Reading: Sounding Live: An Institutional History of the Television Laugh Track (Gina Giotta)
The reading gives a deep knowledge of the laugh track’s origins and how it has developed over the years with the advancement of technology. Giotta also incorporates their own personal opinions of the laugh track and how it “serves as a language of unoriginality for the medium of popular culture”. This statement acknowledges that the culture of entertainment has evolved (and is continuing to evolve) – this questions the existence of the “laugh track” and whether it is relevant to the current scene of entertainment.
With the rich description of how the laugh track has grown with time, it has given me a perspective of how the laugh track has revolutionalised TV in the era it was found in, making it a highly important device for live television. It has also made me question its relevance over the years –
- Despite its contribution to live TV, will it still continue to be an imperative device for the advancement of television?
- As we are constantly bombarded with new information, how can the laugh track catch up with the rapid changes around us?
Those are the few questions that I have considered whilst going over the reading. I will conclude this reading with a question – the laugh track has changed the way we see TV, but how long will it stay applicable?
Pre-production/Planning Stage (Week Three’s Class):
We began Week 3 by discussing the reading as a collective. Despite my own personal thoughts about it (refer to the top), the whole class condensed the reading in what it was trying to imply – the relevance of the laugh track, its origins and the emotional trigger it invokes from an audience. What I found interesting was the video that was shown in class – the live audience for Big Bang Theory. I found it intriguing that not only game shows and talk shows required a live audience, but also sitcoms and comedy shows like the Big Bang Theory. The video explained how they would do multiple takes on each scene and how the audience’s response was a big part of the production.
For the second part of the lesson, we were taken on a tour of the RMITV Studios – a place that had already been familiar to me for the past two weeks.
I have been committing my time at the RMITV Studio for the live show, In Pit Lane! Two weeks in and I have been soaking in a lot of information, so I was pretty familiar with how a studio operated. I still managed to learn a few things from the tour because I saw more rooms such as the smaller studio (in front of Studio A) and the green room. Overall, my thoughts on the studio was that it was definitely a knowledgeable experience and only added more to my existing knowledge of what goes on in the studio and in the control room behind the studio. It also made me realise the plethora of roles in the studio and how there’s a large-scale operation that occurs behind the studio.
For the third and final part of Week Three’s studio, we were assigned into our groups for Assignment #2. One of my group members and friends, Alex, took the initiative to create a Google Doc file, connecting each and every group member with one another. In the Google file, it contained all the studio roles that was going to be filled in by each group member. Most of us didn’t have any considerable amount of studio experience so everyone was happy to fill in any role that they were interested in.
My thoughts on getting the Kimmy Schmidt scene were both exciting and curious, only because I don’t watch the TV show (and wasn’t too much of a fan of it, to be honest). However, we did watch the assigned scene as a group and I immediately envisioned how we would be working as a group. As the role of a Vision Mixer/Editor, it is my job to alternate between Cameras 1, 2 and 3. In relation to the transition of the single-camera use to the multi-camera use, my role of vision mixing directly links to the transition of each camera angle, making sure I directly switch the cameras when relevant.
These are my thoughts and opinions on the happenings of Week 3 – the reading, the tour of the studio and what I will be expecting as a Vision Mixer for the production of Assignment #2.