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When this was first created, was this planned ahead of time (for example, before a series starts in case of dead audiences) or created as a show went along as needed.
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A short question with a long answer that (thankfully) I won't post here ;-)
Sweetening was actually experimented with in the days of live radio using 78rpm sfx records. There were even applause machines tested wherein artificial \"hands\" on rotating wheels slapped against each other! Sweetening came into its own when the movie studios stopped fighting the growth of television and began supplying programs on film to the medium. Those filmed sitcoms were all produced using single camera film techniques without an audience, and after live radio and live TV with audiences, they sounded terribly dry. That was the big-time birth of canned laughter and applause.
Today many producers and programmers feel that a show becomes more compelling to the home viewer and seems more entertaining when the audible \"audience\" is wild with enthusiasm. Thus even on shows where the audience is already pumped (including TPIR) the audience is enhanced to meet the ever increasing level of what sounds \"right\". That's a decision that's made either prior to the first episode being taped, or shortly thereafter when the natural sound of the audience is evaluated.
Recently on shows such as LINGO, the choice to use sweetening is made long before production begins to compensate for either small or non-existant audiences - it saves money over dealing with the costs and hidden complexities of actually having people present.
Answered?
Randy
tvrandywest.com
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Did \"Sports Challenge\" use sweetening? On the ep I taped this morning, the applause/cheering sounds the same every.....single.....time. I do remember Enberg snapping at the \"audience\" on occasion but methinks there was no audience.
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There is a guy in the sound booth at TPIR (don't know his name) who sit's in front of a small keyboard and presses a key for canned applause. After hearing it very briefly, it's been used on the $1M specials, and I've noticed this exact sound has been used on other shows (Comb's Feud, Eubanks CS, and even PYL)
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[quote name=\'PeterMarshallFan\' date=\'Aug 21 2003, 08:57 PM\']Did \"Sports Challenge\" use sweetening? [/quote]
Yes it did.
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[quote name=\'cmjb13\' date=\'Aug 22 2003, 05:15 AM\'] There is a guy in the sound booth at TPIR (don't know his name) who sit's in front of a small keyboard and presses a key for canned applause. [/quote]
Correctamundo ;-)
That keyboard accesses over 2 dozen individual sampled stereo audience sounds from extremely subtle laughter by about about 5 or 6 people, all the way up to big laughs (you can usually hear one of the medium laughs after the \"37 hours\" range game joke). It also has a bunch of applause bursts (small to large), and that very familiar audience screaming heard on the primetime shows' 6 one-bids, plus a nice assortment of \"oooh\"s, and \"aaah\"s ;-)
PRICE is the only show I've watched produced that sweetens \"on the fly\". All others I've worked/watched sweeten in post.
(Cue applause and music button)
Randy
tvrandywest.com
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Remember on the NYC Pyramid, when all of a sudden there would be thunderous applause out of nowhere? That sounded like it could have been done at the time of taping (otherwise I think they would have done it with a little more finesse.)
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[quote name=\'tvrandywest\' date=\'Aug 22 2003, 09:37 AM\']That keyboard accesses over 2 dozen individual sampled stereo audience sounds from extremely subtle laughter by about about 5 or 6 people, all the way up to big laughs[/quote]
I wonder where they originally recorded those sounds. They are heard on a lot of shows.
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[quote name=\'cmjb13\' date=\'Aug 22 2003, 10:17 AM\']I wonder where they originally recorded those sounds. They are heard on a lot of shows.[/quote]
Most likely, they were taken from \"TPIR\" audiences--since the advent of stereo television, they've had to dump the loops that were used year after year from the 50s. On CBS shows nowadays, \"TPIR\" is the most likely source because you have such enthusiastic audiences on that show.
Back in the days of Mother MacKenzie at NBC, they came from various shows--supposedly, the big laugh you always heard after Paul Lynde's lines on \"Squares\" came from an unaired bit from \"You Bet Your Life\" where a contestant told about standing outside a tall building naked. In his \"As Long as They're Laughing!,\" producer Bob Dwan said that the story got the biggest laugh in the history of the show, but only the response made it on the air--on other NBC shows.
As for other Mother MacKenzie tracks, the phased audience shouting heard on \"Wheel\" and \"CS\" (among others) probably came from \"LMAD\" audiences when that show was taped there (phased so it's hard to tell that they're shouting \"Take the curtain!\" or \"Door No. 1!\" instead of \"Big Money!\" or \"Higher!\"), while a kids' screaming/cheering track heard on \"The Gong Show\" and various shows' \"Kids Weeks\" came from the 1972 kids game show \"Runaround\"--the giveaway being that, due to a bad edit on the loop, you hear the bell that \"Runaround\" used as a sound effect.
As for \"YAAAAHOO!\", I assume that if an NBC stagehand supposedly wore a cowboy hat and made that noise, one day a sound man asked him to do into a microphone for posterity.
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[quote name=\'cmjb13\' date=\'Aug 22 2003, 10:17 AM\']I wonder where they originally recorded those sounds. They are heard on a lot of shows.[/quote]
To add to uncamark's info, laughs in the mono days were also often taken from I Love Lucy and The Red Skelton Show because both shows had many moments of purely physical comedy that allowed for lifting of clean laughs. Need more info? Try this link (http://\"http://www.tvparty.com/laugh.html\").
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Game shows were generally all sweetened on the fly in the '70s and '80s. Po$t production co$t$.
Not all of the Mackenzie tracks came from archived shows. If we needed an audience shouting \"double\" for the MG star wheel for example, Johnny Olson would instruct the audience to shout \"double\" while an audio tape was recording. In fact the technical challenge to lifting audience reaction from a show recorded in monaural is separating audience reax from music and dialog.
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[quote name=\'chris319\' date=\'Aug 22 2003, 04:50 PM\'] Game shows were generally all sweetened on the fly in the '70s and '80s. Po$t production co$t$.
Not all of the Mackenzie tracks came from archived shows. If we needed an audience shouting "double" for the MG star wheel for example, Johnny Olson would instruct the audience to shout "double" while an audio tape was recording. In fact the technical challenge to lifting audience reaction from a show recorded in monaural is separating audience reax from music and dialog. [/quote]
There's a certain laugh I recall hearing on MGPM, that was more commonly used on CBS Feud, when showing the family poses. Where did this one originally come from?
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[quote name=\'chris319\' date=\'Aug 22 2003, 04:50 PM\'] Game shows were generally all sweetened on the fly in the '70s and '80s. Po$t production co$t$. [/quote]
Great point, Chris.
Ahh, the good ole days. I guess sweetening is part of the post process now because every damn show is posted to death (the opposite of \"live\") anyway.
Randy
tvrandywest.com
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I wonder if there is any way that I can acquire these audience SFX heard on many NBC or CBS game shows. There is one crowd track that is used sometimes on CBS game shows that appears on a cartoon sound effects library.
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There are lots of generic audience sfx floating around out there. BigJon has some nice ones in his games.
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This is a very interesting topic. I have one question, however. I've thought for a while now that "Small Talk" operated without an audience and just used laugh and applause tracks; is this true?
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It's cool to see this and the other old threads that become, in the jargon of radio programming, "recurrents".
I still see the same faces in post production facilities painstakingly adding a full pallete of audience reactions to sitcoms and game shows. Although with "reality" programming taking many of those time slots as the "flavor of the month", I imagine their work has lessened lately. Bob LaMasney is one; he sweetened Supermarket Sweep. Another is a really cool guy with a great ear named Boyd. I see him all over town; we worked a number of shows together, including Twenty One and I believe Weakest Link, as well. John Bickelhaupt was the post production laugh-meister for "The Nanny".
Each of these guys carries his own mysterious hardware into the sessions. I remember at Metromedia Square in the early 80s, in the era when tape loops were still king, seeing one of the old-timers with his large 3 or 4 foot high box, a dozen piano-style keys and a footpedal that he shlepped on a handtruck to multiple sessions a day. These days the hardware is significantly smaller, but equally mysterious; it's always "hands off" as far as playing with the tools of these guys' trade. Although I did have endless access to the electronic keyboard and it's internal audience that's used on "Price".
Some of the audience sounds on Price must be unique to the show, as the "oooh", the "aaahhh" and the screaming (used during the one-bids) are far from subtle. I can't imagine hearing them anywhere else. The smaller giggles and the small smatterings of applause could work anywhere.
The NBC-Burbank McKenzie loops resided in the Sound Effects department across the hall from Studio 1 until the entire department was closed around 2001 after so many decades. I did manage to dub everything that remained in the room on the week it closed. The techs there told me that indeed the same loops were used for years, as were some of the game sfx. I remember a really talented guy's intensity and flailing hands in Studio 3 at a "Sale Of The Century" taping as he worked on-the-fly with his set-up of 4 five-loop McKenzie machines.
In recent years, my experience in the studio with Boyd on the first day of a show's taping was that it was serious work for him. We would take the audience through several dozen different sounds; the subtle ones where only a small portion of the audience participated were the most important to him ("This time let's hear it only from those with birthdays in January, February and March"). He was even painstaking in getting a solid 30 seconds of silence on tape so that he could have the room ambience available to cover edits.
Right now I'm wrapping work on Fremantle's five 1-hour "Game Show Moments" specials, but my sessions in post production have not yet coincided with any of the audience sweetening.
btw, I think my life will be far more entertaining after it's edited and sweetened. I hope it tests well ;-)
Randy
tvrandywest.com
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[quote name=\'tvrandywest\' date=\'Apr 24 2005, 01:02 AM\']btw, I think my life will be far more entertaining after it's edited and sweetened. I hope it tests well ;-)
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Too bad you only appeal to the 50 and over demographic. According to advertisers, you're undesirable.
:)
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I remember a really talented guy's intensity and flailing hands in Studio 3 at a "Sale Of The Century" taping as he worked on-the-fly with his set-up of 4 five-loop McKenzie machines.
Geoff Cooper.
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[quote name=\'tvrandywest\' date=\'Apr 24 2005, 02:02 AM\']It's cool to see this and the other old threads that become, in the jargon of radio programming, "recurrents".
I still see the same faces in post production facilities painstakingly adding a full pallete of audience reactions to sitcoms and game shows. Although with "reality" programming taking many of those time slots as the "flavor of the month", I imagine their work has lessened lately. Bob LaMasney is one; he sweetened Supermarket Sweep. Another is a really cool guy with a great ear named Boyd. I see him all over town; we worked a number of shows together, including Twenty One and I believe Weakest Link, as well. John Bickelhaupt was the post production laugh-meister for "The Nanny".[snapback]83103[/snapback]
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Boyd Wheeler is the guy's name and he's got quite a few credits in the sweetening dept.
Bob LaMasney was also the master and overlord of those well-known audience sounds at NBC. He's also worked on Chuck Lorre's great sitcoms "Dharma and Greg" and "Two and a Half Men".
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[quote name=\'tvrandywest\' date=\'Apr 24 2005, 02:02 AM\']Some of the audience sounds on Price must be unique to the show, as the "oooh", the "aaahhh" and the screaming (used during the one-bids) are far from subtle. I can't imagine hearing them anywhere else.
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The screaming during the one-bids seems to be used dominantly on Price, but I've also heard it on Eubanks CS, during both the main game and Money Cards.
Seems to be used for scenarios where they want people shouting answers (bids & guessing the next card respectively), but you really can't understand what they are screaming.
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[quote name=\'chris319\' date=\'Apr 24 2005, 02:00 AM\']
I remember a really talented guy's intensity and flailing hands in Studio 3 at a "Sale Of The Century" taping as he worked on-the-fly with his set-up of 4 five-loop McKenzie machines.
Geoff Cooper.
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There was at least one other--John Kantrowe (who even got a credit in the final SP for "audience reaction"). Kantrowe was also given an audio credit on the final $otC (along with a couple of other techs), so it's conceivable that he did some audience reax for them as well.
Doug
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Geoff Cooper was a funny and talented guy. I don't think he works for NBC any more. Someone told me he owns a record store in Burbank. During a rehearsal of Classic Concentration, when they were trying to decide between the "fire bell" and the "school bell" for the time's up effect, Geoff turned to me and said, "We're curing cancer here".
The late John Kantrowe was a surly old NBC engineer who was once ready to deck Bobby Sherman merely for requesting a lighter hand on the audience sweetening.
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[quote name=\'chris319\' date=\'Apr 24 2005, 04:19 PM\']Geoff Cooper was a funny and talented guy. I don't think he works for NBC any more. Someone told me he owns a record store in Burbank. During a rehearsal of Classic Concentration, when they were trying to decide between the "fire bell" and the "school bell" for the time's up effect, Geoff turned to me and said, "We're curing cancer here".
The late John Kantrowe was a surly old NBC engineer who was once ready to deck Bobby Sherman merely for requesting a lighter hand on the audience sweetening.
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Couldn't Bobby had said "Lin Bolen stopped working here years ago?" :)
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Boyd Wheeler is the guy's name and he's got quite a few credits in the sweetening dept.
Don't ask me how I remember, but he also worked on TTD '90.
Chuck Donegan (The Illustrious "Chuckie Baby")
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I know as a sound effects company called Sound Ideas that can try to hunt down the complete NBC, ABC and/or CBS sound effects libraries (with audience reactions from each networks' facilities [Burbank And New York]) and digitally remaster those sounds from the original MacKenzies or NAB cartridges for the best sound ever.
Speaking of NBC's Mother MacKenzie, can we call CBS's tapes Father MacKenzie?