Laugh tracks are the worst of mankind. After corruption and genocide.
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The IT Crowd is another show that I love so much that I endure the laugh tracks anyway.
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What I donât get is that in this magical age of illegal downloadsDVDs, Blu-rays and other media with distinct audio tracks baked into the format, an audio track without it isnât an option.
Pretty sure itâs a seperate audio layer in mixing anything which isnât recorded âliveâ (and even then), so it wouldnât be difficult.
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*** The movie MASH on VHS was the Christmas gift for myself & my sister when dad bought that GREAT thing called a VCR in the late 70âs/early 80âs. I had always heard that it was ââŚa bloody and violent movie!â âŚNOT
Recently the show has been flooding at least 3 of my cable channels; Hmmm, are they just trying to spark interest because:
- Theyâre remaking the show since they donât have writers w/ fresh thoughts?
- Remaking the movie?
- Hopefully none of the stars passed away and itâs just being shown as a memorialâŚ!
With that being said: I loved the show too but just canât get into the reruns?!?!?!
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The best you can get away with would be one of two not-very-satisfying approaches. In the first, watch the show in 5.1 surround, but with the surround speakers unplugged. The only audio that gets sent to the surround speakers in most 5.1 multicam sound mixes contains music and laughs. Unplug those speakers, and the laughs will be that much quieter. All the dialogue is primarily mixed to the center channel, so you could conceivably turn down the front left and right channels as well as the surrounds to maximize your dialogue level compared to music, laffs, and sound FX.
Trouble is, youâll never get a completely clean dialogue track. The actors are miked from above by boom mics, and those stage mics are sensitive enough that they unavoidably pick up the sounds of the audience laughing 20 feet away. The audience is miked as well to record the actual laugh track, but since the audience is encouraged to laugh out loud at whatever strikes them as funny, some bleed-through of the laughs onto the dialogue track is unavoidable. That audience is loud.
The other approach would be to watch a foreign translation. The dialogue track is completely replaced and free of audience laugh bleed-through. The laugh track is generally replaced as well, because of the English language dialogue bleed-through when the audience mics pick up the stage dialogue.
If most of your recent multicamera sitcom experience is with Two and a Half Men or Big Bang Theory, I can see why the laugh track irritates you. Chuck Lorre prefers to mix his laugh tracks louder than I like. I find it grating and obnoxious.
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Chuck Lorre, or his sound mixing?
If you had quadrophonic microphones, you could remove the audience entirely from the recording, couldnât you?
(Trying to vaguely remember from when this stuff was mentioned at university, years ago - couldnât you combine the signals to only take sound from certain directions?)
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It is, indeed, its own track, but as I explained above, the dialogue track is not clean, but rather contains the audience laughing, since multicam sitcoms are in fact recorded before a sizable studio audience.
Itâs a pretty specific artform, distinct from single-camera sitcoms like Modern Family or 30 Rock. The goal is to simulate the experience of watching live theatre, as if you, the viewer, are in that studio audience. It might feel wholly artificial, but for what itâs worth, watching one of these things being shot live can be really fun, if itâs a good one. The energy exchanged between actors and audience is palpable.
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I went to the Beeb to watch a couple of sitcoms being recorded. Sadly they were crappy ones (Chalk, Heartburn Hotel) so it wasnât a great experience. Hard to get free tickets for good stuff.
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Thereâs no real point in jumping through hoops to record perfectly clean dialogue tracks. You could isolate the audience behind soundproof glass if it was important to keep their laughs isolated from the actorsâ dialogue tracks, but many people seem to enjoy this somewhat dated-feeling artform, and the thing that distinguishes it from single-camera work is that back-and-forth energy exchange between audience and actors. The actor says something funny, the audience roars, the next actor holds her response until the laugh has crested and begun to roll off⌠even though it âcheatsâ with editing and multiple takes, multicam sitcoms are closer to live theatre than other forms of scripted filmed entertainment.
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Not if you know the right lizard. 
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I think youâve explained this before, but whatâs the deal with multi/single camera setups?
Multi camera is the standard TV setup and you get it wrapped up quicker, single camera is more like movies?
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I think Desi Arnaz invented the 3-camera sitcom with I Love Lucy, which was shot (and broadcast) live with 3 cameras in front of a studio audience. That show took a half hour to shoot, if indeed they broadcast it live.
One of the cameras shot the wide master shot, the other two got the close-ups. At some point in the 70s or 80s, a 4th camera was added to add some versatility and editing flexibility. (Not sure, but I think Jimmy Burrows was the guy who popularized the use of four cameras instead of three.)
Unlike movies or single-camera TV shows, multicam sitcoms are generally shot in script order, from beginning to end. Usually theyâll shoot each scene twice or thrice, and maybe a couple pickup lines, before moving on to the next scene. First you shoot the first scene, from beginning to end, occasionally backing up a bit if someone flubs a line. At the end of the take, the writers huddle up for a bit and discuss what worked and what didnât, and pitch a few new lines and jokes. The warm-up guy entertains the audience during those few minutes with jokes, trivia, and prizes. The writers give the revised lines and new jokes to the actors, then they shoot Take 2 of that scene. Once the director is happy, they move on to the next scene.
This process can be deadly slow or fairly speedy. Both Friends and Will & Grace would start shooting around 6:00 PM. Friends might go until 2:30 AM, whereas W&G rarely went past 10:30. Still, itâs tough to keep an audience laughing that long with only 22 minutes of jokes, unless youâre really funny.
Single-camera half-hour sitcoms take around 4 or 5 days to shoot, by way of contrast.
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Wow. I had no idea it would take anything close to that long. By the end the audience must be dozing off!
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My husband is re-watching The Office. Have I mentioned I donât like that show? I mean, some of the jokes are funny but ⌠Iâve been Pam. Itâs not nearly as funny when youâve been Pam.
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Iâve been Creed.
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I think Friends would cut the audience loose halfway through, and bring in a second audience for the second half⌠Or at least thatâs what I heard.
They were certainly popular enough to never run out of audience!
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US version?
I like the original (minor celebrity connection, Ricky Gervais grew up next door to my mum), never saw the Carrell version.
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Creed is my favorite. Heâs insane, but I like him.
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Thank you, as always for your insider perspective.
My brother in law is in the biz too (on the music side of things) and I always find it fascinating to hear stories about how the sausage is made.
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On the latest book and no no time travel yet.
