This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, and I'll acknowledge that it doesn't really affect what you're saying here, but the term "laugh track" doesn't apply to most of those sitcoms. Friends, Seinfeld, etc., were filmed in front of audiences and the laughter you hear is a live crowd. It's like saying that stand-up comedy specials have "laugh tracks."
Now, of course, I know that it doesn't matter to you if it's pre-recorded or a live, honest reaction from a crowd of people, but it just bothers me that people seem to think these shows are taking canned laughter and jamming it in.
I think earlier sitcoms used pre-recorded laughs, but by the late '80s and through the '90s, they were mostly using audiences (as I understand it).
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Spuds (80)
8 months ago
Unfortunately they aren't able to really record the honest to god audience when filming in front of a live audience. If they did they would catch people coughing, talking lots of things you wouldn't want with the show. So while they did film in front of a live audience they also used a laugh track as well. Yes you get some live audience reactions but it is mixed with a laugh track. In some of the older shows it was very well done and you didn't notice it, but in the Frasier reboot it is so over the top that it might as well have had no audience and just used canned laughter since that seems to be what they are pushing so hard in some of the scenes.
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DoctorThirteen (11620)
8 months ago
I'd also think that with scenes sometimes being shot multiple times the real audience don't laugh as much as they did on the first take.
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Ace_Spade (9458)
8 months ago
Jason Alexander said differently of Seinfeld:
"So the sound of the laughter in take one is different from the sound of the laughter in take two, but it's an immediate shot. So we're using Jerry's line from take one and my reaction from take two, so they would use a laugh machine to blend the organic audience laugh and not make it jump."
In other words, you're hearing the real audience laugh and they're only using tinned stuff to make it connect from shot-to-shot.
Or, really fast: yes. they can, could, and do use the real audience laughing on sitcoms. Seinfeld, at least.
As to the new Frasier series, I don't know; I haven't seen it. But those "laugh tracks" aren't just tinned laughs.
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Spuds (80)
8 months ago
Some shows have used lots of real audience reaction, but that started declining in the 90's as it required more work than it was worth. If you watch the new Frasier it isn't just that it sounds fake you get so much laughter at things that just aren't funny it is pretty clear they are just adding in the laughs. Reminds me of when I've watch live taping of things and they will have an assistant director trying to tell the audience how to react to different things, which isn't that big of a deal until you get an AD telling people they need to laugh at things that no one in the audience find funny.... once in a while it will be so bad the audience just doesn't do a damn thing.
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Ace_Spade (9458)
8 months ago
Sure, but again, I'm not talking about the new Frasier. The only thing I really wanted to do was to express a bit of personal exasperation with the assumption (or implication) that the laughter heard in sitcoms is all manufactured and fake.
To some degree, sure, different sitcoms were more guilty of it than others. M*A*S*H* used pure canned laughs (as I understand it) and Seinfeld (as I pointed out with Jason Alexander's quote) really only used it to prevent jarring edits (he basically says that Larry and Jerry wouldn't have had ADs telling people to laugh when they didn't).
My point is just this: "laugh track" as an assumption is not always correct, and it isn't fair or accurate to tar all sitcoms with one brush.
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Spuds (80)
8 months ago
This thread is focused on the new Frasier... and it is so heavily reliant on canned laughter that any live audience they might have is pointless. In a perfect world the producers and writers would be using a live audience to ferret out what is and isn't working... but that doesn't appear to be what has happened with Frasier. I've seen better acting in high school plays, I doubt even an AD could get anyone to laugh half as much as you get with some of the laughter on this show... You should watch it and see just how far they have strayed from a live audience that you actually hear.
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