So you’re saying the zany drummer wasn’t being recorded while he was playing, and it was all added in post? Every drumbeat, every cymbal hit? I dispute that.
I meant more the jam session than that ending clip, which was a special case and might have been an exception proving the rule.
Granted. But then why would they have to bring actual musicians into the scene, rather than just paying a couple extras scale and have them pretend to play, then dub in the music later?
Kevin was pretty competent at playing the drums, when he looked foolish was at the end when he tried to copy the other drummers fancy tricks.
I dunno, it’s just, that’s how TV is usually done. Almost anything you hear other than dialog (and sometimes that too) is recorded separately.
Often music is re-recorded for the final soundtrack. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the actors filmed in the scene were faking their playing. Having actually been in a studio in which a live band was being recorded, I know that it’s very difficult for it to make it look real when musicians are faking their playing.
You can almost always tell when an actor doesn’t actually know how to play the instrument. Furthermore, you can often tell when real playing was later overdubbed, like it is in music videos. From what I’ve seen on The Office, generally the music as played by Ed Helms, Rainn Wilson, Creed Bratton, and Craig Robinson looks pretty much real.
Brian Baumgartner didn’t play the drums before they wrote Kevin as a drummer, but he’s been taught some actual drumming and what he is shown doing on the show is real, if not spectacular quality.
Furthermore, it’s basically impossible to “mime” playing the drumset. Regardless of whether they later dub the sound in, a drummer has to play for real on the set for it to look at all convincing.