How I Met Your Mother - Production

Production

How I Met Your Mother was inspired by Carter Bays' and Craig Thomas' idea to "write about our friends and the stupid stuff we did in New York." The two drew from their friendship in creating the characters. Ted is based loosely on Bays, and Marshall and Lily are based loosely on Thomas and his wife. Thomas' wife Rebecca was initially reluctant to have a character based on her, but agreed if they could get Alyson Hannigan to play her. Hannigan was looking to do more comedy work, and was available.

MacLaren's, a bar in the middle of New York, in which some of the show is set, is based on a bar named McGee's. It has a mural that Bays and Thomas both liked and wanted to incorporate into the show. The name for the bar is from Carter Bays' assistant, Carl MacLaren; the bartender in the show is also named Carl.

Each episode is usually shot over three days in the Los Angeles-based Soundstage Studio 22 and features upwards of 50 scenes with quick transitions and flashbacks. However, the "Pilot" episode was filmed at CBS Radford. The laugh track is later created by recording an audience being shown the final edited episode. Thomas claims that shooting before a live audience would be impossible because of the structure of the show and the numerous flashforwards in each episode and because doing so "would blur the line between 'audience' and 'hostage situation'." Later seasons started filming in front of an audience on occasion when smaller sets are used.

The theme song is a portion of "Hey Beautiful" by The Solids, of which Bays and Thomas are members. Episodes from Season 1 generally started with the opening credits. A cold opening has been used since Season 2. Viewers then occasionally see Ted's children on a couch and hear him talking to them, telling the story of how he met their mother. Alternatively, scenes from previous episodes or shots of New York City with Ted narrating over the top are shown. Thomas has explicitly said Future Ted is an unreliable narrator since he is trying to tell a story that happened over 20 years earlier; this has been a plot point in several episodes such as "The Goat", "Oh Honey", "How I Met Everyone Else" and "The Mermaid Theory". Nevertheless, Thomas has also emphasized maintaining a coherent and consistent universe, and trying to avoid continuity errors, based on his experiences of being a fan of other shows.

A scene directly relating to the identity of the mother, involving Ted's future children, was filmed near the beginning of Season 2 for the show's eventual series finale. This was primarily done because the teenage actors portraying them will be adults by the time the final season is shot.

During the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, How I Met Your Mother shut down production; but, when the strike ended, the show returned on March 17, 2008, with nine new episodes. A change in timeslot was also announced, to 8:30 pm ET/7:30 pm CT, flip-flopping from the summer schedule with The Big Bang Theory. CBS renewed the show for a fourth season on May 14, 2008, which premiered on September 22, 2008.

In September 2008, it was announced that Lifetime Television had purchased the right to rerun How I Met Your Mother at a rate of about $725,000 per episode. The four-year syndication contract stipulated that the studio deliver at least 110 half-hour episodes by the year 2010, and allowed for up to eight seasons of the show. At the end of the fourth season only 88 episodes had been produced, and a further 22 episodes were required, ensuring that there would be a fifth season. On May 19, 2009, the fifth-season renewal was announced. On May 20, 2009, CBS announced that How I Met Your Mother would again be aired at 8 pm, leading into the new comedy Accidentally on Purpose. On January 12, 2010, the show hit the milestone of its 100th episode. It was also announced that the series would return for a sixth season on CBS. In response to being syndicated, Thomas said, "We're thrilled that it will live on in other forms," and they were proud of the show and it was great to see the strong demand. However, cast members have suggested the show will run for no more than eight seasons.

On September 13, 2010, reruns of the series began airing on local U.S. broadcast television stations and on Chicago-based cable superstation WGN America. Featured in these airings are vanity cards previously unseen in the CBS and Lifetime airings due to marginalized credit sequences used by the two networks. Shown in between the closing credits and the production company credits, these vanity cards show portions of "The Bro Code", a list of rules frequently referenced by Harris' character, Barney Stinson, on how men should interact with each other, with an emphasis on activities involving pursuing members of the opposite sex. The opening theme song for the syndicated reruns is also slightly edited, running shorter and not using all the pictures seen in the opening montage that runs on DVD and the original CBS broadcasts. The episodes are also slightly edited, leaving out a few details.

One of the series' ongoing traditions involves giving guest roles to actors from various Joss Whedon productions, many of whom co-starred with Hannigan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Bays attributes this to their being "huge fans" and to those casts representing "a big talent pool".

Another tradition involves the use of euphemisms for culturally sensitive issues. These include “eating a sandwich” for smoking marijuana and “reading a magazine” for going to the bathroom and "playing the bagpipes" for loud, raucous sex acts. These euphemisms, among others, have been used extensively throughout the series and have even been used as central plot themes, such as the episode "Benefits" in Season 4.

On March 4, 2011, CBS announced that the show had been renewed for two more seasons, with the seventh season premiering with back-to-back episodes on September 19, 2011.

On July 27, 2011, it was announced that the FX channel had picked up the show for syndication. FX began airing the show on September 5, 2011.