Hi there, do you know if there is a way to disable laugh tracks from sitcoms? I really would like to rewatch some shows like King of Queens but I can’t bear the constant laughing in the background. Cheers
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But how would you know when something is funny then? (canned laughter)
You just have to use your judgement and laugh at what you find funny on your own, if you need peer pressure (opinions of others) to find something funny then it’s not really funny to you and maybe isn’t even funny for many people to begin with.
This might be controversial but maybe many Sitcoms that do this were never funny in the first place and used laugh tracks because try as they might they had to force people to find it funny via artificial peer pressure, that either constitutes of a crowd being told to laugh on cue, or a recording of them doing so, which is what a laugh track is.
Here’s the key point and why we stopped using them, things aren’t funny, people think certain things are funny, and they also think plenty of things are not funny, and like it or not people are not always going to find the same things funny.
I always thought it was because the earliest stuff was actually filmed infront of a live audience (Like a theatre) who did laugh, so when switching to non-live-audience stuff, the viewing public would be ‘put off’ by no laughter, so they injected it with canned laughter… then as time went on they realised this was rubbish and stopped it.
But maybe I’m just missing the joke in the previous two comments, I dunno.
In the earlier days it was like that but as time went on it became a technique known as sweetening to make the joke seem funnier, sometimes they would even use it to fill in silence or dead air since that was frowned upon (I wonder why people said TV rots your brain for the longest time… can’t be related to any of these practices could it?).
The beginning part is essentially saying that if people need laugh-tracks to find things funny they are dry and humor-less, a joke at their expense but also at the same time it’s 100% sincere, a person who can’t find things funny without others lacks a sense of humor.
the power of an annoyed programmer
I think this (mild/moderate annoyance) is probably the most common reason for inventing things. From cars to remote controls.
I don’t like sitcoms in general but the fact someone made this is funnier to me than any sitcom I have ever seen and I have my own laughing track going on in here right now.
this video is 5 years old already, impressive https://youtu.be/DeTQBiKzmYc
Wow. Super impressive. Guess with today’s technology you could do it pretty much 100%. I saw that model that lets you separate music into separate tracks for guitar, vocals, drums, … Guess something like that could even separate the laughs from the next actor resuming to speak.
Kind of also reminds me of those videos where they stabilize / de-shake Star Trek. There are some scenes where the ship gets shot at for example. And the actors act that out and the camera is shaking too and a bit at an angle. Looks funny once that camera shake is removed.
After a little while, you’re going to prefer it to the strange pauses in the dialogue.
I think the best way would be to re-record the audio. Laugh track usually overlaps the dialog a bit so it’s impossible to get rid of it. You just have to find some actors and have them read the script. The casts of most sitcons are not that big. You will need like what? 10 people? You can probably do it with your friends. Then just add some basic sound effects like door closing and cars starting. A bit of work but doable.
Extraordinary problems need extraordinary solutions! Thanks :D
Have you considered how awkward King of Queens would be without the laugh track? With the actors pausing for laughter every 45 seconds?
Not easily. The laugh track isn’t a separate audio stream by the time you get the episode. It’s all mixed together with the dialogue and music.
Watching a sitcom with the laugh track missing seems like it would be awkward. The actors are constantly taking extended pauses between lines, or sometimes in the middle of a line, while the laugh is happening.
Yeah I get what you mean, I just watched the link from the comment below and it feels really weird to watch it like this.
I don’t see anything preventing someone from not just cutting the audio out, but the video, too. Then there shouldn’t be any awkward pauses.
