How Long Does It Take To Make One Episode Of Family Guy

"Family Guy" may be i of the most popular shows of our time, but its approach to comedy has also generated a lot of haters.

Just await back to 2006, when Comedy Central's "South Park" captured what many idea most the testify in a 2-episode takedown, which claimed that Play tricks'south "Family Guy" is actually written past a group of manatees who randomly select combinations of "idea balls" that are used to generate jokes.

The gag, which mocks the absurd cutaways that "Family Guy" is known for, had some venom to information technology. "Southward Park" co-creator Trey Parker explained in the DVD commentary that he and co-creator Matt Rock "don't respect ["Family unit Guy"] in terms of writing." He added that much of Hollywood felt the aforementioned mode, with producers from "The Simpsons" sending them flowers after the episode and people at "King of the Hill" expressing thanks (despite both shows beingness on Fob). "There was this animation solidarity moment, where everyone did come together over their hatred of Family Guy," he said.

"Family Guy," created by Seth MacFarlance in 1999, only seemed to make people mad. There were complaints about the bear witness's reliance on "gag-humor," likewise as its admittedly ripping off elements of "The Simpsons." The bear witness was offensive, too, even if no more than "Due south Park." But what may have upset the industry most is how successful it was.

Dorsum in 2006, "Family Guy" was making a comeback after three years off air, during which time its post-obit had swelled through DVD sales and reruns. The fourth season averaged seven.9 1000000 viewers, more than twice as many as "Due south Park." By 2013, "Family Guy" at 6.ix 1000000 ratings was more than than twice as pop as "The Simpsons" at three.4 1000000 viewers.

Equally "Family Guy" has dominated in ratings, its brand of sense of humour has get more widely accepted, also. Example in point is the much-hyped advent of The Simpsons in the upcoming "Family Guy" premier on Dominicus night — a collaboration that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Why has "Family unit Guy" been and so successful?We asked Executive Producer and Co-Showrunner Steve Callaghan, who has written for the testify since its debut.

To start, he says the show has actually put together some compelling stories, despite its irreverence: "The series is synthetic in such a way and was created by Seth in such a fashion that it can accommodate a lot of unlike types of episodes. We tin can practise an episode that has a message where we have on a political issue, and and so the next week we can practise one about fourth dimension travel, and in the adjacent calendar week we tin can exercise one where Peter gets a metal detector and goes crazy."

He says the show keeps getting better: " Due north ot merely has the look of the animation vastly improved ... but too we plant more things to do with the characters, and the characters have go more multidimensional."

And he's excited for flavour 13: "W eastward're pretty far into our run, but I'chiliad always happy to see that we go along working harder and we go along topping ourselves. I hope fans experience the aforementioned mode."

It'due south worth mentioning that many people like those random cutaways, which MacFarlane says are not easy to pull off.

"It'due south something that in later years has almost become something that's s--- upon in writers circles.And information technology's interesting because those are the hardest things to write," MacFarlane said at a console in 2012. "When yous're dealing with story-based comedy information technology's almost easier. With the cutaways, you demand to develop a brand new premise, storyline, arc, all in simply a few seconds."

As for how the evidence is fabricated, there are no manatees involved. The process involves many rounds of edits from a large team and takes up to a twelvemonth, which is typical for Idiot box comedies, co-ordinate to Callaghan.

He walked us in extensive detail through the production of 1 episode:

"At the very beginning of every season ... everyone will come in with some thoughts on stories or possible episode ideas and we'll spend a mean solar day or so just pitching out all those individual ideas. They could be three or four paragraphs or they could be literally five words depending on whatever depth of an idea someone comes in with.

"Then we'll start breaking the story. What I mean by that is we'll get iv or five writers in a room together and nosotros'll start talking about that basic idea and we'll start figuring out okay if there'south a story here with a beginning, centre, and end; what might happen in act i, deed 2 or iii; what are the act breaks; and we'll literally write information technology out on a dry erase board.

"Once we experience like we have blank structure of the story, it will go assigned to a item writer who volition then go off and write an outline. ... The outline is mayhap 10 or 12 pages long and it'southward just clarification of the action that tells what happens in each scene.

"They'll turn that into myself and my co-showrunner Rich Apell and a couple of other folks, and we'll give them notes on the outline and and so they will go off and they'll accept ii weeks to write the showtime draft.

"They will come back after that time with the full script with all the dialogue and the phase direction and everything like that, and and then we will as a group go through and rewrite the script line past line, folio by page, and ready any story problems that might all the same exist. We'll try to punch up the jokes and brand them improve, maybe make some trims. As y'all can meet it's all very, very collaborative.

Speaking at a panel in 2010, MacFarlane described the madness of the writers' room: "It's a completely gratis, open ... They tell me to f--- off all the time when they call up I'm wrong about something. It'southward a completely open up ... Y'all hear well-nigh writers rooms where it's similar — formulate your pitches before ... make sure it's absolutely perfect earlier it's set to pitch — no, dude, if something'south on your mind short of cacophony, throw it out at that place. It might stimulate someone else to come up with something."

Side by side comes the table reading, as Callaghan explained:

"This is the starting time time that anyone who is not part of the writers room or part of the writing staff is hearing the script ... We all sit effectually a big table in our conference room and the actors are there ... we have some representatives from the network and the studio on mitt, our crew is nowadays, our writers, and then we'll go through and do a common cold reading of the script. Like I said, it's the beginning fourth dimension people are hearing information technology and the whole purpose of that is to hear what works, what doesn't work.

It sounds both fun and nervus-wracking. Here's an example:

Callaghan continued:

"Based upon how that goes we'll get some notes from the studio and the network, and we ourselves volition assess how we call up the script went, and nosotros'll do a rewrite based upon that table reading. Sometimes that rewrite tin be meaning, sometimes it can be relatively pocket-size.

"Once that rewrite process is done, then we take the actors come up in and record the episode. ... Then nosotros take all that audio, and our sound engineers will put it all together, and we'll make some notes on that, maybe tighten up things, perchance choose different takes, but we'll finalize the audio and do something called the radio play, which is but the sound for the episode.

"Once that's locked, and so the animators will start drawing the episode. That process takes a few months. They practise many, many, many storyboards, and what they gather afterward that menstruation of time is something called an animatic. It's similar a rough version of the show, then it's got audio and information technology's got pencil sketches, just non every pose is drawn.

"We'll have a screening of that animatic, and we'll have a group fill up our conference room again, and nosotros watch it, and the purpose is sort of the aforementioned, to see what'due south working, what'south non working, and once again some things that may accept worked at the table reading, in one case we encounter them executed may or may not piece of work also as we'd hoped.

"We'll do some other rewrite based on that, and so the show gets sent off overseas where a lot of the animation happens for u.s.a., and and so that episode comes back a few months later, and nosotros lookout man information technology one last time, and at this betoken information technology's in color and it looks like pretty close to what the episode volition look like when it airs. ... We get one concluding risk to rewrite information technology and hopefully by this point yous're making smaller and smaller changes, only we withal practise have an opportunity to keep rewriting at this point.

"Later that last rewrite and then we practice our final few things. We'll sit with the composer and figure out where the music needs to become, we'll add in sound effects, we'll do whatsoever final cutting to get it down to the proper running time ... put the credits on.

"That whole process takes about a yr, so what'southward nice is that you lot've constantly got this flow of episodes going through our pipeline. ... It gives you lot a chance to have a piffling altitude from information technology and then it comes back and y'all go some other chance to view it with fresh optics.

"W e do about 22 episodes a year, and then it's almost as if we have to be juggling ii different seasons at one time, because I'll have to be thinking about last changes on a show that might air this coming weekend or the Sunday subsequently that and then too thinking almost what the Christmas testify is going to be a year and a half from at present and everything in between. We have a large board in our writer's room where nosotros runway every episode that'due south currently in production. ... It'southward a lot of balls to go on in the air, simply it is a lot of fun, and we're very lucky to have a very talented writing staff."

Got all that?

Callaghan offered some thoughts on his favorite episodes:

"I think our 'Star Wars' episode turned out well, but I think some of my favorite episodes tend to exist the ones that ... are smaller simpler stories where we have an idea that on some other show might seem a fiddling familiar but we always spin in a 'Family Guy' sort of way. Here's a bad example — and this isn't my favorite episode — simply we did an episode called 'Trading Places,' and I call up simply because it was one where I happened to write the start draft. It was an episode where the parents and the kids switch places, which is something that we've seen before on many sitcoms, but in this one Chris ends up taking on Peter's job and is so stressed out he has a heart assail, which yous wouldn't see on 'The Brady Bunch.'"

As for "The Simpsons" crossover:

"A lot of the credit for that episode should go to Rich Appel, who is the co-showrunner with me. He is a very talented guy, who earlier in his career had worked on and written for 'The Simpsons,' and so he obviously knows the show and knows many of the people who were nonetheless involved with the show. ... He contacted them and presented the thought that nosotros wanted to practice something like that and I call up the fact that they knew him and trusted him and knew that that he had had experience over at that place gave them the confidence to know that we were going to take the job seriously and that we would do a good chore and write the characters as the characters and non abuse the opportunity. ... Once that got going, all the folks at 'The Simpsons' were just terrific. They basically said to us: 'Hither'south our characters, go ahead and write the show, and just please let united states see the script when you're done.' They gave united states of america a lot of freedom to come upward with the story we wanted to exercise and write the episode equally a 'Family Guy' episode. In the finish not simply did they have very few notes just they were very happy with the way information technology turned out."

As for the hereafter of the evidence:

"Evidently, we can't practice this indefinitely, but i don't feel like there's any sign right now that the show is nearing its conclusion. I experience like if annihilation nosotros're in a stiff menstruation in the lifespan of the show and i feel like it could go for quite some time."