Filmed before a live studio audience

The live audience in Married with Children always made the show seem like it was a skit put on at a strip club.

Cue cards are held up by the sound stage workers, right?

The live audience on Married With Children ruined live audiences in a before-and-after way.

The audiences in later years of the Golden Girls became much more vocal, reflecting the Mw/C effect.

The live audience, first used by Lucy and Desi in I Love Lucy, was absolutely necessary for the comedy. Lucille Ball herself needed the energy and response of an audience. All the comedy variety shows like Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Carol Burnett, etc., used live audiences. And ALL the very best sitcoms had live audiences, Seinfeld, Friends, Taxi, Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke, Cheers, Frasier, Will and Grace, Rosanne, etc. And these shows were much funnier than the shows without live audiences, like Bewitched, which had special effects so it couldn't have a live audience. Instead, shows like Bewitched put in a laugh track as if they had an audience. Watching Bewitched without the sound of laughing people is just deadly.

The audience during the last couple seasons of the Nanny sounded like it was made up completely of busloads of old Jewish women.

I think if a show is truly funny it doesn't need a laugh track or live audience. I think Frasier would be funny without one.

The live audience watching "Good Times" was hysterical. If J. J. kissed a girl they'd go "WOOOOOOO!" If the pimp Sweet Daddy made an entrance decked out in his pimp finery, flanked by two equally overdressed goons, they'd go "WOOOOOOO!" If a character got off a good one they'd say "Rhat onn!" or sometimes "Rhat on, Willona!" What a dumb audience.

I don't think Frasier filmed before an actual audience.

Seinfeld had a canned laugh track.

Frasier and Seinfeld both had live audiences. Multi-camera set-ups.

"Slap her Wilona!"

Yes, studio audiences are cued to laugh, applaud, etc. If the don't give enough, the production team "sweetens" the audio in post. Yes, the actors do better with the live response -especially those who come from a stage background. The hoots, whistles and catcalls, though, are usually a sign that the show has become thoroughly predictable, with situations created precisely to get those reactions, rather than simply telling the story.

Not all multi-camera sitcoms have live audiences R10

Better than a laugh track.

R13, can you name a multi-camera show without a live audience? There's little reason for the multi-camera set-up without the audience. Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, etc. Single camera shows.

This.

R15 All in the Family later in the run, and Archie Bunker's Place.

Golden Girls was filmed live? I find that hard to believe.

Golden Girls, live audience.

The Helen Lawson Two-Hour Comedy Show was filmed before a dead audience.

All in the Family was the first major American series to be videotaped in front of a live studio audience. In the 1960s, most sitcoms had been filmed in the single-camera format without audiences, with a laugh track simulating an audience response. Lear employed the multiple-camera format of shooting in front of an audience, but used tape, whereas previous multiple-camera shows like Mary Tyler Moore had used film. Due to the success of All in the Family, videotaping sitcoms in front of an audience became a common format for the genre during the 1970s, onward. The use of videotape also gave All in the Family the look and feel of early live television, including the original live broadcasts of The Honeymooners, to which All in the Family is sometimes compared.

For the show's final season, the practice of being taped before a live audience changed to playing the already taped and edited show to an audience and recording their laughter to add to the original sound track, and the voice-over during the end credits were changed from Rob Reiner's voice to Carroll O'Connor's (typically, the audience was gathered for a taping of One Day at a Time, and got to see All In the Family as a bonus.). Throughout its run, Norman Lear took pride in the fact that canned laughter was never used (mentioning this on many occasions); the laughter heard in the episodes was genuine.

Multi-camera, live audience shows, superior comedies. That is all.

R21, read r16’s link and get back to us with an apology.

[quote] In 1951, at the dawn of television, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz brought forth a new form of comedy: the three-camera sitcom, performed live before a studio audience.

I attended studio tapings of both "Golden Girls" and "The Drew Carey Show."

[quote]Lucille Ball herself needed the energy and response of an audience.

Odd, since up to that time the majority of her career was spent in film. She did do a radio sitcom with a studio audience, however.

Most of early television was adapted from radio -which itself was populated with stars from vaudeville, who were used to audiences.

R23, the article says that All in the Family was the first comedy with live audience on VIDEOTAPE. I Love Lucy, shot on film. But you'd know that if you read the article.

R25, Lucille Ball needed the live audience to be funny. Her (mostly useless) film career didn't really let her comedy gifts come out.

Who cares if it was film or videotape or digital?

I went to a taping of a sitcom pilot. It was so bad that the audience didn't react at all. Obviously, the show was not picked up. During the summer the network put on a series of pilots that didn't make the cut. A laugh track was used instead of the live audience reactions. The track made the audience seem to be idiots as it seemed we laughed hysterically at every line.

r26, I wonder if the radio personalities acted out the script for the studio audience? Or did they just sit around the table with mics?

They basically stood in front of mics, but they timed their lines to audience reactions.

[quote] Golden Girls was filmed live? I find that hard to believe. —Rose's wiser sister Lily

Went to a "Golden Girls" taping too and it happened to be the same studio of "I Love Lucy".

Ask any actor - acting in a comedy without an audience is awful. Even worse, when you have an audience and they're not laughing.

When the audience is on fire, it gives the actor an energy they wouldn't have otherwise. You can always tell which scenes in a sitcom were shot in front of a real audience and which ones were shot elsewhere with audience laughter added in later. There's a different energy to them, more like a film. It's usually scenes like moments where the characters are in a car (they usually shoot against a green screen and add in the surrounding area later) or a bit where they had to shoot something on location like an exterior shot.

Is there a way to tell if a show is three camera or one camera by watching? I can figure if there is a real audience it’s three camera set up, but what if they add a laugh track?

Teach me, DL. It will be far from the first time I learn something cool here.

r31/ r32 And they usually had their scripts in hand (or on a lectern.) No need to memorize lines in those days. Made it easier for actors to appear in several different shows in the same week.

R35, shows filmed with an audience look more like a theater set. It's flat, with the fourth wall (where you're watching, where the cameras are placed) missing. The living rooms usually have a long couch, like Happy Days, All in the Family, Golden Girls, Roseanne, Seinfeld, etc. People enter the set from doors left and right.

All the various sets are lined up in a row. This worked out particularly well for Friends, because it took place mostly in two apartments, with a hall in between. They could go between sets and play scenes in the hall, just as if they lived there. Will and Grace did this, too.

Because of the multiple-cameras, the scenes are played from beginning to end (or mostly), so the actors have to learn the lines for the whole scene. Sometimes they might do a close-up afterwards, like a movie would do. But it is more like theater, definitely. And really needed for comedy.

I love Jennifer Coolidge, but the studio audience going nuts every time she made an entrance kinda got old. (2 Broke Girls)

I loved the Good Times audience. When Penny got that iron to the face .....

'Family Matters' once Urkel became a household name had an OOC audience. And then when Urkel was Stefon...you better mute the volume.

I may be precious but I regard canned laughter as fake and wrong.

And, furthermore, I regard the sound of a primed, dopey audience as equally disturbing.

Situation comedies are supposed to be about real people doing stuff. They are different from stand-up, 'direct address' and cabaret.

I think it was pathetic that ABFan had canned laughter.

Canned laughter is a sure indication that the show isn't funny.

^ ** Ab Fab **

I went to two Golden Girls tapings!

I want to know about the Golden Girl tapings! Tell all.

I went to a Golden Girls taping. The video taped shows would do them almost like a live play. The filmed shows (saw Cheers) took forever because they'd stop so much.

The Golden Girls did two a day and then took the best scenes from them. I think that is why there are often continuity errors.

Betty White would stay on stage and clown with the crew and audience during set changes. The others didn't.

If the geography of the coast seems to change a little for Billy’s dramatic Soliloquy number and the ballet sequence, that’s because these scenes were filmed at Paradise Cove, 28128 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. (Much of the ballet is shot inside a soundstage.)

Paradise Cove, once a humble fishermen’s hangout, has become an upscale beachfront community with its famous Pier and Bob Morris’ Paradise Cove Beach Café. The cove has been a screen regular, appearing in Indecent Proposal, American Pie II and Beach Blanket Bingo.

Oops, sorry, meant for the Carousel thread.

R37, thank you! I suspected some of that, and really appreciate the confirmation.

Interesting you mention Happy Days, as that was definitely a multi camera in most years, but it seemed to be a different setup early on. Same with the Odd Couple. I’m sure there are others who converted to multi camera as well, but those are two examples I can think of off the top of my head.

Ugh...2 Broke Girls was so unfunny and I love Jennifer Coolidge. That brunette chick was a terrible actress and she was always smirking at her own lines.

Multiple-camera setups for sitcoms is really a hybrid form, part theater, part film. That's why the audience is needed, and why the camera angles and set-ups aren't particularly unusual, or varied. It lets the actors play the comedy — using their own comic timing, not a director's or editor's.

There are some funny single camera shows (The Office) without a laugh track, but they really are the exception.

I don't like it when the live audience shows "sweeten" the laughter with canned laughter, but it is often quite necessary. When Friends would shoot outside, for instance, they would broadcast those scenes to audiences watching video monitors, to get more authentic laughs. But a show like The Beverly Hillbillies never used a live audience, so the laughtrack had to be inserted.

The first season of the Odd Couple was filmed without an audience. Starting with the second season, show had a live audience. If you pay close attention, the apartment set for Felix and Oscar changes from season 1 to season 2 to accommodate having the live audience.

Likewise, the first season of Happy Days was without an audience. Starting with season 2, there was an audience.

Incidentally, both Happy Days and Odd Couple were developed and produced by Garry Marshall.

I think "The Odd Couple" being filmed in front of a live audience was due to audience reaction. I think viewers were polled: did they want a laugh track or not? I remember seeing an episode without a laugh track and it did not go over well. The audience overwhelmingly was in favor of a laugh track. It was then that The Odd Couple was filmed in front of a live audience and it made the show much better.

How I Met Your Mother looks like it is filmed before a studio audience but it actually wasn't.

Cheers writer Ken Levine, whose fun bog I learned about here on DL years ago, was asked why a cast member would always say before every episode that "Cheers is filmed before a live studio audience" line. Apparently, NBC would get tons of complaints that the laugh track was way too loud and distracting, so the disclaimer was put in to show that the laughs are real and it was truly an audience naturally just laughing very hard.

I also remember reading the Seinfeld cast having to ask the audience before each taping not to give Kramer the huge applause he'd get every time he burst in Jerry's door. And you can tell in later seasons they definitely calmed that down.

The Nanny had a Christmas episode in season 3 with a VERY overexcited frau in the audience. Every time a laugh came up, she SHRIEKED in hysterics like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.

They should have kicked the bitch out or tranquilized her after Act I, because she ruined the whole motherfucking episode. I’m just glad she wasn’t a repeat visitor (and believe me, we would have known).

Oy!

I saw a lot of the filmed (as opposed to taped) three camera comedies from MTM filmed - MTM, Phyllis, Rhoda, Newhart. They always instructed us not to applaud or hoot and holler for anyone's entrance. Most of the other shows, like Happy Days or Maude or All in the Family - did not request that. That's when you get the "strip club" atmosphere.

The Honeymooners.

"The Honeymooners" had an audience at the DuMont Adelphi Theatre.

Laverne and Shirley. The way the audience whooped and cheered at Carmine's they'll-never-go-from-rags-to-riches entrance (or exit) was just gross.

Some audiences are better behaved than others. On Cheers, Wings and Frasier, for instance, the reactions always felt organic and never over-the-top or unwarranted. Friends, on the other hand, tended to have very sappy women in the crowd, particularly the later seasons, who’d lose their shit over every contrived emotional moment. I’m also not a fan of sweetening; you can almost always tell when the laughter isn’t genuine.

Norman Lear audiences tended to be way too reactive. The earlier post saying it gave them a “strip club” quality was spot on.

On some episodes of I Love Lucy, you can hear Desi's distinctive laugh/voice in the audience of scenes he wasn't in. Also, Lucille Ball's mother is the one who says "oh no" half a dozen times. Now, that's live.

Married With Children always felt like the audience was 4 seconds away from jumping on stage and raping Peg, Marcy, and Kelly.

On one episode of I Love Lucy, you can clearly hear Joi Lansing tell someone “I’m just here to blow Desi after the filming.”