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Canned Laughter (1 Viewer)

cinerama10

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Why do television channels have to always have canned laughter in their comedy shows. When they emerge on dvd we still have to endure this appalling and stupid procedure. Nothing irritates me more than having to listen to canned laughter .I now find myself avoiding any show that has it.
 

Dr Griffin

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My wife feels the same way. I grew up on it, and it doesn't bother me. We recently started watching Partners, the Kelsey Grammer/Martin Lawrence show, which is pretty good, though it does have the laugh track. I noticed it is more subdued than some. Take a show like Modern Family, they don't use one, and they definitely don't need one.
 

TravisR

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I don't mind when there's a recording of the live audience's laughter (like The Dick Van Dyke Show or Seinfeld) but I hate a crappy sitcom that has to use canned laughter to tell the home audience when something is supposed to be funny. One sounds & is real and the other is just junk.
 

Thomas T

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Sometimes, it's not "canned" laughter but real people who are paid to laugh. I worked on a sitcom and during each scene I heard laughter at exactly the same place and it wasn't canned. When the director called a break, I wandered down the set and saw about a dozen people in chairs watching a monitor as the scenes were being shot. I found out that they were professional "laughers" and were paid and told what kind of laugh was wanted after each "joke": "Big laugh", "low chuckles", "long laugh followed by applause", "nervous laughter" etc.
 

mrz7

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John Hermes said:
Doesn't bother me at all.
Totally agree.....besides if you went to a live taping of a t.v. show sitcom, like "The Big Bang Theory", you would hear the same thing.
 

Dr Griffin

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Thomas T said:
Sometimes, it's not "canned" laughter but real people who are paid to laugh. I worked on a sitcom and during each scene I heard laughter at exactly the same place and it wasn't canned. When the director called a break, I wandered down the set and saw about a dozen people in chairs watching a monitor as the scenes were being shot. I found out that they were professional "laughers" and were paid and told what kind of laugh was wanted after each "joke": "Big laugh", "low chuckles", "long laugh followed by applause", "nervous laughter" etc.
I didn't realize it was that involved of a procedure, but after thinking about it, I am not surprised.
 

battlebeast

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My favorite tv show of all time is M*A*S*H. They used heavy canned laughter despite producers wishes against.On the DVDs, you can turn off the Canned laughter. I watch the show ad Nauseum, and I always watched it with the laughter on. But recently, I turned it off, and find (after 30 years of watching it) i like it better without the laugh track.
 

FoxyMulder

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I cannot stand canned laughter, i am watching old episodes of Cheers and other shows and the canned laughter is annoying, even Will & Grace which isn't that old had canned laughter, i think it's the filmed in front of a live studio audience thing.

I don't need canned laughter to tell me when it's time to laugh, if it's funny i'll laugh.
 

Dr Griffin

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battlebeast said:
My favorite tv show of all time is M*A*S*H. They used heavy canned laughter despite producers wishes against.On the DVDs, you can turn off the Canned laughter. I watch the show ad Nauseum, and I always watched it with the laughter on. But recently, I turned it off, and find (after 30 years of watching it) i like it better without the laugh track.
I've got the entire individual first editions of the M*A*S*H set, and have never watched with the laugh track off. You've given me a new project. :)
 

Dick

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FoxyMulder said:
I cannot stand canned laughter, i am watching old episodes of Cheers and other shows and the canned laughter is annoying, even Will & Grace which isn't that old had canned laughter, i think it's the filmed in front of a live studio audience thing.

I don't need canned laughter to tell me when it's time to laugh, if it's funny i'll laugh.
With you completely. I despised this practice even as a child, once I found out it was "faked."

This topic needs to be in the TV forum, though.
 

Mark-P

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In this discussion, there does need to be a distinction between "canned laughter" and "filmed before a live audience." The former is a practice that is now all but abandoned. The latter is still in practice among sitcoms.
 

Matt Hough

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Even shows that film in front of live audiences "sweeten" the audience response in the final audio mix if the laughter that is captured is not enough for their needs. This is an old and time-honored practice which is why you can hear some of the same exact audience responses in different episodes of I Love Lucy, for example.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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TravisR said:
I don't mind when there's a recording of the live audience's laughter (like The Dick Van Dyke Show or Seinfeld) but I hate a crappy sitcom that has to use canned laughter to tell the home audience when something is supposed to be funny. One sounds & is real and the other is just junk.
"How I Met Your Mother" was a single-camera/multi-camera hybrid production that didn't use a live studio audience. Since CBS wanted a laugh track, the showrunners would screen each completed episode for theater full of people and record their laughter for the laugh track. The reason they cited was the exact one you did: there's a difference between real laughter and canned laughter, and it affects the feel of the show.
 

Josh Steinberg

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I'm not a huge fan of laugh tracks, but I don't totally hate them either. They strike me more of a dated relic - I accept them without question in older shows, but cringe a little bit when I hear them in new shows. Which may just be some crazy unfair pickiness on my part.

When I watch a show like "I Love Lucy" or "Dick Van Dyke" or "The Honeymooners", it's very clear that they're on a stage, and you can even imagine where the audience would be sitting. The laughter is in sync with the performances and feels organic to the show, to me anyway. When I compare those shows to something like "M*A*S*H", the laughs in "M*A*S*H" seem out of place - it never feels like the actors are performing for a live audience, and the laughter feels out of place with those cramped tents and hospital rooms. It feels like something added afterwards, and it takes me out of the show, rather than drawing me in. (It was really cool seeing the show without the laugh track on DVD.) When I watch the new spectacular Blu-rays of the other shows I mentioned where I liked the laugh track, I feel almost like I'm watching these shows being shot, like I'm seeing what the studio audience did, and I'm laughing there with them.

The last "new" show I remember watching that has a laugh track was "Sports Night" and it seemed so out of place. I love the show, and I believe they eventually dropped the laugh track before the end of the series. The interactions between the characters are both so personal and hyper specific and filled with that great Sorkin dialogue that it just feels weird to hear these random voices interrupting to laugh. I tried watching both the Michael J. Fox and Robin Williams sitcoms that aired last season, but I didn't make it more than a couple weeks with either. I can't say that the laugh track was the only reason I didn't like them, but they added a vibe that immediately took me out of the show.

When I hear them in an old show, it usually feels right and "period appropriate". When I hear it now on a new show, I feel more like I'm being condescended to by insecure network people, it's the equivalent of having them shouting at me "THIS SHOW IS REALLY FUNNY!"
 

seangood79

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I remember as a child trying to figure out how they got the live audience for the laugh tracks on The Flintstones and Scooby Doo. This was from a time when the idea of TV being used to deceive me was a completely foreign concept.
 

Joe Bernardi

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I haven't watched "I Love Lucy" in ages, but I remember in every episode when Lucy was going to get into trouble, they used the same canned female voice "Oh oh" followed by that person's laughter
 

Richard Travale

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the recent Dave Foley vehicle ‘Spun Out’ had a laugh track that was so badly mixed, timed, etc, that I refused to watch after the first episode. It was absolutely horrible. It’s too bad because I’m a big Dave Foley fan.
 

cineMANIAC

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I always wondered how they got an audience to laugh on shows that were set outdoors. I pictured a mobile bleacher-type setup that followed the cast around. All I could think of was how cumbersome and awkward that must've been to accomplish.

On some sitcoms it was fairly easy to spot a canned laugh. You would always hear the same type of giggle or chuckle sprinkled throughout not only the episode but throughout the show's entire run. This was prevalent on Married...With Children. This goes with the territory - anyone who has ever been to any taping knows that there's an army of people positioned throughout the stage encouraging people to laugh or applause, even if none of these things are deserved :) That's Hollywood for ya
 

phillyrobt

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The most bizarre use I can think of is when it was applied to the Pink Panther theatrical cartoons. When they were issued on DVD, both the US and UK releases included them on titles such as Psychedelic Pink (which ruins it IMO), although there are televised versions that don't. On the other hand, the Bill Cosby Show (Chet Kincaid) didn't use one and it made the show funnier.
 

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