MovieChat Forums > House of Fools (2014) Discussion > What I'd like to see changed.

What I'd like to see changed.


I personally want the canned laughter taken out. It's just far too obviously canned, and extremely jarring. I also want the pace picking up, often there are blank parts between lines which seem to be filled with canned laughter purposefully. Although that could be part of the joke?

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Agreed. The canned laughter is awful. Gives the impression that there is an audience of morons who laugh at absolutely every word.




If it's a boy, do you think it will look like Rodney? It doesn't matter as long as it's healthy!

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I know people don't trawl through every part of the comments section, but apologies if you've seen this post in the "Absolutely awful" thread :

You know canned laughter is pre-recorded laughter added when there is no audience? Do you think this is on this show? It's recorded in front of a live audience who are in the studio with them (for most scenes, except a few of the animated sequences which are shown to them on a screen). A resulting 27 minute show probably takes around an hour to record, so there are going to be parts where applause fades out over and into the next scene due to time restraints. Beef gets that applause, as Vic and Bob wanted to do a kind of Fonz from Happy Days entrance for a character, so yes, they'll be told to react like that.

Canned audiences are used less now compared to the '50s to '80s, where they used special machines to activate different levels and types of laughter. "Friends" later on 'embellished' their laughter tracks if they didn't think the line got the right reaction, which to me seems a bit obsessive about one line. I'm not saying House Of Fools and other modern sitcoms don't do that at all during editing, but surely you don't think their over all audience is a recording from somewhere else? Reeves & Mortimer have a big enough following to get the audience who love their humour, so can get real laughs and not faff about with sticking fake ones in. It would be a bit like using auto-tune on a song vocal when the singer can actually sing it.

A bit like Mrs Brown's Boys, they're popular and their core audience will laugh like sycophants at anything they say or do. Though personally and without being sycophantic, I find House Of Fools much funnier :)

I agree, there are "morons" who laugh at every word... they're fans of the humour, and maybe love laughing at their comedy heroes. Though, trying to avoid being moronic, I only laugh at what I find funny, no matter who it is. To be honest, I find the people who laugh at every 'feck' etc. on Mrs Brown's Boys a bunch of moronic crawlers :D

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