Do sitcoms works without canned laughter
jonjons
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I was watching Outnumbered the other night and thought if there was an audience watching or laughter was added would it create an effect of you know when to laugh.Its the same with Benidorm anyone got any opinions?
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Canned laughter is a big turnoff. Watched the new sitcom with Caroline Quentin for the first time this week and it'll be the last. What a load of poo, folks supposedly laughing when there was nothing funny to laugh at in the whole sorry half hour.
Outnumbered is class, we're not stupid for goodness sake, we know what's funny and what isn't without being prompted. Mash was shown in the UK minus the audience/canned laughter and it worked and worked very well.
I'm sure that other posters can think of more examples.
..Sometimes it can add to a situation like on Fawlty Towers, Father Ted and Alan Partridge.
Shows without canned laughter
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Always Sunny In Philidelphia
Peep Show
The Inbetweeners
The Office
Modern Family
30 Rock
Laugh tracks seems old fashioned nowadays, and a bit desperate.
If it's funny I'll laugh, if it isn't I won't - simple as that.
Some braying idiot soundtrack won't make a jot of difference.
I was so pleased when we first had satellite installed and I realised I could watch MASH again. I was so cross when I turned it on and heard canned laughter. I watched one show and didn't watch any more on satellite.
I don't like it all, especially on shows that are more thought provoking and where the humour is more subtle.
I can watch sitcoms without the laughter track. 30 Rock and the brilliantly hilarious Community are two prime examples where canned laughter wouldn't fit in at all. Those shows hold their own without laughter tracks.
A live audience can help the actors too. If they have to pause to let the laughter die before they continue, I guess it would look weird to a TV audience if we couldn't hear the live audience.
For me it sometimes works the opposite way. If I notice a funny joke in a show that the live audience didn't laugh at, it makes me feel the show has hidden depths and I'm the only person to discover them. (I first noticed this with Man About the House, believe it or not.)
Canned laughter hasn't been used for years in prime time shows.
I dislike canned laughter too. It is a weak system and people do not want to be spoon fed laughs. Canned laughter can also get in the way of multiple funny scenes as you can easily miss a one liner smothered in "ha ha haa haaa!".
I do find "Life Of Riley" funny in places but last weeks episode was very torpid and I did think several times"why am I watching this?"
If the script is sharp and well delivered with first takes the audience reaction will be enthusiastic and fit the gags/punchlines like a glove. There is also a dynamic in the laughter that canned laughter rarely gets right, ranging from quiet giggling for subtle jokes to screams and applause for the best ones.
A well made comedy either works well without laughter (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Peep Show) or works well with a live studio audience, depending on the style and outside location scenes.
The remake of Reginald Perrin with Martin Clunes was a real dogs dinner. I just couldn't work out what was going on with the laughter. Was it a live studio audience? Was it canned? It just didn't sound right. If I remember right someone on the DS forums said they were at one of the shoots and the audience were just not laughing at the right moments or were too muted, so the eventual broadcast version had the laughter edited and dubbed for better effect.
If that is true , it didn't work and is the ultimate admission of a show's failure.
As for whether its needed or not is another matter. Some sitcoms work well with it, and some work better without it.
I do think that because we have had a lot of bad sit coms recently, that some of the blame goes on the fact that there is audience laughter in them, when it is just down to bad writing.
When used well, studio audience laughter can really help a sitcom. Look at the way some of the great american sit coms were produced (and also Dinnerladies). Its performed infront of a studio audience to see what they find funny, and where they laugh (which is hard for a writer to figure out). The writer is on hand watching the live audience reaction, and will tweak bits, re-write lines to make them as funny as possible, before its finally shot for tv. Friends, Frasier, Seinfeld, Cheers, Roseanne, Will & Grace, The Cosby Show etc were all filmed this way.
As for the multi can sit coms dieing out, i really dont see that. Yes, the single camera no laugh track comedies are doing well, there are still alot of big hit multi camera ones. Look in the UK, My Family is still one of the highest rated comedies. Look in the USA, yes The Office and Modern Family are doing well, but they are no where near the success of more tradional sitcoms such as Two and a half men, and The Big Bang Theory.
Quite. I think some of you need to look at the definition of "canned laughter" as it's rarely used in any of the shows cited. They used a studio audience and that's the antithesis of "canned".
Absolutely correct.
And there's nothing worse than hearing a studio audience shrieking away when there was nothing that appeared to be even remotely funny (yes, it demonstrates that humour is subjective).
They also hire professional stand-up comedians to loosen up the audience. In between each take, there's a pro working the crowd, making sure everyone is in a chirpy mood.
Canned laughter is only used these days for Scooby Doo and children's sitcoms (like Hannah Montana, for example). I highly doubt if a star of Quentin's calibre would be subject to a laugh track....
There seems a snobbery towards studio sitcoms but yet there just as many bad single camera comedies as multi camera comedies.