Male Restroom Etiquette - Background and Production

Background and Production

In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Phil Rice stated that the ideas in Male Restroom Etiquette were based on observational humor that he had first seen in 2000 on the collaborative Internet site Everything2. In 2006, he decided to take a temporary hiatus from making machinima and to produce a short humorous work when he returned. He felt that the ideas about restroom behavior on Everything2 were well-suited for visual humor and adapted them into a screenplay. According to Rice, the film "is rooted in the Juvenile humor that most men retain a secret fondness for, but don't get many opportunities to celebrate but if the movie is too focused on that kind of humor, you'd lose the intelligent audience that I wrote the film for." Intending to make a parody of educational and social guidance films, Rice considered distributing the film in black-and-white, but decided against it.

Rice originally started to film using id Software's 1997 first-person shooter (FPS) video game Quake II but, after three months of pre-production, was dissatisfied with the game's visual quality. After experimenting, he chose The Sims 2, a 2004 life simulation game published by Electronic Arts. His audio work for Strange Company's 2006 film BloodSpell delayed the start of Male Restroom Etiquette's production. However, after he was able to start, he finished after about two weeks of work. He recorded himself for the narration, and a friend for background voices. He edited audio in Steinberg Cubase SX3 and video footage from the game in Sony Vegas 6.