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Monday, May 23rd, 2011
Multicam
24

Whitney Cummings Defends the Laugh Track of Whitney

by | May 23rd, 2011

Standup Whitney Cummings had a pretty great pilot season. NBC picked up Whitney, her show that she'll write and star in, and she also co-developed Two Broke Girls, which CBS picked up. But since trailers for Whitney came online, she's been getting a lot of flack for the show being a traditional multi-cam affair with a studio audience rather than a single-cam show like the rest of NBC's comedy lineup. So she took to the internet to defend her decision.

I know on NBC there aren’t any live audience shows at the moment so I totally get why it’s jarring at first. But I think we’ve all forgotten that multi camera is how awesome scripted TV started. Shows used to be shot in front of a live audience. Humans sat in chairs and watched the actors act and laughed when they did something funny. Some of the best shows ever made had studio audiences: Cheers, Roseanne, Seinfeld, Friends. Basically the shows we grew up on as kids that made us not want to kill ourselves when we were in a vortex of depression. Just me? That’s cool too. A live studio audience didn’t bother us when those shows were on and I am sure a lot of ya’ll watch Seinfeld reruns, so I’m not sure why some people today are so upset that my show being made this way. Watching my show will basically feel like watching or seeing stand up. A joke happens and real people laugh. Why is that making people spaz out so much?

She makes a fair point! A show being multicam and in front of an audience is not an indicator of its quality. Of course, we're in the middle of a time in which whether or not a comedy is multicam and in front of an audience is a decent litmus test for whether or not the show is "smart" or not, with most critically acclaimed shows avoiding that format. There's clearly plenty of room for quality comedy shows in a multicam format, but it'll just has to do a bit more work getting a more sophisticated audience on board when they're used to laugh tracks on shows like Two and a Half Men but not on Parks and Rec.

One thing is certain, and that's that judging a show before you've actually seen it is pretty stupid. So multicam or no, it'll be interesting to see how Whitney turns out. If it's good, maybe it'll change some stubborn minds about the worthiness of the multicam format. If not, Whitney will just have to deal with jerks tweeting "I told you so" at her.

Tags:

multicam, nbc, tv, whitney, whitney cummings

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Gordon-McAlpin/502414362 Gordon McAlpin

    Is it accurate to refer to a studio audience's laughter as a "laugh track"? I thought that term always and ALWAYS referred to canned, fake laughter. And Wikipedia agrees, not that that means much: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laugh_track

    • Megh Wright

      @Gordon McAlpin There's no difference between a laugh track and a studio audience for me. Either way someone's telling me when I should be laughing, and that's a crutch I have trouble getting past. Maybe it's my loss though? I'm more of an awkward silence kind of gal.

      SNL is an exception because the whole schtick is that it's live. I'm sure there are other exceptions.

    • HerooftheBeach

      @Gordon McAlpin: I'm with Megh, but I'd go further since live audiences are primed and basically trained ahead of time to laugh on cue. It would be costly for a lame joke to actually die on the air (I've never seen it happen in the modern era), and the audience needs to laugh just as much for the microphones on the 2nd, 3rd and 10th take of a scene.

      So not only is the goal the same, but, for all intents and purposes, the method is the same as well. The only difference is they record the laugh track on the same take.

      edit: As an addendum, one of the best parts of The Story of Everest is that you can hear the audience's exhaustion as the sketch crawls on and on and on. They laugh, but they're not happy. Definitely one of the best uses ever of a live audience in a comedy scene.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-Hall/1605914261 Daniel Hall

      @Megh Wright but then how do you watch a stand up special on tv or sit with a crows during a set, is the crows a crutch there? I don't think one is better than the other, it's the product itself that counts or is hacky and single camera vs multi-cam with an audience are just two different techniques to produce the product. This debate is like comparing the merits of live theatre vs going to see a film, they are both different ways of staging life.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-Hall/1605914261 Daniel Hall

      @Daniel Hall sorry about the type-o meant to ask "is there a crutch there also?"

    • Megh Wright
    • Megh Wright

      @Daniel Hall Oops, addressed to the wrong person. Anyway, I was referring more to sitcom-type shows, not live performances like a stand-up act. That's why I said there are exceptions. I DO think one is better than the other because one is a first reaction and another is like a 7th reaction on the 7th take.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jaime-Weinman/656722902 Jaime Weinman

      @Megh Wright But I think that's part of Cummings' point – her sitcom is an extension of her standup act, so it makes sense to have a live audience there to maintain that kind of rhythm and timing.

      Her show may turn out to be good or bad (though the jokes are no worse than in NBC's other comedy trailers, but who knows from trailers?), but the criticism she's getting is that it must be bad because there's an audience laughing or because it doesn't look like a movie. And she's right to be annoyed about that, since that has nothing to do with the quality of the show.

    • Megh Wright

      @Jaime Weinman I think there are some serious flaws in that line of thinking, but that's just me. I never said anything to shit-talk her or her show and am not really the kind of person to do that, but mentioning you don't like people laughing for you is fair game. I can't relate to the idea that the show shouldn't be at all judged on the laughter — you are treating it like a separate entity that she can't help, when it was very much a choice.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jaime-Weinman/656722902 Jaime Weinman

      @Megh Wright I think there's a difference between saying you personally don't like something, which is fine, and saying that something is artistically bad – which you weren't saying, but which many people do say about sitcoms with audiences.

      We wouldn't think it made sense for someone to say a show must not be funny because it _doesn't_ have laughter on the soundtrack, but it's become strangely common for critics to say that a show _with_ a laughing audience is doing something wrong. When in fact it's just a legitimate artistic choice that sketch shows, talk shows, and yes, sitcoms make all the time.

      We're all free to like or dislike what we want, but dismissing live audience laughter leads to ridiculousness like the time a New York Times critic said that "multicamera sitcoms are bad, and single-camera ones are good."

      So I would say that bad jokes, stories, performances are the show's problem; if we don't like the chosen format it's more our problem.

    • Megh Wright

      @Jaime Weinman Sure, I agree with that. I certainly won't judge the show until I see it, but I am more on team "laughter in a sitcom is archaic" than team "laughter in a sitcom is a legitimate artistic choice." I wish her well, I really do, it's just not my personal taste, that's all.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jaime-Weinman/656722902 Jaime Weinman

      @Megh Wright That's fair. I don't personally see how it is archaic (particularly since a show like "Community" or "30 Rock" cues us when to laugh constantly, through music and editing choices, whereas a live audience forces the writers not to just tell the home viewer when to laugh), but I get that the live-audience sitcom is not for everyone; we all have forms and formats we don't personally care for.

      But if live-audience sitcom wasn't an artistic choice, then the multi-camera format would never have been invented; most early filmed TV sitcoms were single-camera with laugh tracks.

    • Megh Wright

      @Jaime Weinman That's why I watched it back then, when I was 8, during TGIF :) It taught me when to laugh, and now I don't need my training wheels!

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jaime-Weinman/656722902 Jaime Weinman

      @Megh Wright Ah, but that's the difference between a laugh track and a studio audience. A laugh track — or the constant music that "30 Rock" uses in lieu of a laugh track — is the creator telling us when to laugh. An audience is real people telling the writers and performers that they found something funny. It's a different way of making sitcoms: at its best, it leads to sharper writing and performances, at its worst, it leads to dumbing down jokes to please a crowd. But it's not about telling us when to laugh. If they wanted to tell us when to laugh, they'd shoot without an audience and use laugh tracks.

    • Megh Wright

      @Jaime Weinman I was totally kidding with my last comment. But really, this just comes down to a difference in opinion. You say it's everything except telling me when to laugh, but there's not much you can do to change the awkwardness I feel when the studio audience (or laugh track, or whatever – there really is no difference when you're watching at home) laughs at one thing but I don't, then I laugh out loud at something that gets no studio response. Awwwkward!

  • http://www.twitter.com/pablogold Pablo Goldstein

    Whitney, your show looks like crap. The laugh track/studio audience intensifies how poorly it looks. Maybe it'll a good show; who knows? But bad jokes + canned laughter = not funny. Seinfeld had a slightly different equation that equaled funny.

  • http://jonaspolsky.tumblr.com/ Jonas Polsky

    The bigger issue with 'Whitney' is that it uses coded messages to instruct viewers to kill.

  • GothamTommy@twitter

    Seinfeld, which she references, ended in 1997. That same year, audiences paid $42.8-million to see Batman & Robin opening weekend. That was what the general public was into in 1997.

    Culture has changed and there's a reason shows with audiences and/or laugh tracks are almost extinct.

    The show will last four episodes before being yanked.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jaime-Weinman/656722902 Jaime Weinman

    @HerooftheBeach: It's true that audiences are warmed up to laugh, but it's also true that lame jokes die in front of them all the time. When that happens, the writers substitute a new joke or the actors play it differently. So the final version we see on the air has used the audience for feedback to weed out the worst jokes, much as Judd Apatow's movies use constant test screenings in front of audiences to decide what jokes stay in and which ones go out. A show like "Modern Family" isn't as sharply-written as the same writers' work on "Frasier" in part because the writers don't have the same kind of pressure to change lukewarm jokes.

    @GothamTommy – I don't know what your point is exactly; the fact that Batman & Robin performed under expectations could demonstrate that the general public had better taste in 1997 than it does now. Certainly the best sitcoms of the '90s, whether with an audience (Seinfeld, NewsRadio) or without (Larry Sanders) match or surpass today's comedies, and you'd think some writers who celebrate the greatness of "Seinfeld" or "Cheers" would want to do a show in the format that made "Seinfeld" and "Cheers" the shows that they were.

    Besides, never forget that Gilligan's Island, The Flying Nun and The Brady Bunch and many more are single-camera sitcoms without audiences. If we took away the laugh tracks from those shows, would they be considered advanced and modern? Probably. But if culture has changed (and the continued success of multi-cam comedies suggests it hasn't) it's just changed by going back to the format Community shares with My Three Sons.

  • http://videoshare.tumblr.com Firas Alexander

    I think it's a shame that people get up in arms about laugh track, single camera versus mutlicam, etc. Whitney had some good points about having a studio audience being an acceptable traditional comedy model. Of course I think Two And A Half Men would be terrible even without a laugh track, but Seinfeld would lose some of its charm without people hooting and hollering at Kramer's entrances. I think its better to keep an open mind about it, otherwise you'll miss out on some fun shows. Also I love Parks & Rec, Community, etc. but I think there is plenty of room for a variety of comedy shows on TV. I think we as comedy fans are spoiled by the wide range of amazing material that is around at the moment.

  • http://favstar.fm/users/wdeg Will DeG

    Laugh track or no laugh track – nothing makes up for the horrible jokes in the trailer.

  • http://mattpayton.tumblr.com/ Charles Bogle

    "Because they put lights on you and shit, and they light the audience. So it’s a completely false representation of what stand-up is. And the audience becomes a participant, rather than a true audience. That’s why I like stand-up, because the fucking audience can hate your guts sometimes and you can bomb, or they can like you. It’s always different. But on the TV, they’re participants. All of a sudden, they know when you stop talking, they’re supposed to laugh. It’s all different shit. That’s what I loved about Saturday Night Live, man. They didn’t warm up the audience. They didn’t fucking tell the audience to laugh, to Lorne’s credit, so sketches could completely bomb. In any other show, they would lather up the audience and force them to laugh at all the shit. The only two TV shows I saw do that, where they don’t warm them up and you can really bomb, was Saturday Night Live—and that’s why it gets a lot of heat, too. Obviously it gets criticism fairly, too. But a lot of it is because Lorne lets the audience decide and doesn’t force them to laugh."

    - Norm MacDonald

    http://www.avclub.com/articles/norm-macdonald,54380/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds&utm_source=avclub_rss_daily

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jaime-Weinman/656722902 Jaime Weinman

      @Charles Bogle All fair points (though "Norm" was a pretty funny show at times and Norm's lack of acting ability makes him unsuited for single-camera) but the other side of that, also from the AV Club interview:

      "Even the single-camera-style of shooting TV now, for me, is not as enjoyable as being in front of an audience…. Yeah, I got to do a sitcom like that for a year. It did not last, but it was so much fun. You spend most of the week working with the cast members, and you become this tight-knit little family, and that’s a really a great experience."

      - Paul F. Tompkins

      http://www.avclub.com/twincities/articles/paul-f-tompkins,55732/

      I think there should just be room for both.

    • http://mattpayton.tumblr.com/ Charles Bogle

      @Jaime Weinman Agreed.