Production History

This is the entire production history for The Office Files and other projects by Little Garfield Production Studios.

### The Office Files & Files Of The Unknown

The first work on the series began in September 2018 with the original The Secret File short film, which was completed on November 27, 2018. Work on a sequel entitled "The Secret File: Escape" began in Late 2018 and started to take shape in Spring 2019. A release date of May 22 was chosen, but it was ultimately not met. The project was picked back up on January 7, 2021, and production resumed January 14 with a new script and storyboards, and a release date of May 22, 2021 was selected. Shooting began on February 11 and continued until it took a 6-week-long break on March 9. On March 18, the script was expanded to include a new character called The Boss, later named Mr. Scott Great, and to give the character who banged on the door a much larger role and the name Lincoln Venience. Seth Bolin was casted in the latter role from the around this time, and was actually reprising the role from the original The Secret File. The final additions were made to the original script on April 20, key among them being the addition of the character Agent 5. On April 27, Scott Pirkle and Audrey Beilharz were casted as Mr. Great and Agent 5 respectively, and shooting lasted from then until May 20. It was during this time that the idea of The Office Files was conceived, and script writing for the first episode began on May 11, 2021. A script was quickly made so that shooting for episode 1 could be completed by May 20. The Secret File / Special Edition was released publicly as the first video on the Little Garfield Production Studios YouTube Channel on May 16, 2021 under the incorrect name of The Secret File (2018). The name wouldn't be corrected until the actual original version of the short film released on the channel over a year later on May 31, 2022 with said name. The Secret File // Escape would then officially release on May 22, 2021. This video would later receive a name change to The Secret File // Escape (2021) in June 2022 when other legacy projects began releasing with that naming structure.

At first, the series had six episodes planned plus a third short film to serve as a finale. The first episode, The Infiltration, was initially planned to be released on July 3, 2021, but it was delayed to August 21 after the script was rewritten. On July 19, four additional episodes were ordered for the series. Three of these were actually just the three short films, which were reclassified as episodes due to none of their lengths being considerably different from the at-the-time projected episode lengths. The fourth added episode was The Planner, which was to be a holiday special. On July 20, Madison Benninger was officially casted as Agent 1. On August 15, Chloe Pope was officially casted as Ava Rage. On August 16, Lyndon Padgett was officially casted as Norm Al as script writing for The Printer concluded. Shooting for the series resumed on August 19, 2021. Episode 1 was pushed back several times for several reasons, but eventually ended up on the final release date of September 25, 2021. On September 13, the series was reduced to 8 episodes, with episodes 5-6 and 8-9 being merged into single episodes. On September 26, the release of The Printer and The Back-Up were pushed back to November 6, 2021 and February 12, 2022 respectively, with The Back-Up and The Planner switching positions in the series order. The script for The Back-Up was completed on October 23, and the script for The Planner was completed October 29. On November 4, The Printer was delayed one final time to November 20 to complete the final few scenes and some reshoots.

On November 16, 2021, three shorts were added to the series order, with the first one (The Questioning) having it's script completed on December 9. Also on December 9, The Planner had to be pushed back to a release of January 22, 2022 with it's script going through rewrites to "make it less complicated so it could be completed in a timely manner". On January 2, 2022, The Printer - The Newspaper Cut, an alternate version of Episode 2, released on the original Little Garfield YouTube channel to serve as it's 5th Anniversary Special. Soon after, this became the officially considered version of the episode for series canon. On January 18, two additional shorts were greenlit, with one releasing only four days later, while The Planner was delayed further. In addition, a miscellaneous project titled GAME: The Game was also confirmed to be in production with a June 2 release set. On January 27, The Questioning was upgraded to a full episode, becoming Episode 3, The Escape and The Anomaly were merged into one single episode, and Madison Dorris, Aidan Nash, and Zara Rahat were cast as Melanie Miller, Agent 21, and Agent 20 respectively. With this change, The Planner and The Back-Up were pushed back to February 26 and March 12 respectively, with The Questioning set to release on February 12. A trailer released on February 5 that ended with revealing the release dates of every remaining episode. However, due to unexpected real-world issues, the final shooting day of February 11 had to be delayed to February 14, causing The Questioning's release to be pushed back to February 15. These real-life issues unfortunately continued for the rest of February and pushed every episode back in production. While shooting on February 24 was successful even with major alterations to the Episode 3 script, it just barely wasn't completed and the remaining scenes were shot on March 2. The Questioning got moved one final time to a March 5 release, and The Planner was pushed back an extra week to March 19 just to be safe. The Planner was, however, pushed back to an undetermined date in April, and the rest of the episodes' releases were adjusted accordingly.

On March 21, 2022, a spin-off series entitled Files of the Unknown was greenlit with a 10 episode order, with the first two being The Comedic Irrelevancy of White Dwarfs (originally titled White Dwarfs: The Comedy) and the previously announced GAME: The Game, with the latter pushed to July 3. Additionally, The Conspiracy was replaced by a new short called The Prank scheduled for an April 1 release, and the events of the former short were worked back into The Anomaly. However, April 1 was shockingly not the actual release date for The Prank, as it was afterwards revealed it was actually to be released on July 10. On April 12, The Investigation was officially canceled, with its plot reworked into the a future episode of Files of the Unknown called Borderline Investigation. To make up for the cancellation, one of the other shorts had it's title revealed as The Argument with an expected release in August. A limited showing of the pilot of Files of the Unknown was held on April 19, with the public release scheduled for June 19. On April 27, The Office Files was reduced back to the original order of six from May 2021, with The Back-Up and The Final Hours combining into The Back-Up, and The Anomaly and The Finale combining into The Revelations. Additionally, one more rerelease of The Printer subtitled Definitive Edition was confirmed. It will use the updated version made for The Complete File movie that adds in Melanie’s scene in the montage and just generally polishes up the episode compared to the previous two releases. This release was put on hold to focus on things not pertaining to releasing the third cut of a single episode. However, the earlier change to the episode line-up was in vain, as several projects like the final three episodes, The Support, and The Prank were not completed before the immovable cut-off date for shooting on location of May 2022. The first six minutes of The Planner would go on to release on May 30, with numerous more completed scenes releasing individually throughout the next few months.

While the debut episode of Files of the Unknown, The Comedic Irrelevancy of White Dwarfs, was completed on April 18, the episode was pushed back two weeks to July 3 due to needing special permission to release the project from a few particular actors who were initially uncertain on the matter during production. An unreleased, standalone mini clip titled The Mirror was randomly released on June 27 ahead of the release of Bloopers - The Tutorial, which for the first couple hours of it's availability unintentionally featured the same clip. Additionally, all the clips from that and The Tutorial that were also featured in Bloopers - The Infiltration were edited out of said video since at the time of it's release in October, the idea to recontextualize them into a full short hadn't been thought of yet. Upon getting confirmation that the episode could be released, the official trailer for the spin-off was released on June 29 to generally positive reception, with it's subsequent series premiere following suit on July 3. The recorded footage for The Prank was released via Bloopers - The Prank on July 10, the planned release date for the short itself. On July 14, The Argument was bumped up to replace Bloopers - The Planner as the release for July 17. The short wasn't released until July 18 at 1:15 AM in it's primary release region (EDT) due to a minor delay, but is still listed as releasing on July 17, 2022 due to how close it was. The spin-off's second episode was initially set to release on July 24, but was pushed back to August 7 so a few additional scenes could be added.

During this period, ideas of how to expand the series in the future were also being thrown around, with more episode and story ideas being conceptualized and developed that would further develop the ideas, characters, and dynamics of the 2021 Series. However, no major new details have been revealed outside some scrapped or unused concepts for the original series like the character of Agent 4, a rival and romantic interest for Agent 22 who was only briefly mentioned in the produced content. To quote series creator Robbie Slodysko, "Since our current focus is producing Files of the Unknown, releasing everything that was finished from The Office Files, and releasing the crew's legacy projects, the future series is gonna be on the back-burners until we have the capabilities to do it right. However, since that'll essentially be a reboot, I'm still looking for ways to expand the world of the 2021 Series in other ways. This spin-off is just the first of many, with other mediums such as comics or graphic novels in consideration to tell more stories." On July 18, the first of these projects was teased to be a comic-style adaptation of the unproduced short The Support that would connect with the events of the then newly released short, The Argument, with the possibility of other unmade stories being finished in this new way later. The other was an upcoming graphic novel that would recount the alluded-to past of Agents 20, 21, and 22 and their crazy adventures, focusing on their big moment that led to them becoming secret agents. Both of these projects are not going to release anytime soon as they're relatively early in production, though the latter being the more distant of the two.