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- waltdaniels
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- From: Cincinnati
- Registered: 2006-09-08
- Posts: 49
Topic: Laugh Tracks
I wonder if others find the TV laugh tracks as disgusting as I do. If I am going to laugh, I don't need to 'hear' a laugh. One of the worst shows this year with laugh tracks is "Two and a half Men". I love the show, but not the phony laughs cues. (;(
- From: Australia
- Registered: 2005-10-18
- Posts: 111
Re: Laugh Tracks
The laugh tracks drive me crazy. But what would be better in their place? The shows that use them would seem empty without all of that extra sound.
- d1n3
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- From: Trondheim, Norway
- Registered: 2007-10-23
- Posts: 38
Re: Laugh Tracks
Sometimes the laugh just drives me crzy bananas! xD I can't follow the show, and then I get even more annoyed.. And if I get this crazy I tend to get werry angry.. And this sometimes leads me to just drop a show, like seinfeld.. I hate that show now *grr*
æ e kul, æ e kul ;D
- BlackBox
- Back from Black
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- Registered: 2005-11-06
- Posts: 6,429
Re: Laugh Tracks
I think it just works with old shows like "Married With Children". New shows look stupid with canned loughs
- _mccutcheon
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- From: Vienna, Austria
- Registered: 2006-09-10
- Posts: 228
Re: Laugh Tracks
laughtrack = Big Bang Theory's biggest fault
"The hammer - is my penis."
- waltdaniels
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- From: Cincinnati
- Registered: 2006-09-08
- Posts: 49
Re: Laugh Tracks
An e-mail from a worker on "Two and a half men" tells me that the reason they were told that they use laugh tracks is that 'without them the audience wouldn't know when to laugh' How's that for reasoning?
- arashi
- AWOL
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- Registered: 2005-10-25
- Posts: 386
Re: Laugh Tracks
I was going to post something in this thread but I forgot
- arashi
- AWOL
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- Registered: 2005-10-25
- Posts: 386
Re: Laugh Tracks
It was even relevant to the topic but I saw something shiny and got distracted. Now I can't remember.
- hometimenow
- Ensign Redshirt
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- From: Australia
- Registered: 2007-08-21
- Posts: 442
Re: Laugh Tracks
arashi wrote:It was even relevant to the topic but I saw something shiny and got distracted. Now I can't remember.
BlackBox wrote:I think it just works with old shows like "Married With Children".
Dude your making me feel old. I was 24 when this came to TV. you gotta love Christina Applegate "Canned Laughter" is how I remember it. The biggest offender The Brady Bunch and yes I'll admit it, I watched it. But I was 8-13yrs old at the time. I have NEVER seen the 1995 MOVIE or the SEQUEL and NEVER WILL. @_mccutcheon: M*A*S*H is another big offender - Your in luck thou in the DVD series you have a choice to hear it or not. Apparently it been around since the 1950's - an evil plot to rot our brains
I sleep through most or all of these
11 Reply by TheFizza 2022-01-17 06:32:14 (edited by TheFizza 2022-01-17 07:42:25)
- TheFizza
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- Registered: 2018-05-07
- Posts: 504
Re: Laugh Tracks
d1n3 wrote:Sometimes the laugh just drives me crzy bananas! xD I can't follow the show, and then I get even more annoyed.. And if I get this crazy I tend to get werry angry.. And this sometimes leads me to just drop a show, like seinfeld.. I hate that show now *grr*
So, I was talking with a friend who did some work in Hollywood before the pandemic they worked on a series where they did a test with and without a laugh track and even though the comments from the laugh track version had a lot of "laugh just drives me crazy" that screening also had much higher rating across the board. It was an interesting bit of info, which begs the question: were these folks just following where they were lead (was the program not actually good) or did the laugh track just give them a kind of permission to enjoy the program?
- TheFizza
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- Registered: 2018-05-07
- Posts: 504
Re: Laugh Tracks
_mccutcheon wrote:laughtrack = Big Bang Theory's biggest fault
Do you watch the spinoff, Young Sheldon? It doesn't have a laugh track and I very much enjoy it.
- Registered: 2016-06-09
- Posts: 31
Re: Laugh Tracks
Laughter is an essentially social activity. We laugh more in the company of others. My guess is that a laugh track fools us into feeling like we are part of a crowd, in a social setting. The big problem with laugh tracks, IMO, is not the laughter itself. It's that using a laugh track forces the show into a predictable rhythm, where every 2-4 lines there HAS to be a punch line. This is then followed by the laugh track, which makes an immediate response from the next actor impossible until the laughter dies down. I hate this rhythm. Line, line, punchline. Over and over. Also, since a crowd is too unpredictable, even though a show is "filmed in front of a live studio audience", what you hear is NOT the actual raw recording of that audience. Audiences laugh in the wrong place, some have annoying laughs, they don't stop laughing fast enough, or whatever, so the laugh track is always edited. An example of what can happen when you don't edit, is "Married With Children". Remember how every episode, at the first appearance of Ed, the audience would cheer? But often it was clear how he was supposed to come in with a line, but the crowd was too loud, so he had to stand there, awkwardly waiting. Of course they cheered out of appreciation, but it still lead to a weird pause. That would never be allowed nowadays.
14 Reply by TheFizza 2022-01-19 13:38:50 (edited by TheFizza 2022-01-19 13:40:46)
- TheFizza
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- Registered: 2018-05-07
- Posts: 504
Re: Laugh Tracks
selecta wrote:Laughter is an essentially social activity. We laugh more in the company of others. My guess is that a laugh track fools us into feeling like we are part of a crowd, in a social setting. The big problem with laugh tracks, IMO, is not the laughter itself. It's that using a laugh track forces the show into a predictable rhythm, where every 2-4 lines there HAS to be a punch line. This is then followed by the laugh track, which makes an immediate response from the next actor impossible until the laughter dies down. I hate this rhythm. Line, line, punchline. Over and over. Also, since a crowd is too unpredictable, even though a show is "filmed in front of a live studio audience", what you hear is NOT the actual raw recording of that audience. Audiences laugh in the wrong place, some have annoying laughs, they don't stop laughing fast enough, or whatever, so the laugh track is always edited. An example of what can happen when you don't edit, is "Married With Children". Remember how every episode, at the first appearance of Ed, the audience would cheer? But often it was clear how he was supposed to come in with a line, but the crowd was too loud, so he had to stand there, awkwardly waiting. Of course they cheered out of appreciation, but it still lead to a weird pause. That would never be allowed nowadays.
Okay selecta, it's like you were in my brain and wanted to enlighten me on how even 'live-in-front-of-a-studio-audience' doesn't necessarily mean it's not turned into a 'laugh track'... Dangit, I'm never gonna forget this... like when a friend said to me about TV shows, "Either they tell you the plan and the plan goes wrong or they don't and there's a twist."
- g371
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- From: Riga, Latvia
- Registered: 2013-11-08
- Posts: 911
Re: Laugh Tracks
I thought laugh tracks are a thing of past, but then there is this: https://next-episode.net/how-i-met-your-father
- Registered: 2016-06-09
- Posts: 31
Re: Laugh Tracks
I saw a documentary about the history of this subject, but I can't remember where or what it was called. I do remember this guy, who (more or less) created the whole thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Douglass
17 Reply by TheFizza 2022-01-20 04:55:08 (edited by TheFizza 2022-01-25 04:24:23)
- TheFizza
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- Registered: 2018-05-07
- Posts: 504
Re: Laugh Tracks
selecta wrote:I saw a documentary about the history of this subject, but I can't remember where or what it was called. I do remember this guy, who (more or less) created the whole thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Douglass
That's very interesting selecta, if you recall the name do post it... In the meantime I found these: Canned Laughter: Ben Glenn II - Television Historian Laugh Tracks Wiki Page And this: Television Academy Interviews: Carroll Pratt (25 mins in talks about "the Audience Reaction Machine") which also provide some good background and can be used as a potential resource.
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