Runkle
Footballguy
Like I said, you can see the cast interecting with them occasionally in the bloopers while filming the episodes.Maybe for that one episode, but they did have a live studio audience reacting to them throughout the seriesThen you believe incorrectly. The series finale showed them and some of the bloopers have the cast interacting with them.It is a generic studio audience track, not theirs, i believe.Big Bang Theory doesn't have a laugh track. It has an actual studio audience.I'll join you and raise you with Big Bang Theory. Mainstream TV sitcom + laugh track + same, lazy, cliche ridden, warmed over, unfunny, network storyline = painfully boring and played out.Fake laugh track. Minus a billion pointst-112 - How I Met Your Mother
Comedy
Score: 274
Average Rank: 31.9
A father recounts to his children, through a series of flashbacks, the journey he and his four best friends took leading up to him meeting their mother.
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I’ll see myself out
"Typically with sitcoms like Friends, (the show HIMYM is easily compared to) they use a multi-camera approach where a live audience watches each scene onset and the laughter is then recorded. Since the show constantly jumps between flashbacks and flashforwards, a live studio audience would not be possible."
Link
You're both correct in part.
A bit of a too-deep dive into sitcoms, for those that want to know how the sausage is made:
Most multi-camera (aka "proscenium") sitcoms use a live studio audience for most of the filming in the main sets. A sitcom tends to shoot over two days, with any scenes that are technically difficult (think live animals, practical effects, etc) or on a non-standard set (outside, on location, etc) filmed on the first day with no audience, and then the easier scenes using the permanent sets (those that appear in nearly every episode, such as the apartment, the hallway, etc) filmed the second day in front of an audience. Some shows shoot twice on the second day... a full shoot without the audience (to get it all safely "in the can") and then again in front of them.
The audience allows for the actors to get some feedback on performance and helps with pacing the humor. A good audience reaction will multiply the effect of a joke. Any scenes that were pre-taped on day one (again... outside, on location, etc) are played back to the audience on day two so that they can 1) follow the plot, and 2) record laughs.
However,
There is a bit of a downside to the "modern" studio audience. These average people have lived their whole lives watching sitcoms. They know what is expected of them as an audience. So, they tend to act like a laugh track. They give a genuine laugh on the first take of an unexpected joke, for sure. But on the second take? Third take? They're fake laughing and you can tell. They know they're supposed to laugh there, so they do an imitation of what they've heard on TV their whole lives. But they're not actors, nor "professional laughers" (which does exist). They're bad at it, and the laughs are bad.
But, more importantly,
(Almost) all the laughs are either augmented or replaced in editing later anyway, in a process called "sweetening". For one, even with genuine laughs, you can't cut from one take to another without using some layered sound to bridge the cut. The laughs from take one won't pair when you use a shot from take two, so you cross-fade pre-recorded laugh track over the cut to smooth the transition. And, the timing for a sitcom has to be exact. 21 and a half minutes because they've sold 17 thirty-second commercials or whatever. So the final cut has to come in at the right time. So a super long laugh from the audience gets chopped down for timing, which means fake laughter is put into the soundtrack to paper over the cut out parts.
Third, those pre-taped scenes from day one need to match the audience that sees the main set action on day two. They use some of the live laughs if they can, but they augment with fake laugh track, because that's what is easiest to match to.
But, fourth, and perhaps most influentially, there is an ego issue at play. There is one executive producer/head writer on a sitcom, who is called the "showrunner". On a show like Big Bang Theory, that would be Chuck Lorre himself. He leads the writers and is involved in every script, he's on set making the show, and he's in editing crafting the final version. The showrunner makes all the final decisions. He's also working several jobs at once... he might be writing the script for episode 6 while episode 5 is being filmed and episode 4 is being edited. His time is short and valuable. So... when it comes time to do the final sound mix after locking picture, on a professional mix stage, which for a sitcom is one full day usually the week before the episode airs... you only get the showrunner present for the last few hours at the tail end of the session. The sound mix team and the show's post production associate producer will lay down all the sound, music cues, effects, etc. they think they need. And, a special sound crew guy, a 'laugh man', will also lay in a laugh track on one of the channels (most stages can support up to 88 simultaneous tracks for all the possible sounds, which at the end get mixed into stereo, Dolby 5.1, ATMOS, etc). That laugh man will lay in the laughs thick. He'll put a laugh on every possible joke. He'll put in a laugh even if it's not funny, because they only have the showrunner present for a limited time so as a professional you build everything he might want and subtract, rather than waste the showrunner's time adding in layers later. The Laugh Man might put in several takes of laughs on different tracks... a big one, a medium one, some minor chuckles, etc., and let the showrunner pick later. And if the audience missed a joke, or didn't get one, or it didn't land right on set but they fixed it in post... you're plugging in pre-recorded laugh track there to make sure the joke hits.
But... you letting the guy who wrote the jokes, and thinks of each one as his own hilarious favorite child... decide how big a laugh a joke gets. Even if the live audience didn't find it that funny. He's going to hear it on the stage with loud guffaws and uproarious laughter and it's really, really, really hard for a showrunner to make the call to dial it down. "Nah, that joke's not that funny" is never coming out of his mouth. He's gonna hear his precious baby get big laughs and love it. So that fake laughter is staying in. It's added on top of and augmenting the real stuff. But by the end of the process, there's more laugh track than genuine reaction in the final product.
So yes, a show like BBT used a live audience for the majority of each episode, but, in post, they were mostly replaced as part of the technical process. Some of the real audience lives in there, sure. But every second of the final cut has been dissected and optimized and treated and sweetened so by the end... what's in there is what the executive producer and the network want in there. They're going to sacrifice authenticity for a funnier end product. They're making entertainment, not a documentary, so whatever is more entertaining is what makes it on TV.
The audience allows for the actors to get some feedback on performance and helps with pacing the humor. A good audience reaction will multiply the effect of a joke. Any scenes that were pre-taped on day one (again... outside, on location, etc) are played back to the audience on day two so that they can 1) follow the plot, and 2) record laughs.
However,
There is a bit of a downside to the "modern" studio audience. These average people have lived their whole lives watching sitcoms. They know what is expected of them as an audience. So, they tend to act like a laugh track. They give a genuine laugh on the first take of an unexpected joke, for sure. But on the second take? Third take? They're fake laughing and you can tell. They know they're supposed to laugh there, so they do an imitation of what they've heard on TV their whole lives. But they're not actors, nor "professional laughers" (which does exist). They're bad at it, and the laughs are bad.
But, more importantly,
(Almost) all the laughs are either augmented or replaced in editing later anyway, in a process called "sweetening". For one, even with genuine laughs, you can't cut from one take to another without using some layered sound to bridge the cut. The laughs from take one won't pair when you use a shot from take two, so you cross-fade pre-recorded laugh track over the cut to smooth the transition. And, the timing for a sitcom has to be exact. 21 and a half minutes because they've sold 17 thirty-second commercials or whatever. So the final cut has to come in at the right time. So a super long laugh from the audience gets chopped down for timing, which means fake laughter is put into the soundtrack to paper over the cut out parts.
Third, those pre-taped scenes from day one need to match the audience that sees the main set action on day two. They use some of the live laughs if they can, but they augment with fake laugh track, because that's what is easiest to match to.
But, fourth, and perhaps most influentially, there is an ego issue at play. There is one executive producer/head writer on a sitcom, who is called the "showrunner". On a show like Big Bang Theory, that would be Chuck Lorre himself. He leads the writers and is involved in every script, he's on set making the show, and he's in editing crafting the final version. The showrunner makes all the final decisions. He's also working several jobs at once... he might be writing the script for episode 6 while episode 5 is being filmed and episode 4 is being edited. His time is short and valuable. So... when it comes time to do the final sound mix after locking picture, on a professional mix stage, which for a sitcom is one full day usually the week before the episode airs... you only get the showrunner present for the last few hours at the tail end of the session. The sound mix team and the show's post production associate producer will lay down all the sound, music cues, effects, etc. they think they need. And, a special sound crew guy, a 'laugh man', will also lay in a laugh track on one of the channels (most stages can support up to 88 simultaneous tracks for all the possible sounds, which at the end get mixed into stereo, Dolby 5.1, ATMOS, etc). That laugh man will lay in the laughs thick. He'll put a laugh on every possible joke. He'll put in a laugh even if it's not funny, because they only have the showrunner present for a limited time so as a professional you build everything he might want and subtract, rather than waste the showrunner's time adding in layers later. The Laugh Man might put in several takes of laughs on different tracks... a big one, a medium one, some minor chuckles, etc., and let the showrunner pick later. And if the audience missed a joke, or didn't get one, or it didn't land right on set but they fixed it in post... you're plugging in pre-recorded laugh track there to make sure the joke hits.
But... you letting the guy who wrote the jokes, and thinks of each one as his own hilarious favorite child... decide how big a laugh a joke gets. Even if the live audience didn't find it that funny. He's going to hear it on the stage with loud guffaws and uproarious laughter and it's really, really, really hard for a showrunner to make the call to dial it down. "Nah, that joke's not that funny" is never coming out of his mouth. He's gonna hear his precious baby get big laughs and love it. So that fake laughter is staying in. It's added on top of and augmenting the real stuff. But by the end of the process, there's more laugh track than genuine reaction in the final product.
So yes, a show like BBT used a live audience for the majority of each episode, but, in post, they were mostly replaced as part of the technical process. Some of the real audience lives in there, sure. But every second of the final cut has been dissected and optimized and treated and sweetened so by the end... what's in there is what the executive producer and the network want in there. They're going to sacrifice authenticity for a funnier end product. They're making entertainment, not a documentary, so whatever is more entertaining is what makes it on TV.
ery.
