Has anyone ever attempted to film a feature film in front of a live studio audience like a sitcom?
Give 'em Hell, Harry! (1975), starring James Whitmore in a one-man show as Harry Truman. Shot on videotape, transferred to film for theatrical release.
I assume you are excluding concert films, like Stop Making Sense with the Talking Heads, or The Last Waltz with The Band.
Other than concert films, films of stage plays, and large crowd scenes, I doubt anyone has ever filmed a movie in front of an audience. The reactions of a studio audience that we accept in sitcoms (laughter, applause, etc) would be jarring in a movie.
Silent movies frequently had an audience.
I can’t remember the name of the movie, but there was a movie several years ago that was shot in front of an audience, much like a sitcom. If I recall correctly, it featured Shelly Long (of Cheers fame) after she had left that show, which might help to date it. The movie had laughter, applause, and a lot of the other gimmicks of a sitcom, such as the actor turning to the audience for a laugh or surprised look, etc.
I remember the critics pouncing all over it and saying what a royal piece of crap the movie was. The movie was a comedy, and most critics didn’t think it was very funny. The sitcom aspects of the movie (laughter, applause, etc) were also very heavily criticized. Not only did the critics hate it, but audiences hated it too. The movie did not do well.
I just looked over Shelly Long’s entry at the IMDB and can’t find any movie that matches my recollection of this, so I probably have the wrong actress in mind. The movie would have been late 80’s or early 90’s, though.
It seems to me that an audience attempting to watch a tradidtionally-made film would be bored out of their skulls.
Other than the techical crew, not usually, if at all. Most silent studios were like factories: several films working at once, and there really wasn’t anywhere to put an audience.
There are long stretches of My Favorite Year and Noises Off which take place in front of “audiences,” but those are just other actors/extras and probably aren’t what the OP had in mind. Filming a movie in real time in front of a live audience probably wouldn’t work for the reason Johnny L.A. identified.
There was always that odd segment of Natural Born Killers that was filmed as if it were a sitcom. Woody Harrelson comes to get his girlfriend Juliette Lewis and ends up killing her father Rodney Dangerfield while the audience cheers and laughs (mocking the American sit-com).
Sitcoms are a lot more static than movies. Those filmed before the audience have only a few sets, while movies have a lot more locations. I suspect they’re filmed in sequence, while movies (and TV shows not filmed before an audience) are filmed out of sequence. For a movie, filming all the scenes on one set before an audience would be confusing, since the audience would have no idea where the story was, or what had happened before.
I suspect an early talky, like Coconuts or Animal Crackers, could have been filmed before an audience because of the limited camera work and the limited number of sets. They weren’t, but a modern movie filmed before an audience would have to be almost as static. You’d have to limit the shots too - no over the shoulder shots with an audience there, I’d suspect. Very litle of that type of camerawork in sitcoms.
Which sitcoms have a live audience? I’ve been given to understand this is uncommon, and the laughter, etc. is usually fake - dubbed in.
[Shouldn’t this be in CS?]
[slight hijack]Actually, most multi-camera sitcoms are performed in front of a live audience. The most successful currently on TV would be 2 1/2 Men, but there have been several threads about Dopers’ experiences in live audience.[/slight hijack]
Producers have also found that studio audiences don’t work well with animated series.
The studio audience laughs are “sweetened” with additional canned laughter to cover for the irregularities in audience appreciation.
A couple of scenes in the Lord of the Rings trilogy used sound effects from large crowds.
In the Two Towers Saruman addresses his Orcish army which is 10,000 strong.
Peter Jackson used a cricket crowd of 25,000 for the chanting.
La venganza de Don Mendo, whose script is a classic play, was filmed without any attempt to look as anything but a theater play. Cellophane flames, cardboard houses and a conch in the middle of many scenes (I don’t know how to say apuntador in English, it’s the guy who gives hints to actors who’ve forgotten their lines). It is a very tragic comedy in which “even the apuntador dies” - literally; and perhaps the most-represented Spanish comedy.
There’s occasional laughter because the crew couldn’t hold it.
Note: the IDMB entry states that the original play was modified a bit. This is called “morcillas” in Spanish theater and it’s perfectly normal… a tad of improv or rewrite to adapt the play to the specific audience or to current times.
That would be the prompter.
Thank you!
On the other end of the spectrum, when they filmed the chase scene in Bullitt, they had non-extras (i.e., casual passers-by) along the side of the road and even running madly to get out of the way of the speeding cars, including a woman with a baby carriage, because they hadn’t adequately cleared the streets before starting the shoot, and some people jumped the barricades so they could get across the street. So, for those people, not so bored.
Perhaps you are remembering the sequences from Natural Born Killers with Rodney Dangerfield and his “family” ? They were played as sitcom, with audience sounds.
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