Who is Responsible for This Laugh?

[Katydid]

There’s this ONE guy in the audience of every episode of Series VIII who multiple times per episode emits this identical, forced-sounding laugh. Usually at things nobody else laughed at. It happens a couple times in Series VII but not nearly as much. I can’t say it sounds canned, because canned laughter doesn’t sound that bad.

I don’t know how to embed on this forum, so here’s a link (sorry, no clue how to embed) to a compilation of all six of the laugh’s appearances in “Only the Good” that I wasted my time on because I am that kind of person.

I love how he laughs at “What about our escape?”, despite that line not even being a joke.

I know I’m obviously not the first person to ever notice this, but I’ve never seen it brought up online before. It really bugs me every time I watch Series VIII. In fact the only thing in Series VIII that bothers me more is when they tell a joke, and then explain the punchline.

[Ridley]

Ha HA haha.

[Slainmonkey]

It is series VIII after all, I bet you they added in additional laughing where things seemed to not get a strong enough audience reaction…..I sure as hell know I wasn’t laughing at any of those scenes.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

You think that one is annoying? Watch Marooned and wait for the Eric Van Lustbader line.

Every fucking time, it ruins the lead-up for me, I sit and wait for it and cringe.

In fact, there’s a new poll to be had, the ten most annoying audience reactions in Red Dwarf.

I’m nominating the first appearance of Ace in Emohawk and the polite but utterly diluted laughter at the end of ‘The End’.

[(deleted)]

That’s a laugh you hear in quite a lot of mid-to-late-1990s BBC shows (definitely in VII as well, which undeniably swings quite heavily towards Flintstones territory in places), as the horrible practice of hybrid, ‘sweetened’ laugh tracks started to appear on things that really didn’t need it.

The sound of fake sweetened laughter really ruins one particular series of One Foot In The Grave if I recall (5, 6 or both). And I’m fairly certain the mystery laugher you mention is present.

Just thinking, it’d technically be possible to analyse a VII laugh track by transposing scenes from VII and Xtended against each other, matched up to the node and the broadcast one inverted against the Xtended. It would be very easy to tell which laughs were and weren’t real from the ambience. Actually doing such a thing would be half a day I’d never get back, but still, possibly interesting. Would also expose anything else altered in the dub between the laughter taping and broadcast.

[Katydid]

…why would they take this awful laugh and copy and paste it over the places no one laughed, even following lines that aren’t even jokes in the first place? Across an entire 8 episode series, even? I figured it had to be a real audience member because the idea of someone choosing to add that terrible laugh in seems so fucking ridiculous to me.

Look at me, again being wrong for assuming competence.

I know the VII laughter had to be edited as not to drown out dialogue, but the idea of them sweetening it just feels wrong to me. It’s totally unnecessary. Red Dwarf is not an obnoxious American sitcom like The Big Bang Theory where the audience explodes into laughter at every other line, joke or not. The audience should not feel like an entity within the show forcing everyone to pause all the time. Only the especially funny jokes should do that.

That said, VIII’s over the top audience makes more sense to me if it’s sweetened.

The one woman yelling “Woo!” at the triple thick condom line in Emohawk is pretty embarrassing.

[Katydid]

I have no idea how I fucked up the quoting that badly, but the edit function doesn’t work.

Now I’ll look stupid forever.

[si]

Now I’ll look stupid forever.

You’re in the best possible company.

[Ben Paddon]

You’ve

flamingo’d

up

[Kris Carter]

Ha HA Haha

[Taiwan Tony]

Rob Grant?

[John Hoare]

Oddly enough, this links in with something I’m writing at the moment, comparing the DVD release of the pilot of Hi-De-Hi! with the repeat version shown on BBC Two a couple of weeks back.

The repeat version has the laugh track sweetened to fuck. For absolutely no reason whatsoever. The original version is hardly lacking in laughs, being, y’know, one of the finest sitcom pilots ever made.

[Ben Paddon]

b C b a

[Taiwan Tony]

John! I was watching a couple of Seinfelds recently and to my untrained ear the laughs seem much more enhanced in the first couple of episodes I watched in season six to the later ones in season five.
I don’t know what I expect you to do with this information!

[Stephen R. Fletcher]

After listening to Friends commentaries, I’ve started to notice Marta Kauffman’s laugh in some episodes. I’ve read that you can hear Larry David’s laugh in Seinfeld episodes, too, but I’m not really familiar with what his laugh sounds like.

[Stephen R. Fletcher]

I was watching a couple of Seinfelds recently and to my untrained ear the laughs seem much more enhanced in the first couple of episodes I watched in season six to the later ones in season five.

I had a Seinfeld DVD re-watch marathon a few months ago and I remember the sound and laughs in the first episode of Season 6 standing out as sounding really odd.

[(deleted)]

There’s a Blackadder episode almost drowned out by the sound of Robbie Coltrane’s laugh. It’s the sole interesting thing revealed on Fry’s otherwise useless DVD commentaries.

[Pete Part Three]

The horrendous laughter in BlackAdder Goes Forth : Private Plane at everything Rik does towards the end of the episode pisses me off. Rik’s performance is great; being accompanied by exaggerated banshee wails is just annoying

In terms of Red Dwarf; nothing annoys me quite as much as the smug groans from the audience members who twig Lister’s grassy knoll plan and need to announce it. Yeah, well done you fucking geniuses; you got the reference.

[Pete Part Three]

(Tikka to Ride, obvs).

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I can forgive VII as they had to dial in the laugh track after the event but VIII is a fucking mess of overly enthusiastic ’90s audience ‘WAHEYS, WHOOPS & FUCKING IDIOTIC SELF-REFERENTIAL AWWWWS’ and some looped and lazy canned laughter.

Darrell mentioned One Foot in the Grave. I have to brace myself every time Angus Deayton or Owen Brenman appears, you can practically hear the clunk of the play button as the canned guffaws kick off.

[si]

overly enthusiastic ’90s audience ‘WAHEYS, WHOOPS & FUCKING IDIOTIC SELF-REFERENTIAL AWWWWS’

I think Emohawk’s worse for that. As Duane Dibbley’s head appears, then Ace… I’ve always found that cringeworthy, even watching it go out as a 14 year old. As for the Dibbley Family in Back In The Red…

[thomasaevans]

Hate these added canned-pad-laughter bits. They stand out a MILE to me in every series.

A genuine studio response you cannot beat. There’s a laugh during the specials (Series 2) of the Vicar of Dibley that has me cracking up. Very high pitched. It’s from the studio recording. It’s brilliant.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

‘Kryten’ was a killer audience response from start to finish, it really enhanced the feeling that you were amongst friends while watching it.

[(deleted)]

The Kryten audience are a bit raucous for me. There’s an series 2 episode of The Thin Blue Line where the audience are weirdly giddy as well.

Worst of all is the first Cabin Pressure Christmas special, from after Cumberbatch was famous but before they started filtering his fanbase out of the recordings. They literally ruin it, it’s unlistenable.

[Pete Part Three]

Another Dwarf one; the re appropriated (er, canned) response to the crew dressed in Trek-style uniforms in Trojan. The laughter isn’t itself annoying, just the fact that what is on screen is not what they’re laughing at.

[(deleted)]

Didn’t Trojan have a taped screening during the Dear Dave session though?

[Pete Part Three]

Yes, but that shot wasn’t in it then, either.

[(deleted)]

Would have been weirder to keep it silent I suppose.

X is sweetened a lot too but they seem to have used their own tracks to do it rather than tapes, so it sounds okay. I spotted lots of ambience anomalies when I unpicked the 5.1 mixes.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

The X laugh-track is more blanketed and representative of the entire audience than the earlier series and most BBC comedy recordings up to the late ’80s. Just listen to an episode of The Young Ones and you can make out maybe 4 or 5 very unique voices in amongst the entire audience track. Modern laugh-tracks remind me of American sitcoms where it’s very rare that you hear individuals and unique sounds but instead it’s more a collective laughter. Ultimately you have more control over the laughter, where it comes in, how to sweeten it and so on but it sounds kinda tacked on, even if it’s an accurate representation of the audience reaction from the recording on the night.

The stereo mixes for Red Dwarf IV to VI are quite odd to hear via headphones as the FX, dialogue and music cues are virtually down the middle in mono and there’s huge swathes of audience laughter at the sides. From VII onwards, they begin to populate the stereo space more. Remastered just fucking goes for it as you can imagine.

[Katydid]

Oh my god, I just heard THAT LAUGH that started the topic in Balance of Power Remastered.

That proves it’s copy and paste canned.

[locusceruleus]

It’ll be the last sound you hear before you die.

ha HA haha.
ha HA haha.
ha HA…..
…..
…
..
..
.
haha.

[MANI506]

Wasn’t there going to be a High & Low audience reaction article at one point. We all had fun on Twitter discussing it – I didn’t get to bed until ten past the eleven.

[(deleted)]

I was about to mention Remastered.

Ironically the series 1 remastering notes specifically mention dubbing out a (real) annoying laugher. And replacing her with a fake one…

[John Hoare]

Wasn’t there going to be a High & Low audience reaction article at one point.

There was. It got put back due to a million and one things, but it’s still in the pipeline.

This thread, however, proves writing it will be a hundred times tricker than I ever imagined…

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Are the Remastered notes anywhere to be had? I recall on the Re-Dwarf documentary that Doug and Ed made a copious amount. They’d be a rather interesting read.

[(deleted)]

Freeze-framing on Re-Dwarf and the text track on Remastered pretty much cover it.

Though again, I’d buy a book of those as well…

[Danny Stephenson]

That ‘Ha HA ha’ is DEFINITELY the same piece of Audio reused.

I tell you what colours the performance for the better for me is the laugh track in DNA. The scene where Kryten is troubleshooting his anatomy (ooh pardon), there is a distinctive high pitched squeak laugh which for me is just as much part of the scene as the dialogue.

[Danny Stephenson]

That ‘Ha HA ha’ is DEFINITELY the same piece of Audio reused.

I tell you what colours the performance for the better for me is the laugh track in DNA. The scene where Kryten is troubleshooting his anatomy (ooh pardon), there is a distinctive high pitched squeak laugh which for me is just as much part of the scene as the dialogue.

[Jawscvmcdia]

For anybody interested, here is the same laugh being used in One Foot in the Grave (Series 6):

https://youtu.be/Es5aXHCSTTY?t=343

(Time: 5 minutes 43 seconds)

[(deleted)]

Bloody hell, I was actually correct about something. What is this strange new feeling?

[MANI506]

All time worst audience reaction is the applause at the end of Only The Good…

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

See? SEE? OWEN FUCKING BRENMAN, EVERY FUCKING TIME.

Owen ‘No Laughs’ Brenman.

[Katydid]

Say what you will about the superfluousness of ’60s canned laughter, it was at least well put together. You couldn’t pick out individual reused laughs, at not in any of the shows I’ve ever seen.

I need to watch the deleted scenes from Series VIII again. I want to try to compare the audience reactions to the final, if that’s at all possible.

[Seb Patrick]

>Yes, but that shot wasn’t in it then, either.

Yes it was, and it was a VT during the actual recording of Trojan, too. I know ‘cos I was there both times.

[Seb Patrick]

Also, I’m amazed nobody named Ian Symes has brought up the closing moments of The Beginning in this discussion yet.

[Pete Part Three]

>Yes, but that shot wasn’t in it then, either.

Pretty sure the shot was a storyboard of the Trojan being towed by a rope. And then the laughter that generated was re-appropriated to the slow-mo shot of the crew.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Thankfully, V & VI don’t end on the dreaded ‘final ever episode’ big laugh / cheer / hooray cringe that X sadly fell to (to an extent). I’m assuming Doug emphasised the audience reaction just in case ‘The Beginning’ really was goodbye.

Then again, VIII ended on a horribly stapled in polite applause which could’ve came from a 1992 edition of Paul Daniel’s Every Second Counts.

End on a joke as per, treat it like any other episode, don’t force a nod and winked goodbye, it sticks out like a blackface Cat at Dimension Jump.

[Jonathan Capps]

Pretty sure the shot was a storyboard of the Trojan being towed by a rope. And then the laughter that generated was re-appropriated to the slow-mo shot of the crew.

What I recall is the towing wasn’t in there for the recording or for the screening after the Dear Dave recording, as it seemed new to me when I saw the finished version. So whatever that laugh was, it wasn’t in reaction to that shot. The storeboard I remember is the version when they were going to have it parked next to a open hanger door.

[Seb Patrick]

>Pretty sure the shot was a storyboard of the Trojan being towed by a rope. And then the laughter that generated was re-appropriated to the slow-mo shot of the crew.

Nah, the slow-mo shot of the crew was definitely in it on the Trojan recording night. However, the tow-rope gag didn’t exist then – instead we got shown a storyboard of the Trojan in the cargo bay, as per the original intent for that shot.

On the Dear Dave night, we might have been shown a different storyboard with the tow-rope gag now inserted, I’m not entirely sure.

[Seb Patrick]

>the dreaded ‘final ever episode’ big laugh / cheer / hooray cringe that X sadly fell to

IT WAS A GOOD LINE AND I ENJOYED IT AND SO I CHEERED, OKAY?

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

You wanted to cheer, you filth.

[Jonathan Capps]

Nah, the slow-mo shot of the crew was definitely in it on the Trojan recording night. However, the tow-rope gag didn’t exist then – instead we got shown a storyboard of the Trojan in the cargo bay, as per the original intent for that shot.

Oh, we’re completely at cross purposes here. That’ll teach me for not paying attention, I didn’t realise this was about the slow-mo scene.

[Nick R]

In terms of Red Dwarf; nothing annoys me quite as much as the smug groans from the audience members who twig Lister’s grassy knoll plan and need to announce it. Yeah, well done you fucking geniuses; you got the reference.

I quite like that lone “oh-HOOO!” noise. After years of watching my recording of the broadcast, when I got Xtended it was one of those bits where something seemed missing.

I also don’t think it was necessarily done through any need to announce their cleverness. Couldn’t it just have been an involuntary reaction from someone impressed with the idea?

[John Hoare]

Relevant to this thread. (The second half of the piece, anyway.)

http://www.dirtyfeed.org/2016/09/hi-de-hi-edits-1-raiding-the-funny-cupboard/

[Katydid]

Ripping my VII DVD and I notice the second laugh in Tikka to Ride (I always watched the extended version so I didn’t know), not fifteen seconds in, is that fucking awful stock laugh laughing at the fact that Lister has just picked up a camera.

I’m planning to do a fanedit of Tikka which would include replacing all the CGI with model shots, but it now occurs to me I can also mute that goddamn laugh by swapping in the audio from the extended over it any time it appears. Since it never laughs after an actual joke, I don’t need to worry about screwing up the real audience. Since it never laughs after an actual joke, you wonder what dumbass thought it should be there.

I’d love to interpolate too and restore the video look, but from what I’ve found researching the topic that’s going to be annoyingly complicated to do without having to purchase specialty software, if it’s even possible at all.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It is possible as I’ve done it.

Last year, I reconstructed Ouroboros into a 720p50 master from the original, which is in essence 288p25.

The original was de-interlaced, motion interpolated from 25 to 50 frames per second, re-sized and the original colour grading was flattened to pull it away from the film lighting enveloping the sets at the time and towards Series I & II.

[Stabbim the Skutter]

There’s a guy in Series III who constantly goes “TUH-HUH-HUH-HUH-HUH”. Best example I can think of is after “This is a scalpel.” Drives me up the wall. One of the few improvements of the Remastered versions is that they got rid of him.

[Ben Paddon]

Last year, I reconstructed Ouroboros into a 720p50 master from the original, which is in essence 288p25.

Did you share that one? Or clips from it, at least? I vaguely recall seeing some of it, wouldn’t mind giving it another gander.

[Jawscvmcdia]

If you think the laughter in Red Dwarf is bad, check out some episodes of Steptoe and Son. Here are a few examples:

(25 m 27 s)

https://youtu.be/zjcUcTJPEDs?t=1469

(24 m 29 s)

(4 m 19 s)

Even Mr Bean had its fair few of annoying laughs:

https://youtu.be/Bz6D6kBloic?t=230

(3 m 52 s)

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Deleted, but I may resurrect it as a bonus for the ‘Restored’ project.

[Taiwan Tony]

Oh man. I loved that Mr. Bean laugh.

[Jimboid]

I thought common thinking around these parts was that there was no such thing as canned laughter in Dwarf…

But surely this counts as that?

It’s not like they reappropriated the laugh from elsewhere as it crops up in other shows.

I don’t want to open a whole XI episode 6…

[Ben Paddon]

<blcokquote>I thought common thinking around these parts was that there was no such thing as canned laughter in Dwarf…
But surely this counts as that?
Nope. Canned laughter is the act of placing a laugh track where none previously existed. Sweetened laughter is the act of taking an existing laugh track and “enhancing” it with additional laughs.

[Ben Paddon]

(Fecked up the bluhcockquote there, didn’t I? Oh well.)

Distinction: How I Met Your Mother is not shot in front of an audience, is not shown to an audience. The laugh track is pure artifice. That’s canned laughter.

Big difference there, I’m sure you’ll agree.

[Jimboid]

I always imagined it was sweetened by tinkering with the genuine lulz, chopping and changing, layering them up or something…rather than just pasting from a pre-existing generic laugh bank.

That seems like sweetening *with* canned laughter. To me, anyways.

[Pete Part Three]

Potato/potatoe

Sweetened laughter is canned. It’s been re-appropriated. Laughter may have existed on a scene, but if you’re adding additional laughs from somewhere else (irrespective of whether it’s from the same show), then those specific laughs are canned. I’m not sure how there can be a distinction, just because there’s already laughter there.

I’ve seen multiple claims that HIMYM was shown to audiences, Red Dwarf VII style.

[Tarka Dal]

Oh thank fuck. I know I’m responsible for two horrible laughs in Dwarf, one in Only The Good, but thankfully not guilty on this occasion.

On the whole OTT audience laughter doesn’t bother me, whether it’s a scream, a woop or something similar unusual.

[Tarka Dal]

What does tend to bother me is over-abundant applause. Occasions where mundane gags generate a round of applause.

It’s something I’ve noticed more from Series 8 onwards and so I’ve always put it down to the result of a bunch of rabid Dwarfers feeding off each others enthusiasm at the live recordings.

[Ben Paddon]

I’ve seen multiple claims that HIMYM was shown to audiences, Red Dwarf VII style.

True for the pilot and at least part of first season, but the majority of the show uses canned laughter. They did shoot some stuff in front of an audience towards the end, but only a handful of scenes and only for smaller sets.

Keep in mind, I’m getting all of this from people I know who worked on the show across multiple seasons.

[Katydid]

Really? I had no idea canned laughter was ever more than a very rare thing after the ’80s, let alone being used for a popular modern sitcom like HIMYM. That seems so anachronistic.

[Pete Part Three]

Blimey. Have to wonder why they bothered. It moved as frenetically as an episode of Scrubs, and that avoided a laugh-track completely.

[Katydid]

I’ll give them credit, they at least shot it multi-camera like an audience show. Or looking multi-camera, anyway.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned the stupid laugh that’s heard at the end (or should that be the beginning?) of the bar room tidy in Backwards. You know, the one that sounds like telephone ringing underwater?
Remarkably, I’ve even played this laugh backwards and it sounds exactly the same either way; utterly moronic.
I don’t think this is a sweetened laugh though, but a genuine on-set laugh. One that badly needed removing.

[Jawscvmcdia]

Is this the laugh you mean?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Yup. That’s the one.

[Katydid]

Oh yeah, I remember being really confused by that since laughter sounds just about the same backwards and forwards. I figured maybe it was supposed to be “backwards” laughter?

I tend to remember stuff like the topic’s “Ha-HAHA-haha” better because it’s just repeated. I can live with one stupid laugh, but I want to punch whoever thought “Ha-HAHA-haha” should be used seventy times an episode in the goddamn throat.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

That strange backwards laugh is the best in the episode, it sounds so strangely ’80s and of its time, it’s a right Essex giggle.

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