Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: heart radio. Stuff you should know is recorded in front
Speaker 1: of a live studio audience. Hey, and welcome to the PODCAST.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh and there's chuck and this is stuff you
Speaker 1: should know. The WHAMOBAMO double episode about Sitcoms, probably the
Speaker 1: most important thing in any of our lives. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is sort of our homage to the, more specifically
Speaker 1: the American Multi Camera Studio Audience Sitcom, even though we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk a little bit about other forms of the genre. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Brits come up here, there maybe a Keywi appearance
Speaker 1: and uh, and what we're gonna try to do, everybody,
Speaker 1: is do this Sitcom Style and record to thirty minute episodes.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're gonna be twenty two minutes
Speaker 1: including the ads, but that would be that would be
Speaker 1: a stroke of genius. But we're gonna do our best,
Speaker 1: which means we're probably not gonna do a listener mail.
Speaker 1: Then let's get right to it, right. Yeah, let's we're
Speaker 1: talking sitcoms and just right out of the gate we
Speaker 1: should explain what a Sitcom is. Everybody knows what a
Speaker 1: Sitcom is, but if you stop and think about the word.
Speaker 1: It's actually a Portmanteau of situation and comedy. A Sitcom,
Speaker 1: that's right, uh, and it's a very you know ed
Speaker 1: helped us put this together. It. It is definitely Portmanteau
Speaker 1: that some studio executive no doubt came up with, because
Speaker 1: it's kind of dumb, sounding like it's a comedy about
Speaker 1: a situation. You know what I'm saying? I do know
Speaker 1: what you're saying, but at the same time I think
Speaker 1: it actually does aptly described sitcoms, because every Sitcom, the
Speaker 1: basis of it is you have your main characters in
Speaker 1: some sort of dilemma situation and then by the end
Speaker 1: of the episode that dilemma situation is resolved. The situation
Speaker 1: is resolved. A Sitcom generally yeah, uh, and it looks
Speaker 1: like that people in the industry. We're using this term,
Speaker 1: maybe even back in the radio days of the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: because it comes up in print kind of for the
Speaker 1: public's eyeballs in early nineteen sixty four. Uh, for the
Speaker 1: best we can tell, in life magazine and the Chicago Tribune,
Speaker 1: where they talk about what a Sitcom is and kind
Speaker 1: of have to explain it to the two people, but
Speaker 1: they do indicate that it's it's sort of been used
Speaker 1: as industry uh slang for a little while. Right, exactly. So, Um,
Speaker 1: there are certain things that do like make a Sitcom
Speaker 1: a Sitcom, and you know, they started out as very
Speaker 1: basic and then kind of built along the way and then,
Speaker 1: as you know, writers UH started to come of age
Speaker 1: having grown up on Sitcoms, they learned to kind of
Speaker 1: play with the format more and more and create all
Speaker 1: sorts of different takes on sitcoms. But there are some
Speaker 1: basic structures to basically every sitcom that's ever existed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of fun because, like Ed nailed
Speaker 1: a lot of this and some stuff. As a Sitcom Guy,
Speaker 1: I was like, not quite right, I'm so nervous. Now
Speaker 1: I know he did a great job, though. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, he points out that it's a comedy. Of
Speaker 1: course it's Um sort of the obvious one. They are
Speaker 1: a half hour long, which is why these episodes will
Speaker 1: be a half hour long. Yeah, I chuck. I looked
Speaker 1: for one hour Sitcom and it just does not exist.
Speaker 1: The closest I saw was love boat, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if you could really call love boat to Sitcom.
Speaker 1: I think love boat defied genre. It's something it definitely did.
Speaker 1: For sure, from what I saw, was the only one
Speaker 1: hour show that had a laugh track. Okay, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the laugh track. I think you can look forward to
Speaker 1: the shorty on Wednesday, right. Yeah, definitely all about the
Speaker 1: laugh track. Uh. So, the situation, and again these are generalizations.
Speaker 1: The form has been tweaked and subverted over the years,
Speaker 1: but it is almost always about a smallish group of people. Um,
Speaker 1: not always a family, but many, many times it's a family.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a group of friends. Obviously that the UH
Speaker 1: workplace comedy is going to be colleagues, but many, many sitcoms,
Speaker 1: especially in the Hadaia Sitcoms, were about families. Yeah, and Um,
Speaker 1: the basic structure, from what I saw, the minimum essentially
Speaker 1: is four you you want to have four characters and
Speaker 1: there's actually a set of types for those four characters.
Speaker 1: There's the hero, the Anti Hero, the love interest in
Speaker 1: the buddy, and this pops up everywhere, from married with
Speaker 1: children to Seinfeld. But then obviously, of course people have
Speaker 1: toyed with that because there were six friends. I think
Speaker 1: there were six characters. On how I met your mother.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of them on Big Bang theory. The
Speaker 1: Simpsons are far and away one of the best sitcoms
Speaker 1: ever and they have myriad characters who can have their
Speaker 1: own episodes based on them. So, for in the family, though,
Speaker 1: that's true. So so that seems to be kind of
Speaker 1: the nucleus that everything else grows from. As far as
Speaker 1: the number of CA yeah, I was looking back at
Speaker 1: the fourth thing and it is interesting because you look
Speaker 1: at Seinfeld and all in the family. I Love Lucy
Speaker 1: had the two couples. The honeymooners had the two couples.
Speaker 1: I think Dick Van Dyke had two couples as well. Well,
Speaker 1: he had himself and Laura Petrie's wife, Mary Tyler Moore,
Speaker 1: and then he had Rosemarie, I can't remember what her
Speaker 1: character's name was, and then I can't remember what. So
Speaker 1: he worked with a woman and a man and they
Speaker 1: formed the other two characters. Right, right, right. They weren't
Speaker 1: a couple, though, right, no, they weren't. They were just buddies.
Speaker 1: All right, it's been a while since I've seen that,
Speaker 1: but they all had sex with each other. Right. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: in every episode they would end. It got really graphic,
Speaker 1: especially for the fifth you think got very weird. Uh.
Speaker 1: As far as the format goes, there is UH, like
Speaker 1: if you're a screenwriter or you're reading a script of
Speaker 1: a of a Sitcom. I mean scripts are formulaic no
Speaker 1: matter what, but Sitcom scripts are really, really formulaic, uh,
Speaker 1: in that they are twenty two minutes long. The there's
Speaker 1: an a storyline, which is, you know, sort of the
Speaker 1: main plot of that episode. Uh, and then you have
Speaker 1: at least a B storyline, Um, and sometimes that's it,
Speaker 1: but sometimes you'll have c storylines, maybe even a D storyline.
Speaker 1: But kind of traditionally you've got an a and a
Speaker 1: B and Ed points out that, and he's kind of
Speaker 1: right in some ways, that generally the storylines are resolved
Speaker 1: in each episode. But over the years that really sort
Speaker 1: of fluctuated as far as you had running plot lines
Speaker 1: that would last kind of a season, whether it's are
Speaker 1: this character and that character going to get together or
Speaker 1: one might get pregnant and so that season sort of
Speaker 1: has a recurring storyline about them having a baby. But
Speaker 1: generally what you wanted in a Sitcom was to be
Speaker 1: able to watch them in any order and still enjoy
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah, like if you if you watch any
Speaker 1: episode of Gilligan's island or Mr ed or even the
Speaker 1: Adams family. Like there's you can watch them in any
Speaker 1: order and there every episode is going to make sense
Speaker 1: because they were generally designed to stand alone, featuring the
Speaker 1: same characters and the way that they do that. I
Speaker 1: saw there's two TV tropes associated with this chuck. One
Speaker 1: is the reset button, which is where that dilemma or
Speaker 1: situation that characters are put in becomes fully resolved by
Speaker 1: the end of the episode and things go back to normal.
Speaker 1: That's the reset button. Then there's a snap back where
Speaker 1: things aren't necessarily resolved, but in the next, next episode
Speaker 1: everything's back to normal regardless, as if nothing happened previously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean occasionally he might hear a reference, but sitcoms
Speaker 1: are famous, like you never heard Arnold and Willis in
Speaker 1: subsequent seasons saying Hey, remember that time we were almost molested?
Speaker 1: That was crazy. Yeah, they don't reference that stuff. No,
Speaker 1: and then we'll get a little more into like those
Speaker 1: kind of serious episodes of Sitcoms, because those were landmark
Speaker 1: episodes for a reason. But the reset is is a
Speaker 1: pretty funny trope, I think, totally Um and then there's
Speaker 1: really a big distinction in how they're shot. There's really
Speaker 1: two ways that they're shot and they're they're kind of
Speaker 1: wrapped up, or there named, I should say, by the
Speaker 1: original ways that these sitcoms were shot, and they're called, Um,
Speaker 1: one camera or three camera, and you would think that
Speaker 1: three camera would seem like the more innovative, expansive kind
Speaker 1: of sitcomment. Is Actually the opposite. The three camera one
Speaker 1: is what the traditional Sitcom is, is filmed, is right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they kind of say multi camera these days. But
Speaker 1: if you're talking about the old school live in front
Speaker 1: of a studio audience, uh, what you have is this,
Speaker 1: and I have to bring up the fact that I
Speaker 1: was on one. I was on dear John, I was
Speaker 1: on one too. Were you really well? So if you
Speaker 1: should know, yeah, alr, I guess I was on two then. UH, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: ours was. We'll talk about ours in a minute. But Um,
Speaker 1: if you're talking the live in front of a studio
Speaker 1: audience thing, what you have is very long, wide stage
Speaker 1: with bleachers where people sit, and then in front of
Speaker 1: that you have usually two or three permanent sets, uh,
Speaker 1: and what's called a swing set, which they would bring
Speaker 1: in each week. So what's the swing set. Well, on
Speaker 1: like let's say cheers, would have always, of course, the
Speaker 1: bar and then like Sam's office, were probably permanent sets
Speaker 1: and a swing set might be like if that episode
Speaker 1: they dined out at a restaurant or something like that.
Speaker 1: So it's something that you could like. It's kind of generic.
Speaker 1: You could strip down and repurpose it in many different ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they bring in these set walls and redress them,
Speaker 1: but like let's say Seinfeld, obviously would be Jerry's apartment
Speaker 1: and the diner would be the permanent sets and if,
Speaker 1: like the season where George worked for the Yankees, his
Speaker 1: his office set would be a swing set. That would
Speaker 1: be just sort of stored and wheeled off and preserved,
Speaker 1: because you want to you don't want to have to
Speaker 1: Redo all that stuff every time. But sometimes it was
Speaker 1: just like one week only it would be like an
Speaker 1: antique shop or something. Or in my case on dear John,
Speaker 1: it was a restaurant, uh that I played a bus
Speaker 1: boy in, and I was texting with my brother, actually,
Speaker 1: Scott has a you know, he worked on dear John
Speaker 1: and had a lot of experience on some of these shows,
Speaker 1: and he said there were always at least two permanent sets.
Speaker 1: He said some shows had as many as four. I
Speaker 1: think he thought UH was one with Charlie Sheen that
Speaker 1: I never watched. UH, two and a half men? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he said two and a half men had
Speaker 1: what he thought was four permanent sets, and it all
Speaker 1: kind of depended on how big these the stages were,
Speaker 1: where they shot it, Um, and also how how well
Speaker 1: funded the the show was too. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then like something like Seinfeld, they all the street
Speaker 1: scenes and stuff like that. They shot those on the
Speaker 1: adjacent backlots and in when they shot the real shows, uh,
Speaker 1: in front of an audience, they would they would show
Speaker 1: those bits on the TV screen while they're like changing over,
Speaker 1: just so the audience would sort of be able to
Speaker 1: all along. Oh, Gotcha. Okay, so we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: more about the different camera setups. Right. That just that
Speaker 1: distinguished the two basically the two types of sitcoms. A
Speaker 1: little more in a minute. But do you want to
Speaker 1: talk about the origins of Sitcoms? Yeah, should we take
Speaker 1: a break, like Sitcom style? Okay, let's do it. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back after this word from Ben Gay. I
Speaker 1: want to learn about a terrestortic college for it Actyl,
Speaker 1: how to take the perfect but with all about fractals,
Speaker 1: think it's gone. That's a hun the Lizzie border murders,
Speaker 1: and again I've all runs on the plane. Everything we
Speaker 1: should know. Word up, Jerry George. Okay, we're back and
Speaker 1: we're talking sitcoms and everybody thinks TV when you think
Speaker 1: of Sitcoms, but it turns out that sitcoms have their
Speaker 1: origin further back in that uh on, in radio, and
Speaker 1: actually it goes even further back than that to Vaudeville.
Speaker 1: But the first even contours of a Sitcom is found
Speaker 1: in a radio show called Sam and Henry, which became
Speaker 1: much more famous after it changed its name to Amos
Speaker 1: and Andy, and a lot of people say that was
Speaker 1: probably the first Sitcom because it had recurring characters. There
Speaker 1: were situations that the characters were put in catch phrases.
Speaker 1: That's another big, you know, kind of trademark of of sitcoms.
Speaker 1: If you can get America saying like one of your
Speaker 1: characters saying to one another like you've got a hit
Speaker 1: show on your hands. You know, get a load of him.
Speaker 1: It was always something dumb like that, I guess. Oh Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: uh like Sanford and son had to be Elizabeth. I'm
Speaker 1: coming to join you, are you big dummy, you big dummy.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, I love that Joe so much. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a good show, I believe some I mean there's you
Speaker 1: talked to different people about sort of what the first
Speaker 1: sitcoms were and you're gonna get some different answers. Uh.
Speaker 1: One is certainly going to be one called fiber, McGee
Speaker 1: and molly, and it had again, all the ingredients that
Speaker 1: you might think of as like typically Sitcom, although that
Speaker 1: was a radio show that only had a brief appearance
Speaker 1: on television. Uh, and he had shows like the honeymooners,
Speaker 1: of course, one called Mary Kay and Johnny H that
Speaker 1: a lot of people say was the first Sitcom. That's
Speaker 1: where I put my money. Yeah, but when you ask
Speaker 1: a lot of people what really broke it open as
Speaker 1: far as the genre goes, I think most people will
Speaker 1: say I love Lucy for sure, which I think debutede
Speaker 1: and it changed everything. Is We'll talk about in a second.
Speaker 1: But we have to shout out pin rights progress, which
Speaker 1: was a BBC Sitcom that air did nineteen six so
Speaker 1: it beat Mary Kay and Johnny by a year. But
Speaker 1: no one knows what it's about because no one, no
Speaker 1: one preserved any of the episodes. Yeah, it's funny. It
Speaker 1: seems like the UK and the United States are far
Speaker 1: and away the leaders in the genre, because I did
Speaker 1: look at other countries. It's never been that big in Australia.
Speaker 1: I mean there are examples, of course, but the UK
Speaker 1: and the US just ate it up for some reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like dueling banjos. Yeah, who's the guitar player and
Speaker 1: WHO's the Banjo player? I think it changes from time
Speaker 1: to time depending on the quality of the shows put out.
Speaker 1: But I said something check that I think is really
Speaker 1: important pin rights progress. I it's probably a falsity to
Speaker 1: say that no one knows what it is about, but
Speaker 1: I don't believe there's anyone alive, probably never heard of it,
Speaker 1: who's seen it. I hadn't heard of it either. The
Speaker 1: reason why no one's seen it is because in the
Speaker 1: early days of television, we're talking like the late forties,
Speaker 1: um even mid forties, they would just broadcast the thing
Speaker 1: live and you sat down in front of your TV
Speaker 1: and you watched that thing and it never existed again.
Speaker 1: It's kind of thing that. Yeah, our friend Alex from
Speaker 1: ephemeral has probably done an episode on this kind the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: great show, by the way. Everyone should check that out.
Speaker 1: But that's how they that's how they made shows originally right.
Speaker 1: And then finally they're like, okay, we've got two coasts here.
Speaker 1: Most TV shows were broadcast in New York, filmed in
Speaker 1: New York live, but you know, they were at like
Speaker 1: say eight pm on a Friday, and most Angelino's in
Speaker 1: San Franciscan's didn't want to rush home from work to catch,
Speaker 1: you know, the latest Um Mary Kay and Johnny. So
Speaker 1: they figured out that they needed to somehow preserve that
Speaker 1: show so that they could send it off to the
Speaker 1: West Coast and they came up with something called kinescope,
Speaker 1: the lowest hanging fruit they could have reached. Some some
Speaker 1: executive said, why don't we just show it on a
Speaker 1: TV and then film that television screen with a camera,
Speaker 1: with a thirty five millimeter film camera, and the frame
Speaker 1: rates are gonna be weird and it's gonna look terrible,
Speaker 1: but at least we can broadcast it on the west coast.
Speaker 1: And they did that for a while and that was
Speaker 1: sort of the first Um, the first time that the
Speaker 1: that they were both coasts were able to watch the
Speaker 1: same show. Yeah, and Chuck, it sounds clugy. It gets
Speaker 1: even clugier at like at first there was no way
Speaker 1: to actually broadcast from the east coast of the West
Speaker 1: Coast vice versa, for the first few years of television.
Speaker 1: So they would film that, that show off of TV
Speaker 1: onto film and then they would take that real and
Speaker 1: mail it out west for them to show. And then
Speaker 1: finally in n a t and t came up with
Speaker 1: a coaxial cable that allowed for the first transcontinental broadcast.
Speaker 1: But even still they were using kinescope and they used
Speaker 1: sometimes what was called hot kinescope because the film had
Speaker 1: just been developed within the three hours before they needed
Speaker 1: to broadcast it to the West Coast. That's how fast
Speaker 1: they were turning it around. Man, I bet there was
Speaker 1: a lot of tension, yes, to turn that stuff around,
Speaker 1: you know, and they didn't even have cocaine in the
Speaker 1: industry yet. They were just taking it as a medicine
Speaker 1: at the time. That's true. Yeah, uh. So when what
Speaker 1: really broke things open and what, as a landmark show, both,
Speaker 1: you know, as a comedy and technically, was I love
Speaker 1: Lucy and I looked a little bit more into this. Uh,
Speaker 1: while they developed this three camera set up. Um, it
Speaker 1: was because of Philip Morris. They were the sponsor of
Speaker 1: the show and they didn't want Um. They thought that
Speaker 1: there were more smokers. Well, I think they had dated
Speaker 1: that said that more people smoked east of Chicago. Apparently
Speaker 1: out West it. I mean, obviously people smoked back then,
Speaker 1: but not like they did in the northeast and on
Speaker 1: the East Coast. So they didn't want the show to
Speaker 1: be shot and produced live in Hollywood. That's why they
Speaker 1: really wanted it in New York City. Um, at the
Speaker 1: same time, Desi Arnez and Lucy, I think lucy was pregnant.
Speaker 1: They also wanted uh to stay in L A. So
Speaker 1: there was a bit of a budding head situation of
Speaker 1: sponsor versus is like a TV star, and they worked
Speaker 1: it out with this three camera format. Yeah, so essentially
Speaker 1: what they did. So movies were already around at the
Speaker 1: time and there was a process for making a movie
Speaker 1: where you would shoot a scene, taking a few takes
Speaker 1: of it, then you would move your camera, relight the scene,
Speaker 1: Um and then do the same scene from a different
Speaker 1: angle and so on. And so forth, until you had
Speaker 1: the scene and all those things could be edited together.
Speaker 1: But Lucy and Dezi really wanted to have a live audience,
Speaker 1: to have that energy and that kind of feedback, in
Speaker 1: that laughter that you can only get from a live audience.
Speaker 1: So they combined that movie making, Um kind of format
Speaker 1: with a live performance, and they did it by making
Speaker 1: three static cameras, one wide, one medium and one for
Speaker 1: close ups, that they had pointed at the set that
Speaker 1: they would perform this episode on as if it were
Speaker 1: like a live stage play. Yeah, and they got in
Speaker 1: touch with a guy, an Oscar winning cinematographer and kind
Speaker 1: of a genius, named Carl Freud, and he at first
Speaker 1: was like this isn't possible, because he was an artist,
Speaker 1: and he was like you, it's gonna look at least
Speaker 1: one of the cameras is gonna look bad at all
Speaker 1: times because you're not lighting for that camera. And they said,
Speaker 1: you gotta work with this buddy, like you can't be
Speaker 1: so precious, like it's a movie. UH, we're not shooting
Speaker 1: the Maltese Falcon here. Um, we need to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to do this. So they came up with
Speaker 1: this grid lighting system when you're shooting a movie or
Speaker 1: when you're shooting single camera TV shows, even though these
Speaker 1: days these multi cameras on basically everything, ever since digital
Speaker 1: came out, but they still call it single camera. You would,
Speaker 1: and we've been on these shows where you have lights
Speaker 1: on stands kind of right around what you're shooting. They
Speaker 1: came up with this grid style system where everything was
Speaker 1: lit from this lighting grid above the stage and it
Speaker 1: didn't look as good. It was sort of flat, but
Speaker 1: it it was all lit well enough to where it
Speaker 1: looked okay, and Carl Freud kind of gave in and said,
Speaker 1: you know, this is what we're gonna do with TV.
Speaker 1: Then it makes sense. We can cover everything all at once,
Speaker 1: and basically the sort of basis of the genre was born. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like everything from Seinfeld to friends to frazier to cheers,
Speaker 1: they were all filmed as three camera and now, like
Speaker 1: you said, they call it multi camera sitcoms Um. That
Speaker 1: is like the traditional Sitcom, and you can ultimately thank
Speaker 1: Lucy and desi for that, whereas the one cameras Sitcom
Speaker 1: is the one that you think of as more it's
Speaker 1: made more like a film. There's more real world, there's
Speaker 1: more Um you know, uh, like on location shooting, it
Speaker 1: just seems a little more movie like, like arrested development
Speaker 1: is a good example of a single camera Sitcom. But, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I want to give a little shout out here because
Speaker 1: everybody thanks Lucy and Desi for everything, for basically creating
Speaker 1: the format. But, Mary Kay and Johnny, we're doing this
Speaker 1: before Lucy and desire camera. They had two cameras. They
Speaker 1: were doing it live and they had some poor Schmo
Speaker 1: who was switching between cameras depending on what was happening
Speaker 1: in the scene live. Can you imagine the stress? That's
Speaker 1: pretty cool that the you know, just having been on
Speaker 1: dear John, that they have it down so well in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: even though that kind of show is sort of out
Speaker 1: of fashion now. During the heyday, you know, they those
Speaker 1: cameras were on these huge circular dollies and the cameras
Speaker 1: were very big and they would just so fluidly sort
Speaker 1: of move around to where they you know, they block
Speaker 1: it all lot ahead of time so they knew exactly
Speaker 1: where each camera was supposed to be, and the result
Speaker 1: is you shoot a twenty two minute episode in about
Speaker 1: an hour. Or less. Uh, you shoot it in order
Speaker 1: so the audience can follow along like a play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like a play. Yeah, and you would, Um, you
Speaker 1: would go back generally at the end of each scene.
Speaker 1: They would do like all right, uh, they would. There
Speaker 1: would be a few minutes of conferring, like and then
Speaker 1: they come out and say, all right, we're gonna do
Speaker 1: a retake of the second part of that scene because
Speaker 1: we didn't like the way Jennifer Aniston said this one line,
Speaker 1: and they would all laugh and she would say sorry, everybody,
Speaker 1: and it's a very personal, like engaging thing. Like if
Speaker 1: you never, if you've never been to a live taping
Speaker 1: of a TV show like that, even though they're more
Speaker 1: few and far between, it's a lot of fun to
Speaker 1: go to because they're right there, they're interacting with you.
Speaker 1: If they goof up, they'll like say something to the
Speaker 1: audience and it's just it's a really cool experience. But
Speaker 1: the long and short is they'll they'll be done pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: even with the retakes right. So the more the multi camera,
Speaker 1: three camera setup is like a stage play. There's a
Speaker 1: fixed set or a couple of fixed sets, there's a
Speaker 1: live studio audience and they present it basically as if
Speaker 1: they were putting on a play. There's just a bunch
Speaker 1: of cameras filming them while they do that's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: the clock tells me we need to take our second break. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do it quick, quick, quick. The good folks have
Speaker 1: been gay. Aren't gonna wait. I want to learn about al.
Speaker 1: Had to take a perfect but with all about fractal
Speaker 1: Kiscon that the hunt the lizzie border murders and they
Speaker 1: kind of all run on the plane everything. This time
Speaker 1: we should know. Word up, Jerry stry George. All right,
Speaker 1: I guess we should wrap up this episode with a
Speaker 1: little bit about what is the gold standard for actors
Speaker 1: and crew members in the film business and always has been.
Speaker 1: I know they love to work on their super cool
Speaker 1: streaming shows that are like movies. Prestige TV is great,
Speaker 1: but you ask any actor what they would rather be
Speaker 1: doing and they would say, I want to be on
Speaker 1: a multi camera live studio audience show. Because I work
Speaker 1: about forty hours a week. I show up to work
Speaker 1: at about eight o'clock every morning, I leave at five
Speaker 1: o'clock every day and we work Monday through Friday, and
Speaker 1: it's uh, we shoot twenty two, at least twenty two
Speaker 1: episodes and if we get to a hundred it has
Speaker 1: a good chance of going in syndication and then I'm
Speaker 1: set for life. Yeah, that seems to be like the
Speaker 1: sweet spot for syndication. Eighty five to a hundred previous
Speaker 1: episodes produced and aired, and I guess, my guess is
Speaker 1: that that that means that the syndicating buyer feels like
Speaker 1: they have enough reruns to really make some hay out
Speaker 1: of or make their money back from. Is that what
Speaker 1: this why is the sweet spot? I think so. It's
Speaker 1: like four to five seasons. Dear John Scott said that
Speaker 1: that hit eighty episodes and did have a brief syndication run.
Speaker 1: That he said at the time one hundred was really
Speaker 1: what they kind of shot for. It's still in syndication.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what channel happened, but I watched an
Speaker 1: episode or two of it not too long ago. was
Speaker 1: looking for you but didn't see you. You didn't see
Speaker 1: a handsome young buss boy. But no, not yet. But
Speaker 1: it it is like a surprisingly good unsung show. Like
Speaker 1: it was. It had really good writing, the characters were
Speaker 1: really tight. It was a good, good show, for sure. Agreed. Uh.
Speaker 1: So should we go over kind of the weekly schedule. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So Ed uh ignores Monday and Tuesday for some reason.
Speaker 1: But uh, as someone who who worked on a show
Speaker 1: and I had talked to Scott about it too. Um,
Speaker 1: Monday's is generally when you get a table read Um,
Speaker 1: and you know what that is, because we were luckily
Speaker 1: enough to go to a Simpson's table read man. Thank
Speaker 1: you again to our friend Jesse, who got us in there.
Speaker 1: One of the nicest things anyone's ever done and and
Speaker 1: coolest experiences in my life. Like easily. Uh. So this
Speaker 1: is when the actors and the director and the writers
Speaker 1: all sit down at a big long table and they
Speaker 1: just read through the script. They make little notes and
Speaker 1: make little changes and that's just sort of the first
Speaker 1: read through of the week. Um, while this is going
Speaker 1: on on Monday and Tuesday, they're doing, uh, costume fittings
Speaker 1: and stuff during the day. UH, they're off to the
Speaker 1: side the art department in the props, building the swing
Speaker 1: sets and sort of get all that ready and then
Speaker 1: we hit Wednesday. So, yeah, Wednesday is where everything kind
Speaker 1: of picks up as far as ED is concerned. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's when they really start, Um, you know, trying
Speaker 1: out the script. There's no lighting, there's no cameras, but
Speaker 1: the directors taking mad notes all over it, Um, and
Speaker 1: just basically putting this initial lump of script into, you know,
Speaker 1: actual order and then getting ready for Thursday when they
Speaker 1: do bring in like the lights and the cameras and
Speaker 1: start setting up and trying technical rehearsals. Yeah, and just
Speaker 1: to be clear, on Wednesday they're not at the table,
Speaker 1: they're they're moving through the sets at this point, which
Speaker 1: is the real differentiator. That is a big differentiator. And
Speaker 1: then one other thing I want to point out. When
Speaker 1: they bring in the cameras and the lighting and all that,
Speaker 1: if you think back to I love Lucy um or
Speaker 1: Mary Kay and Johnny, if you want to go even
Speaker 1: further back, for my money, Um, you're talking about static
Speaker 1: cameras that are in one place, and so it's the
Speaker 1: actors that have to move into exactly the right positions
Speaker 1: exactly the right time and look in exactly the right
Speaker 1: direction to get that close up or that medium shot
Speaker 1: or the wide shot exactly how it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: That is mind bogglingly difficult. And they did this every week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we had to do that. It's called blocking. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you can't stand six inches away from where you're
Speaker 1: supposed to stand or it'll look goofy. So they have
Speaker 1: the camera department. UH, they put tape on the floor
Speaker 1: and every actor generally has their own color tape so
Speaker 1: you know where to go. And the trick as an
Speaker 1: actor is to be able to go and hit your
Speaker 1: mark without looking like you're trying to hit your mark.
Speaker 1: And some people are great at it. George Clooney has
Speaker 1: this great story about I think it was Spencer Tracy
Speaker 1: who would be obvious about it, and he said if
Speaker 1: you go back and look at Spencer Tracy movies, he
Speaker 1: would walk in and right before he got to his mark,
Speaker 1: he would just look straight down at the floor and
Speaker 1: kind of go huh and take a deep breath and
Speaker 1: look up where he's supposed to but he played it
Speaker 1: off like that was just a something the character would do. Well,
Speaker 1: plus he's just that likable too. I think, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty fun. Hitting your marks is not easy and, uh,
Speaker 1: we screwed it up all the time because we didn't
Speaker 1: know what we were doing. Oh yeah, I considered it
Speaker 1: a form of ad living until you finally were like, Dude,
Speaker 1: you have to be. It's really important that you be
Speaker 1: in the spot they tell you to be. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty funny. Um. So are we at Friday yet? Um,
Speaker 1: I think Thursday. Did you mention Thursdays when they actually
Speaker 1: light it and they're blocking with the camera and everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I think that night there was a dress rehearsal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they would do a full dress without the cameras. And
Speaker 1: then Friday is basically like game time because you're gonna
Speaker 1: shoot it that night. UH, they shoot it in prime
Speaker 1: time in the evening, but they go through like the
Speaker 1: full dress, full lighting, full camera and all that stuff
Speaker 1: during the day. Right, okay. So then, Um, Friday afternoon
Speaker 1: there's tons of rehearsals. Um, and then Friday night, apparently
Speaker 1: at eight PM. And Chuck, was this just I love Lucy,
Speaker 1: or is this a standard for the industry? I seem
Speaker 1: to remember it being more like seven ish, but Um,
Speaker 1: it may have differed for each show because, you know,
Speaker 1: you got to fill up the audience. There's a warm
Speaker 1: up comedian that comes out and gets everyone in the
Speaker 1: laughing mood. So it may have been eight. And then also,
Speaker 1: don't some sitcoms now film multiple episodes in a single
Speaker 1: day if they can. Well not. Not shows like this,
Speaker 1: not live in front of studio audience. Just want it done.
Speaker 1: So Friday night at seven or eight they would actually
Speaker 1: film the episode and then they would take the film
Speaker 1: from the three different cameras, I love Lucy Wood, and
Speaker 1: they'd edit it together and there you go. You'd have
Speaker 1: an episode that was filmed live in front of a
Speaker 1: studio audience, but was filmed to tape so that it
Speaker 1: could be rerun in perpetuity forever and ever. That's right,
Speaker 1: and the cast comes out at the end and takes
Speaker 1: a big bow and it really is like seeing a play.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of fun. Highly encourage anyone. You know
Speaker 1: it's a, I guess, sort of a touristy thing to do,
Speaker 1: but if you ever go to l a UH, see
Speaker 1: if you can get in and see a Sitcom being shot.
Speaker 1: It's really, really fun, very nice. So I guess here
Speaker 1: in episode one of our very special two part episode
Speaker 1: on Sitcom. So don't you think? I think so. Okay, well, everybody,
Speaker 1: we'll see you on Thursday and in the meantime, don't
Speaker 1: forget to listen out for the short stuff on laugh
Speaker 1: tracks coming out tomorrow. Alright, intrusive comform. We're not too
Speaker 1: happy with the beginning of that last section. Uh, everyone
Speaker 1: in the audience, so I think we should just go
Speaker 1: ahead and retake that. Yeah, sorry, Ladies and Gentlemen, was
Speaker 1: my fault. So Ed helped us put this together again
Speaker 1: and of course he goes through the weekly schedule of
Speaker 1: how to do a Sitcom, but for some reason he
Speaker 1: kind of left out Monday and Tuesday. Ed Don't like
Speaker 1: Mondays or Tuesday's. Thanks everyone, on behalf of Chuck, Jerry
Speaker 1: and I. You've been a wonderful studio audience. We'll see
Speaker 1: you next week. Stuff you should know is a production
Speaker 1: of I heart radio. For more podcasts my heart radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. M HM