General Memes &amp; Private Chuckle

hideshow 5 child comments

parent

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago

It's a live audience and a laugh track.

Yes, The majority of Friends was filmed in front of a live audience, with the exception of a few shots filmed on location here and there. I saw a recent interview with Lisa Kudrow where she talks about being frustrated on stage because of all the pauses for audience laughter, where the actors would have to pause and do some idle animation. That a television show taped before a live audience is expected to be different than a stage play.

I've also seen a "behind the scenes" video, I think as a special feature of the DVD releases, where they would swap out audience reactions. Because, for example, the take where Monica pops out from under the sheets with Chandler, revealing the two were sleeping together, the live audience went nuts for several solid minutes. For the broadcast version, they inserted an uproarious but brief cheer to keep the pacing up.

Compared to MASH or the Flintstones (!!?!), Friends' laugh track is a lot more genuine but it was at least somewhat engineered.

parent

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's still a laugh track. The laughing is captured live, but presumably with a different microphone. They then mix the laugh track with the character's voices to get the levels they want.

hideshow 3 child comments

parent

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They also record the same scene multiple times, so the laughs may even be from a different take.

hideshow 2 child comments

parent

[–] SaraTonin@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

…and not necessarily even from the same joke or scene. All you can say with a „live studio audience“ is that the laugh you hear will have been recorded that night. Maybe even from the warm-up act.

parent

hideshow 1 child comment

[–] Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world 1 point 1 year ago

that night

That's also a high sell. Some sound engineer somewhere definitely has a favourite laughtrack they like to use. There's bound to be inside jokes as well.

What you can say is that it's more genuine than a single overused laugh track. In fact, it's probably the simplest way to get variety - just use the actual laughs when they're okay, and swap those "not okay" with ones from older takes/scenes/episodes.