Canned laughs

As a laugh track , Lach organ , Lach machine , Lach track or plastic Lacher ( engl. Laugh track , canned laughter or laugh machine ) is referred recorded on the tape pools , the particular when sitcoms following a Pointe is played.

Canned laughs were first used on the Hank McCune Show in September 1950. The application was based on the assumption that people who watch TV alone would not laugh and would have to be animated to do so by a laughing recording.

Laughter can be contagious. As a result, the program seen is perceived as funny , which increases the viewer's loyalty to the program, improves the audience rating and reduces the zapping rate . All of this has a positive impact on advertising revenue.

In order to make the laughter appear more authentic and individual, many sitcoms are recorded in front of an audience. Applause, heckling and expressions of surprise, astonishment or disappointment, such as groans, also get into the sound track. The reactions of an audience present should serve the same purpose for the television viewer as canned food.

At the same time, the live audience also fulfills an important function, especially in the production of so-called multi-camera sitcoms , which are modeled on a Broadway show. The actors work directly with the reaction of the audience in order to place punchlines as effectively as possible. When creating the cut version, it is also taken into account which scenes were particularly well received by the audience. Sometimes scenes are rewritten directly on the studio stage if the audience reacts differently than expected.

When synchronizing such recordings, you often have to resort to tinned laughs, as the translation often leads to different lengths of the dialogues and thus the laugh of the studio audience no longer fits in the original. The same applies to applause, heckling and the like. Well-practiced laughter is used as an example of interpassivity .

Researchers were able to show that well-rehearsed laughs actually make film material appear funnier. This even works if the content shown actually has a different valence (e.g. experienced as scary). In contrast, the introduction of other emotions does not lead to an experience increase in the corresponding emotion (e.g. recorded screams of fear do not lead to more fear in the audience).

Studio recordings or video clips not only bring in laughter, but also applause.

Edited versions of well-known sitcoms are circulating on YouTube in particular, from which the laughter has been removed. However, this is usually not about the actual performance of the actors, but instead of the laughter, artificial pauses are inserted that completely change the timing of the scenes and thus the effect of the scenes.

Examples

Canned laughs, public domain audio file

Some better-known sitcoms with canned laughs in German dubbing:

Alf All under one roof Becker Cheers Dharma & Greg The Bill Cosby Show The nanny 2 Broke Girls the wild seventies A house full of daughters A cage full of heroes A horrible nice family

A trio to eat Frasier Friends Full house Golden Girls Hello Holly Hear who's hammering How I Met Your Mother My sister Charlie Mr. Bean

King of Queens Roseanne Rules of Engagement Still standing The Big Bang Theory Two and a Half Men Our noisy home Who is the boss? What's up, dad?

Canned laughs were used in the original sound of a few sitcoms known in Germany :

• Alf
• A terribly nice family (until episode 1.12)

Canned laughs were particularly popular in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, but they were rarely broadcast in Germany.

Synchronization without laughing marks

In some sitcoms in which the original sound of laughing tracks had been used, the German dubbing did not use canned laughs. Examples are:

• Adorable Jeannie
• The Bill Cosby Show (from 1987 to 1989, when the series ran on ZDF as Bill Cosby's family ties)
• The dinosaurs (salmon tracks were also removed in the USA due to the increase in popularity, which was before the German first broadcast)
• Men's economy
• M * A * S * H
• My father is an alien

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Uwe Kreisel: Culture Key USA. (Discover & understand other countries). Hueber, Ismaning 2003, ISBN 3-19-006000-2 , p. 110.
2. ↑ Billy Ingram: TV party! Television's Untold Tales. Bonus Books Inc, Chicago IL 2002, ISBN 1-56625-184-2 , p. 17.
3. ↑ Veronika Opletalová: Comedy and intentionality in pictures. Vydavatelství Filozofické fakulty Univerzity Palackého v Olomouci, 2015, ISBN 978-80-87895-37-5 ( limited preview in Google book search).
4. ^ Stefan Fuchs: Feature films on television. BoD - Books on Demand, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89936-909-0 , p. 20 ( limited preview in Google book search).
5. ↑ Emily Todd VanDerWerff: Do sitcoms taped before a studio audience have a future? Retrieved July 11, 2019 (American English). 
6. ↑ Baranowski, AM, Teichmann, R., & Hecht, H. (2017). Canned emotions. Effects of Genre and Audience Reaction on Emotions. Art & Perception 5, 312-336.
7. ^ Carsten Heinze: Popular music cultures in film. Springer-Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-10896-0 , p. 207 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
8. ↑ Jason Hellerman: In Defense of the Laugh Track. In: No Film School. February 27, 2019, accessed on July 11, 2019 .