Laugh track
A laugh track is an audio recording consisting of laughter usually used as a separate soundtrack for comedy productions. The laugh track may contain live audience reactions or artificial laughter made to be inserted into the show, or a combination of the two. The use of canned laughter to "sweeten" the laugh track was pioneered by American sound engineer Charles Douglass.
File:Laugh and clapping waveform 1.png|thumb|A waveform of an audio track in Audacity with a fake laughter mixed with real studio audience applause which follows immediately after fake laugh
The Douglass laugh track became a standard in mainstream television in the U.S., dominating most prime-time sitcoms and sketch comedies from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. Use of the Douglass laughter decreased by the 1980s upon the development of stereophonic laughter. In addition, single-camera sitcoms eliminated audiences altogether. Canned laughter is used to encourage the viewer to laugh.
History in the United States
Radio
Before radio and television, audiences experienced live comedy performances in the presence of other audience members. Radio and early television producers used recordings of live shows and later studio-only shows attempted to recreate this atmosphere by introducing the sound of laughter or other crowd reactions into the soundtrack.Jack Dadswell, former owner of WWJB in Florida, created the first "laughing record".
In 1946, Jack Mullin brought a Magnetophon magnetic tape recorder back from Radio Frankfurt, along with 50 reels of tape; the recorder was one of the magnetic tape recorders that BASF and AEG had built in Germany starting in 1935. The 6.5 mm tape could record 20 minutes per reel of high-quality analog audio sound; Alexander M. Poniatoff then ordered his Ampex company to manufacture an improved version of the Magnetophon for use in radio production. Bing Crosby eventually adopted the technology to pre-record his radio show, which was scheduled for a certain time every week, to avoid having to perform the show live, as well as having to perform it a second time for West Coast audiences.
With the introduction of this recording method, it became possible to add sounds during post-production. Longtime engineer and recording pioneer Jack Mullin explained how the laugh track was invented on Crosby's show:
Early live U.S. television, film; "sweetening"
In early television, most shows that were not broadcast live used the single-camera filmmaking technique, where a show was created by filming each scene several times from different camera angles. Whereas the performances of the actors and crew could be controlled, live audiences could not be relied upon to laugh at the "correct" moments; other times, audiences were deemed to have laughed too loudly or for too long.CBS sound engineer Charley Douglass noticed these inconsistencies, and took it upon himself to remedy the situation. If a joke did not get the desired chuckle, Douglass inserted additional laughter; if the live audience chuckled too long, Douglass gradually muted the guffaws. This editing technique became known as sweetening, in which recorded laughter is used to augment the response of the real studio audience if they did not react as strongly as desired. Conversely, the process could be used to "desweeten" audience reactions, toning down unwanted loud laughter or removing inappropriate applause, thus making the laughter more in line with the producer's preferred method of telling the story.
While still working for CBS, Douglass built a prototype laugh machine that consisted of a large, wooden wheel 28 inches in diameter with a reel of tape glued to the outer edge of it containing recordings of mild laughs. The machine was operated by a key that played until it hit another detent on the wheel, thus playing a complete laugh. Because it was constructed on company time, CBS demanded possession of the machine when Douglass decided to terminate his time with them. The prototype machine fell apart within months of use. Douglass developed an expansion of his technique in 1953 when he began to extract laughter and applause from live soundtracks recorded, and then placed the recorded sounds into a huge tape machine.
These recorded laughs could be added to single-camera filmed programs. The first American television show to incorporate a laugh track was the sitcom The Hank McCune Show in 1950. Other single-camera filmed shows, like The Pride of the Family, soon followed suit, though several, like The Trouble with Father, The Beulah Show and The Goldbergs, did not feature an audience or a laugh-track. Four Star Playhouse, an anthology series, did not utilize a laugh-track or audience on its occasional comedy episodes, with co-producer David Niven calling the laugh track "wild indiscriminate mirth" and stating that "I shall blackball the notion if it ever comes up. Not that it will. We shall carry on without mechanical tricks".
Multi-camera shows
Soon after the rise of the laugh track, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz devised a method of filming with a live audience using a setup of multiple film cameras. This process was originally employed for their sitcom I Love Lucy, which used a live studio audience and no laugh track. Multi-camera shows with live audiences sometimes used recorded laughs to supplement responses. Sketch comedy and variety shows eventually migrated from live broadcasting to videotape, which allowed for editing before a show was aired. Physically editing a taped audience show before electronic dubbing arrived caused bumps and gaps on the soundtrack; Douglass was then called upon to bridge these gaps.Both performers and producers gradually began to realize the power behind prerecorded laughter. While witnessing an early post-production editing session, comedian Milton Berle once pointed out a particular joke and said, "as long as we're here doing this, that joke didn't get the response we wanted". After Douglass inserted a hearty laugh following the failed joke, Berle reportedly commented, "See? I told you it was funny". The comedian Bob Hope, while working on one of his television specials, took Douglass's hands in his own and began rubbing them to create the effect of limbering up Douglass's fingers, saying "OK, now, give me some good laughs."
1960s
As the medium evolved, production costs associated with broadcasting live television escalated. Filming in a studio with an audience, as I Love Lucy or The Ed Sullivan Show did, had its limitations as well: half the audience could not see the show from where they were sitting. Douglass was brought in to simulate reactions from scratch for the duration of the entire show. Producers soon realized how much simpler it was to film a show without an audience present and tailor the reactions during post-production. Directors initially did not allow space for inserting reactions, making sweetening difficult and resulted in dialogue being drowned out. Audience response cards repeatedly came back saying that laughter seemed forced or contrived. Writers gradually became more conscious of the space required for the laugh track and began timing their scripts around it. Directors gradually left room for as-yet-unheard audience reactions; producers budgeted for post-production so Douglass could edit with greater ease.Most television sitcoms produced during the 1950s and 1960s used the single-camera technique, with a laugh track simulating the absent audience. Producers became disenchanted with the multi-camera format; consensus at the time was that live audiences were tense, nervous and rarely laughed on cue.
''Hogan's Heroes''
Network research indicated that the inclusion of a laugh track was considered essential for categorizing a single-camera show as a comedy. This hypothesis was tested in 1965 when CBS conducted an experiment involving its new single-camera sitcom Hogan's Heroes, presenting two versions of the pilot episode to test audiences: one with a laugh track and one without. The version without the laugh track, due in part to the show's more cerebral humor, performed poorly, while the version with the laugh track garnered a more favorable reception. Consequently, Hogan's Heroes was broadcast with the laugh track, and CBS subsequently incorporated laugh tracks into all of its comedic programming.Sitcom laugh tracks differed, depending on the style of the show. The more outlandish the show, the more invasive the laugh track. Shows like Bewitched, The Munsters, I Dream of Jeannie and The Beverly Hillbillies relied heavily on laugh tracks, while more subdued programs, like The Andy Griffith Show, The Brady Bunch and My Three Sons, had more modulated laughter. Certain shows, like Get Smart, featured a laugh track that became more invasive as the series progressed, while shows like M*A*S*H toned down the laughter as the series became more dramatic; it was entirely absent during operating room scenes.
By the mid-1960s, nearly every U.S. sitcom was shot using the single camera and was fitted with a laughter track. Only a handful of programs, such as The Joey Bishop Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Lucy Show used studio audiences but augmented the real laughter via "sweetening."
Charley Douglass and the mysterious "laff box"
From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, Douglass had a monopoly on the expensive and painstaking laugh business. By 1960, nearly every prime time show in the U.S. was sweetened by Douglass. When it came time to "lay in the laughs", the producer directed Douglass where and when to insert the type of laugh requested. Inevitably, disagreements arose between Douglass and the producer, but the producer had final say. After taking his directive, Douglass went to work at creating the audience, out of sight from the producer or anyone else present at the studio.Critic Dick Hobson commented in a July 1966 TV Guide article that the Douglass family were "the only laugh game in town." Very few in the industry ever witnessed Douglass using his invention, as he was notoriously secretive about his work, and was one of the most talked-about men in the television industry.
Douglass formed Northridge Electronics in August 1960, named after the Los Angeles suburb in the San Fernando Valley where the Douglass family resided and operated their business in a padlocked garage. When their services were needed, they wheeled the device into the editing room, plugged it in, and went to work. Production studios became accustomed to seeing Douglass shuttling from studio to studio to mix in his manufactured laughs during post-production.
The technological advancements pioneered by Douglass closely resembled those found in musical instruments such as the Chamberlain Music Master and Mellotron. His sophisticated one-of-a-kind device – affectionately known in the industry as the "laff box" – was tightly secured with padlocks, stood more than two feet tall, and operated like an organ. Douglass used a keyboard similar to that of a typewriter to select the corresponding style, gender and age of the laugh as well as a pedal to time the length of the reaction. Inside the machine was a wide array of recorded chuckles, yocks and belly laughs: 320 laughs on 32 tape loops, ten to a loop. Each loop contained up to ten individual audience laughs spliced end-to-end, whirling around simultaneously waiting to be cued up. Since the tapes were looped, laughs were played in the same order repeatedly. Sound engineers could watch sitcoms and knew exactly which recurrent guffaws were next, even if they were viewing an episode for the first time. Douglass frequently combined different laughs, either long or short in length. Attentive viewers could spot when he decided to mix chuckles together to give the effect of a more diverse audience. Rather than being simple recordings of a laughing audience, Douglass's laughs were carefully generated and mixed, giving some laughs detailed identities such as "the guy who gets the joke early" and "housewife giggles" and "the one who didn't get the joke but is laughing anyway" all blended and layered to create the illusion of a real audience responding to the show in question. A man's deep laugh would be switched for a new woman's laugh, or a high-pitched woman's giggle would be replaced with a man's snicker. One producer noticed a recurrent laugh of a woman whom he called "the jungle lady" because of her high-pitched shriek. After regularly complaining to Douglass, the laugh was retired from the regular lineup.
There was also a 30-second "titter" track in the loop, which consisted of individual people laughing quietly. This "titter" track was used to quiet down a laugh and was always playing in the background. When Douglass inserted a hearty laugh, he increased the volume of the titter track to smooth out the final mix. This titter track was expanded to 45 seconds in 1967, later to 60 seconds in 1970, and received overhauls in 1964, 1967, 1970, and 1976. Douglass kept recordings fresh, making minor changes every few months, believing that the viewing audience evolved over time. Douglass also had an array of audience clapping, "oohs" and "ahhhs," as well as people moving in their seats.
Only immediate members of the family knew what the inside of the device looked like. More than one member of the Douglass family was involved in the editing process, and each reacted to a joke differently. Charley Douglass was the most conservative of all, so producers often put in bids for Charley's son Bob, who was more liberal in his choice of laughter. Subtle textural changes could have enormous consequences for the ethical situation suggested by a laugh track.
Douglass knew his material well, as he had compiled it himself. He had dozens of reactions, and he knew where to find each one. Douglass regularly slightly sped up the laughter to heighten the effect. His work was well appreciated by many in the television industry. Over the years, Douglass added new recordings and revived old ones that had been retired and then retired the newer tracks. Laughter heard in sitcoms of the early 1960s resurfaced years later in the late 1970s. Especially starting in the 1970s, Douglass started alternating the updated laugh track with an older laugh track and even sometimes combined the two together. Up to 40 different laugh clips could be combined and layered at one time, creating the effect of a larger, louder reaction when in fact the same laughs were later heard individually. As the civil rights movement gained momentum, Douglass also started making his laugh track more diverse, including examples of laughter of people from other cultures, whose sounds were noticeably different from white Americans.
Douglass's "laff box" was purchased, unseen, at auction in 2010 when its owner failed to pay rent on the storage locker where it was housed. It was later discussed, and demonstrated in a June 2010 episode of Antiques Roadshow from San Diego, California, where its value was appraised at $10,000.