How did they do effects shots in front of the audience?

[Stabbim the Skutter]

Hey all! Feels like this might be a stupid question, but it’s something I’ve always wondered about. Go easy on me!

Obviously there are some scenes that HAVE to be pre-recorded and then shown to the audience later, that’s true of every sitcom. But Red Dwarf in particular has a lot of special effects added in post, and a lot of these are during the scenes filmed on a studio set.

I know Bodyswap was filmed entirely without an audience. But I can think of a thousand scenes that just have “one bit” in them that made me think; was the whole scene pre-recorded? Did they sacrifice potential live woofers for the sake of one shot?

A perfect example of this would be The End, when Lister sticks his hand through Rimmer’s new hologrammatic body. Did they film that bit first and show it on the screen? Or did they just act it out? Was there a narrator on set to explain to the audience what they weren’t seeing?

A more recent example is Krysis, when Kryten spins his whole body around but his head stays in place, and it gets a laugh. The rest of the scene looks normal, so surely the entire scene wasn’t pre-recorded? Hopefully those of you who were in that audience can answer this question for me.

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[Warbodog]

The deleted scenes and smeg-ups are raw footage, so can be revealing for which scenes didn’t have an audience and/or needed effects added. This bit where Lister walks through Rimmer uses a makeshift practical ““effect”“ that was replaced later, but the entire scene has no audible audience. Presumably not for that reason, as it could have just been explained that they needed to pretend he didn‘t just duck around him.

[Moonlight]

The End: The Original Assembly has Lister wave his arm past Rimmer’s tie in the moment it’s meant to be passing through his torso.

[Ian Symes]

This is guess work, but for the majority of the little tiny moments I imagine they’d either pre-record or pick the shots up afterwards, but not bother incorporating them for the audience. Just drop them in in the edit, and if the reaction doesn’t quite match, borrow a reaction from elsewhere. 

[Technopeasant]

[pi r squared]

A more recent example is Krysis, when Kryten spins his whole body around but his head stays in place, and it gets a laugh.

I seem to recall someone saying on here after it aired, that in the audience recording they did some rough live VFX on this for the audience – essentially paused Kryten’s/Robert’s head on the monitors while he span his body around. Obviously not as slick as the final edit would have been, but presumably still enough to be amusing and give a good indication of what they were going for.

[Stabbim the Skutter]

Makes sense I suppose. I’m also thinking of the White Hole deleted scene: “Well let’s go. Well let’s go. Well let’s go.” Must have been a nightmare to perform that scene live!

[Jonsmad]

As explained already above.     Studio Pre record days happen for big things with FX which are then played in on monitors for an audience to react to.  For things not ready yet they show pre visualisation versions scene’s for models etc often like that. I saw Entangled recorded and some fx like the fire from a kebab are possible in front of an audience. The warm up man explains any missing context of little things in advance of scenes. Most FX’s stuff is action rather than comedy so it’s often not any issue to fake a version.  One scene the cast read only on that day for Entangled because a set wasnt available so we were genuinely laughing at the lines and how the cast would say them but not seeing the actual scene recorded. Then because the ending of Entangled wasnt written in full yet and the actress not available for a late cast role   we just get sent home with out and ending!  Still very happy to have seen Dwarf in action in the studio. I saw Cured also on the day of studio recording and it’s a lot of fun watching Kevin Eldon pretend his gun will work like it will in the show, when it clearly doesn’t infront of an audience. The power of acting then acting up out of the take!

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