This week was definitely the most interesting, and eye opening class that we’ve had this semester, given that this is only the third one of course.

This week we got to go and explore the new studios which was incredible. I think we’ve all been mentally preparing ourselves for this assignment, but at the same time, to finally be able to see where we’d be working, and the scale of everything, really gave us the push forward that we needed.

Firstly we were given the grand tour. I won’t bore you with every little detail, but i’ll talk about the main studio/control room. For me, the most interesting part was actually the control room. As you might know from a couple of my previous blog posts, by the end of semester I want to have a go being the director. Seeing the scale of what i’ll (hopefully) be working with soon was exciting, and also daunting.

Moving forward to the more informational stuff, this weeks reading was about ‘Sounding Live’. Gina Giotta discusses the history of the notorious laugh track. To my surprise, the laugh track didn’t rise to fame in the television era, but even earlier in the 1930’s, when radio was booming. It was surprising to learn that before pre-recorded laugh tracks, there was real people used in studio, to make the presenter feel more comfortable while he was cracking jokes.

BUT what surprised me even more was, why was I so surprised? Thinking about television now, with shows such as The Project, the live studio audience acts as a live laugh track. The nature of laugh tracks (in whatever form) really have come full circle. Live studio audiences, however, nowadays do play a much bigger role than to just laugh. (but that is an entire other blog post in itself)

Laugh tracks aren’t something i’d really thought much into, but i’ve always linked it to 90’s/early 2000’s sitcoms, such as, How I Met Your Mother, Friends, and Blossom. In class, we watched a scene from the Big Bang Theory, with the laugh track removed, and sit coms like that, I absolutely understand now why they used/used to use laugh tracks.