http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mlaughtrack.html
I would just like to add that another major reason for laugh tracks is that when a punchline is delivered, the silence that follows is extremely uncomfortable. This is extremely evident on the Seinfeld clip-shows, wherein Jerry gives little introductions between clips. These monologues have jokes in them, but for whatever reason no laugh track was inserted. It makes it very difficult to watch.
It depends.
It’s true that silence after jokes is uncomfortable; it means the joke died. I haven’t seen the clips you referred to, but I’m going to guess that it was Seinfeld alone, talking to a camera. In that case, you don’t expect an audience and laughter would be out of place.
It’s also possible that the sound person experimented with a laugh track, didn’t like the effect, and took it out. I do this all the time when I’m producing something. If the background music or sound effects don’t work with the spoken text, I’m going to keep experimenting until I find something that sounds better. With today’s digital technology, it’s not hard to do.
Robin
The Andy Griffith Show DVDs of season 4 issued by Paramount have several episodes missing laugh tracks and some find it annoying.
Apparently scenes were not shortened to compensate for the missing laughter so the pacing seems off and some jokes come off as mean-spirited without laughter to soften them.
I haven’t seen them yet but look forward to comparing an ep with and without laughs to see which I prefer; probably with.
“Joe Bash”, a short-lived series from 1986 starring Peter Boyle as a cop, was produced without a laugh track. I suppose it was meant to be a dark comedy and that’s how it came off to me - dark.
The thing I remember most about MAS*H was the laugh track, it was the same one over and over in every episode, or at least thats what I thought. There was this distinctive hooter somewhere in the audience that stood out like a sore thumb and made it unforgettable…unfortunately.
MAS*H wasn’t filmed before a studio audience. It was filmed at Paramount Ranch in Agoura, California and thus needed a recorded laugh track. Thus, you were hearing the same laughter every episode.
Robin
You don’t know the half of it, Robin.
As you may have noticed, they DO do location shots on sitcoms that are filmed in front of an audience. They just show the footage to the audience on a monitor.
The entire environment of a sitcom soundstage is actually not very conducive to normal laughter. There are 3-4 cameras between you and what’s going on, and the need to move and set these cameras, as well as set and costume changes, not mention retakes, means that the taping of a 30-minute sitcom takes several hours. They need comedians and professional laughers in the audience to keep the crowd’s energy level up.
Thank you, scotandrsn.
Truthfully, there’s not a lot of literature on laugh tracks and their rationale, and I used pretty much all of what I found.
You’re right about the soundstage not being all that conducive to laughter, but some audience seating is miked to pick that up.
Robin
Note that MAS*H never ran the laugh track during scenes in the operating room.
I never thought about it, but you’re right.
I used to live in Agoura when the show was wrapping up its final seasons. The Paramount Ranch is private property and I know people weren’t allowed to tour when shows or movies were in production. (I’m not sure about other times; my Girl Scout troup wanted to go on a tour and were turned away because MAS*H was filming when we wanted to go.)
Robin
I hate laugh tracks. I find it extremely distracting, and just not needed if the show is really funny in the first place. Simpsons, Family Guy, Scrubs, Good Eats. Most of the funniest shows on TV now do not have laugh tracks.
If a show really is funny, then it shouldn’t need to pipe in fake laughter.
I didn’t mean to imply that the laughter you hear is not coming from the studio audience, just that it’s very hard won. I had to leave yesterday, and didn’t have time to go into the detail I wanted to.
I worked as an extra a couple of times on sitcoms (FTR, once on Caroline in the City, once on a long-forgotten Vivica A. Fox/Jon Cryer vehicle called Getting Personal), and both setups were the same:
The audience is herded into the seats, which are quite far removed from the portion of the soundstage where the actiors are, so they see the shoot mostly through monitors anyway, even though the action is going on not 25 yards away. (One pivotal scene in the Caroline episode I was in was shot on a set at the back of the soundstage, completely out of view of the audience.)
Hidden among the audience are ususally a couple of professional laughers. These are people who can produce unusually contagious guffaws that get the people around them giggling, and it hopefully spreads from there for the benefit of the mics. I remembered reading about them in an article in Time many years ago, and had forgotten all about them until I noticed some fakish sounds on Getting Personal, which had hired at least three or four of them, by the sound of it.
This is not enough, however. The shoot will be going on for about four hours or more, so there is also a comedian present. From the look and sound of it, this person has consumed every stimulant known to man about 10 minutes before work. They yell, they whoop, they tell jokes, they give out prizes, they run rapping contests, they encourage people to get up and do impressions, etc., all in between takes, in order to keep the audience’s energy up during the inevitable tedium of any filmed or taped venture. They cajole the audience into laughing again, even harder, at the same jokes when a scene has to be redone. Given that most sitcom episodes these days have two or three plotlines, they provide necessary recap for upcoming scenes, since the last time you saw a three-minute bit relating to a particular subplot may have been over an hour earlier. They are not always the best comedians in the world, but they are certainly hard-working.
The whole thing is quite surreal from a walk-on actor’s perspective, and I can only imagine what it’s like as an audience member. I can also assume that any jokes that fell flat in the studio are “sweetened” during editing with laugh tracks.
I loved your piece, by the way Robin. I just thought I’d chime in with my own observations on how, even when it’s from a live studio audience, the laughter is no less manufactured.