Category:Early

We decided on categorising the following as the early years of Foil Arms and Hog:

Live Shows not on DVD
The 'best of' DVD Live at Vicar Street (recorded on 12 April 2014) contains various sketches from these earlier years, but performed when they were already big enough to fill the theatre. Any recorded clips from gigs at small venues (comedy clubs around Ireland mostly) and at festivals, can feature the same sketches, but these will have been newly written at that point and performed differently.

'Rough' YouTube sketches
In the early days, the production power behind FAH sketches was minimal: they didn't have proper microphones (which you can easily tell by the white noise), lighting (often over or underexposing the set), didn't build any sets yet (you can see their FAH posters hanging on the wall), ...

All in all, you can tell from these sketches that they were still figuring out how to shoot and edit sketches properly. These sketches include out of office sketches which they mostly filmed at their parents' houses, or on the road. There weren't many sketch series then either: only Business Dudes and Hard Lads already had follow-ups. Note that a handful of sketches were still shot and edited by other people (professionals, such as Dermot Grace) and these do look a lot better.

The cut-off for these early sketches might be Mobile Hospital (one of the Vodafone Festival outro sketches), which looks absolutely amazing, with fully worked out production elements: wardrobe and props, set dressing, beautiful colours and sounds... and superb acting! That would make the last 'rough' sketch Festival Knob.

FAHrchive Pictures
Until they created their Instagram page (August 2014), Facebook was their outlet for most of their promo stunts, green room sneak peeks, behind the scenes pics (prop making and set building) and random stories about them messing around at the office or on tour. Their fanbase was tiny then, compared to what it is now, which makes for a different kind of fan interaction that's interesting to browse through.

We try our best to match the behind the scenes pics and relevant comments from the FAHrchives to the sketch on YouTube on the Props &amp; Sets and Location pages, but it's a work in progress...