Is there a standard plan by which all sitcom houses are set up? Looking at, for example, All in the Family and Married with Children, Everybody loves Raymond, there seems to be a common theme. Example:
The Door is to the right. Next to the door is the coat closet… There is a slight step down from the doorway into the rest of the room. The couch is centered in the room and facing toward the viewers, who watch from behind the TV (in All in the Family, the two chairs were substituted for the couch) To the left is the dining room, with the telephone usually found there, next to the doorway to the kitchen. The doorway to the kitchen is always a swinging door that can open either way, and hardwood floors are the norm.
Granted, not all shows follow this format, and many variations are seen, but this general setup seems to be common.
SPeaking of the viewpoint always being the TV, itgives the strange sense that we are watching into the TV, and out of theirs… it gives me the creepy sense that they are watching me on their TV. Obviously it is so they can vegitate in the american style and look in the general direction of the camera, but still, freaky!
Anyone in the business who could shed some light? Is this a standard set that is decorated for the show in question, given the temporal nature of many sitcoms?
I can tell you that at the end of a series, the sets are all broken down to their constituant “flats”. Those flats that are in good shape are stored in a dry place to be used later.
A living room wall may end up as a bed room wall or even as a brick wall. Tear off the wallpaper and shoot on some brick skins and presto!
The sad truth is that most of it gets shitcanned. We get paid to build them, not store them.
The sadder truth is that production designers are myopic, for the most part, and can’t get past the “TV” living room. Hey, I just work here…
Well, I’ve done a fair amount of light design and stage management in local community/low-budget theaters, and many of our sets look like that.
It’s all about “sight-lines” and making sure that the audience can see actors all across the stage. Remember that most sitcoms are filmed in front of a studio audience, so you effectively have a theater stage with three cameras in front of it.
You have an upstage entrance (usually raised a step or two above the stage floor) so the audience can see the actors making entrances through the door over the heads of any actors sitting on the couch. There’s often a coat closet to give an actor something to do at the door while wating to say a line. Usually the front door/main entrance will be on left or right of the set, so the actors have to cross the stage to get to the door (and are thus visible for longer – more opportunity to say lines, make faces or drop props).
Often, if there is a visible staircase going up somewhere, there will be a small landing half-way up, again to give an actor a place to stand and say a line.
You’ll put a phone somewhere to stage left or stage right so an actor can stand and talk on the phone while other actors can be seen elsewhere on the stage, especially if some action takes place while the actor is on the phone.
And kitchen/dining room doors are/can be made to swing either way because it makes the blocking simpler. (“Blocking” relates to the movement of the actors on the stage).