Stock Laughter in Series 8?

[Dax101]

Never seen this before

Topic

[Moonlight]

Yeah, that’s my video. I posted a thread about it here a while ago. That same laugh also shows up in VII and Remastered as well, albeit to a far lesser degree than in VIII. Somebody else posted an instance of it from a different show entirely, which proved beyond a doubt it was stock laughter.

It’s a fucking annoying laugh and literally the thing I most dislike about Series VIII. It’s EVERYWHERE, and once you notice it you’ll hear it all over the place. Even worse, it’s almost always pasted after something that wasn’t even a joke. Besides the Rimmer line I included in the video, the second laugh in all of Tikka to Ride is that stock laugh inexplicably playing as Lister picks up the camera, something that’s clearly not supposed to be humorous.

Sweetening your audience reaction is one thing, a lot of shows do it to varying degrees, but copy-pasting the same distinctive, irritating laugh all over the place? I noticed this thing when I was a kid it’s so obvious. As an aspiring video editor rather proud of her own sound mixing ability I’m especially frustrated to see such unprofessional work in my all-time second favorite show.

I started a Tikka fanedit a while back that I never finished in which I made it a point to utilize the audio track of the extended episode to mute that laugh the couple of times it appeared.

[Ridley]

Ha HA haha.

[Moonlight]

That sound affects me just the way the 9th Symphony does Alex in the second half of A Clockwork Orange.

[Pete Part Three]

Stock/canned tomato/tomahto

[Dave]

Mmmmmm, canned tomato.

[pfm]

What have you done to my life?? I’m now convinced I hear it during any show with laughter….

I don’t understand why they didn’t just copy and paste a laugh from the actual recording sessions instead of stock laughter…

Thankfully, XI didn’t seem to have much ‘sweetened’ laughter pasted on. I may be wrong and there’s loads…but it doesn’t seem ‘in your face’.

[flanl3]

Most of XI’s laughter was about on par with how much I laughed, and I believe that most of the rest were more British jokes.

[Moonlight]

[quoteblock]I don’t understand why they didn’t just copy and paste a laugh from the actual recording sessions instead of stock laughter….[/quoteblock]
Because that takes slightly more than the absolute minimal possible amount of effort.

[flanl3]

It might help you in the future to know that it’s “blockquote”. With <>. But yes.

[Moonlight]

I do know that. I have no idea why I fucked it up so badly there.

[Author]

Replies