The episode was written by Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton and Rob McElhenney. Howerton said the production team was "pretty inspired" by the bravado of
True Detective and found an episode that's served by the approach.
[2] The episode's similarity to
Birdman with jazz score and continuous tracking shot was entirely coincidental. "We did it like
Birdman, even though we didn't know about
Birdman," director Matt Shakman observed.
[1]
The ten minute continuous long shot took a lot of preparation and technical effects to pull off. "It was a huge logistical challenge...It's a lot of visual effects to kind of merge things—the front of the pub is a location in downtown L.A., the interior is a set on stage at Fox and some of those sets don't even link up," Shakman explained. "So we had to come up with some trickery and we redesigned our sets so that certain things could be done in the flow."
[3]
"The sets on stage are only one level, so every time we go to the basement, there is a camera trick." Shakman noted. "Some are simple–where we pan past the brick wall and hide the cut or go through a pool of darkness–or where we are more ambitious and use green screen (coming back into the bar from the basement for instance was a blend of a shot that panned into a green screen with a shot of the keg room that continued the motion)," Shakman noted.
[4]
"The stage sets that are contiguous are the bathroom, main pub interior, back office, and keg room. The bathroom wasn't originally connected but we made it connect for this episode. For this episode we also built a partial back alley on stage. There's a back alley location in downtown L.A. that we usually go to. We used the real downtown location for when the delivery guy is first seated and Charlie sees DeVito running away. I wanted that to be the actual place so the audience wouldn't doubt the veracity when we used the stage set for later scenes: Charlie arguing with Dee about moving the dumpster and checking in with the inspector in the alley. Going from the interior bar set to the real alley required some green screen and a few camera tricks–going into a wall as Charlie passes, and then coming off the wall on location to reveal the real exterior alley, etc."
[4]
), let me know yours.
