible each show, we also try to hang the stockings with the cast member names on them in the shot (ie: Geek Alphabet, cold open, and welcome)

Apparently Grandma takes off her shoes immediately when she enters the house in Money Matters as Seymour is only wearing socks.
The segway shots of Eric on his computer and Tommy sleeping were done in Seymour’s editing suite during post-production at 3AM.
If you look really close and really fast, Zippy is peering through the window on a cellphone and black santa hat during the Scream Caroler. The voice on the phone however is Eric’s saying “do you like Chrismas Carols….Slashing through the snow…”

The kids in the trunk of Jeff’s car is Eric, Zippy, Seymour, and Greg’s voices.
In Santa Recall, the bucket of “lead paint” also has wire poking out that also held the “shards of glass” made of a cut up milk-bottle.
The other gifts opened in “Santa Recall” include many of Eric’s daughters cars and dolls, a dvd of “Hot Stuff”, the remote control to Eric’s TV, and ornaments off the tree.
Drag Count- Eric=1 (Soccer Moms), Jeff=2 (Rachel, Soccer Moms), Seymour=2 (Money Matters, Julia), Tommy=2 (Santa Recall, Carol during Advent Laughin…3 if you count his man boobs in Fat Tuesday), and Zippy=2 (Job interview, Money Matters), Zippy got away with not playing any females last year…this year he’s on the cover in a dress.

The voice of the Sheep and Grizz is Eric; however Zippy is the Sheep puppeteer during Advent Wall as Eric did the voice live…something they’ve done since college. Zippy has been the voice of the Sheep before and Jeff was the voice in the 2005 dvd. Eric is the only one to voice Grizz and mostly puppeteer him for the dvd.
Although we support Hollywood writers, none of the troupe members are WGA members (yet) We also barely make any profit on the dvd sales nor internet and cable showings.
Eric is wearing a bluetooth headset in his right ear as the “Twas the Night” agent.

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