DF Production Notes: 12 Days of Phoenix (Patreon)

Hello everyone! Audi here, hope you are doing well this week. Throughout my time at DF both as a contributor and team member, I have done production logs on Twitter, basically small trivia notes that is written down shortly after production on a video is done. We been wanting to keep this tradition up, and what better than to start with The Ghost of Phoenix Past! I also wrote up notes on Super Star Wars, Splatterhouse and Playstation Launch which John and I will post over the next few months. But let's go, 12 Days of Phoenix production notes!

• Almost all aspects of the show was improvised on the spot. Besides the basic premise of the 12 days and the loose connection to A Christmas Carol, we just rolled with ideas the day before and during shooting.
  
• Despite being filmed in late November, I could not find any Santa beards or old man getup in the store in Norway. Apparently this was due to COVID holding up a lot of fabric shipments or something. The result was John's wife graciously driving to a nearby supermarket in Germany to pick up a hat and beard.
  
• The height difference was a call on John's part. One episode was shot with our natural height difference, but the comedy didn't work as I did not have the "menace" I needed from below. He gave me his son's potty step so that I too could be a big boy.
  
• The Ghost is primarily based on 3 different inspirations. My own grandpa, who would berate and yell at any living thing though somehow still come off as immensely lovable. Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld with some speech patterns and mannerisms, and George Clooney for his looks.
  
• All Phoenix games used for this episode are property of Audi Sorlie. Each purchase was non-refundable.
  
• The series was shot in one full go. As we improvised, new ideas would come up and in order to keep the groove going, we did not stop. The introduction segments took about 3 hours to shoot. The gameplay segments took 6 hours.
  
• Being in "costume" came with some challenges. The lights were piping hot and as the beard's elastic bands were holding onto dear life much like a certain Richard Leadbetter's reputation since hiring me, it was deemed too risky to take off the costume. The beard was made of highly synthetic fabric, which caused a fairly hefty allergic reaction on my face and neck after 9 hours of shooting, resulting in me leaving Germany with what people could only imagine was some kick ass hickeys, high five brotha.
  
• The 12 Days of Phoenix Past was pitched in September to shock and horror from a certain Richard Leadbetter who after hearing of the idea to not only play Phoenix Games on Digital Foundry, but 12 of them and run them for Christmas had to reach out to John and make sure I was not suffering from trauma or concussion issues. Despite this initial worry, Rich would come around to love the execution and request the Best of video be run public.
  
• The Ghost of Phoenix Past was not always of Phoenix legacy. The first ideas I had was Ghost of CD-i, Ghost of Mascots Forgotten and Ghost of Mean Machines. Ghost of Mean Machines would have had the ghost revisit games reviewed by a certain Richard Leadbetter and scored low in Mean Machines and re-evaluate the games.
  
• There was a Phoenix game I had hoped we could have slotted in Alex for a cameo in a dinosaur hunter gimmick, however rendering dinosaurs might have been too advanced for the Dutch company because despite my best attempts to find a game, nothing fit.
  
• If you look closely, you can sometimes see John and I looking at the monitor. This was due to the fact that I was standing on a stool and would risk going out of frame, or stand at awkward angles so we needed to make sure we were both in frame proper.
  
• The 12 games selected for the show was merely based on cover art and if the name sounded funny in the Ghost accent. We had in fact 47 games to choose from, and we discarded a few we had played previously for a prior DF Retro Play episode. Beyond this, everything was real first impressions.
  
• Before editing, each episode were about 30-40 minutes in length. A deleted scenes reel might be possible in the future.
  
• One of the biggest challenges was not laughing. In order to minimize the risk, I would almost never stop my accent or behavior towards John as a ghost and stay in character. John would bite his lip or tongue to avoid laughing.
  
• While we mostly remained hidden in the shadows during filming, John's often seen neighbors would catch a glimpse of me when I was having a swig of water by the windowsill. They have yet to speak with John's family again ever since.
  
• The hat was supposed to stay in place on top of the head of the Ghost. However it kept slipping down, and John felt this was more appropriate since basically: 

"Everything about this is wrong anyway" -John Linneman, November 2021.

• After release, a few fans pointed out similarities to AVGN's christmas specials. However, neither John or I have actually seen AVGN's christmas episodes as we never followed the series closely.
  
• Among our favorite episodes, the Dynamite 100 episode was overall our favorite to shoot and watch.
  
• There are quite a few allusions to another "family friendly" console in the Dynamite 100 episode, see if you can find them all.
  
• Only one game made me break character, Shadow of Ganymede, which gave me leprosy.
  
• John and I are quite big pro wrestling fans and wanted to make the wrestling episode something special. However the game was so bad, that while we did exaggerate our expressions for comedic effect, that was a real first time reaction and we both knew what to do without saying a word.
  
• I cannot read scripts and prefer to do everything off the cuff, whereas John is great at scripting and line reading, which posed a bit of a challenge initially to find a groove. However for this project, it was nearly instant that we clicked.
  
• Based on the reaction to the first series, a second series is most certainly going to happen, potentially for another holiday.
  
• A few outlines were written up prior to recording the introductions, just to keep some consistency and set up some jokes without stumbling over each other.
  
• The ending was originally just envisioned as a "Merry Christmas everyone" with the Ghost fading out. However we recorded a few alternative takes and ideas and landed on the tease.

Phew, that's it! Now if you want to read my previous log threads on Twitter, you can find them below!

DF Retro Bubsy: https://twitter.com/PC98_Audi/status/1257376383447322624 

DF Retro Play Usagi Yojimbo: https://twitter.com/PC98_Audi/status/1284925773149810689 

DF Retro Final Fight: https://twitter.com/PC98_Audi/status/1279549760278614016 

DF Retro Mortal Kombat: https://twitter.com/PC98_Audi/status/1224043038718222338