Petergeist - Production

Production

"Petergeist" is the 26th of the fourth season of Family Guy. The episode was written by veteran writers and recurring voices for the show Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild. This is the third episode written by Sulkin and Wild to air, the first two being "Petarded" and "PTV" respectively. It was directed by Sarah Frost who is also a veteran of the show. Directors Peter Shin and Pete Michels acted as supervising directors, helping Frost direct this episode. Kirker Butler worked as the executive story editor, while Patrick Meighan, John Viener and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong worked as story editors. Mark Hentemann and Tom Devanney acted as consulting producers. Show creator Seth MacFarlane, David A. Goodman and Chris Shreidan worked as executive producers, Danny Smith was the co-executive producer of the episode and Steve Callaghan, Alec Sulkin, Wellesley Wild, Alex Borstein and Mike Henry all acted as producers of the episode.

Like many episodes of the series, it used an orchestra organized by MacFarlane; the orchestra used in "Petergeist" had 55 members, which was large for the series. Composer Ron Jones "spent months" studying and recreating the original music sheets from the 1982 horror film Poltergeist. The photocopies of the music sheets cost Jones US$400.

"Petergeist," along with the remaining 13 episodes from Season 4, excluding the three that made up Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story were released on a three-disc DVD set in the United States on November 14, 2006. Special features include commentary on every episode, multi-angle scene studies, deleted scenes, 3 featurettes, unrated audio, and a DVD-ROM link to exclusive content.

In addition to the regular cast, sports commentator Bob Costas and comedian Carrot Top guest starred in the episode. Recurring voice actors Lori Alan, voice actor Phil LaMarr, writer Danny Smith writer Alec Sulkin, actress Jennifer Tilly, and writer John Viener made minor appearances. Recurring guest voice actors Adam West and Patrick Warburton also made guest appearances as well.

The DVD version includes some scenes that were edited from TV:

    • When the Griffins leave the house (with Peter tossing the skull in the trash), Herbert the pedophile and the tree demon he fought earlier in the episode climb out of the hole and apologize for fighting. FOX objected to the scene because of the implication of anal sex when Herbert asks the tree demon if he's a "giving tree or a receiving tree."
    • When Lois tells Stewie to come out of the spirit world by going through Meg's ass, Stewie shouts, "Are you insane?" in the TV version. On DVD, there's an alternate scene where Stewie adds that getting out of the spirit world through Meg's ass was just as likely as anyone remembering the 1980 cast of Saturday Night Live, followed by a mock-up of the season six opening featuring cast members Denny Dillon, Gail Matthius, Ann Risley, Yvonne Hudson, and Patrick Weathers, musical guest Jack Bruce and Friends, and fictional celebrity host Scott Colomby.

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Famous quotes containing the word production:

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    “An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
    —George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)