>>Narration: In the trade it's known as laugh sweetening and this man, Carroll Pratt, is known
as the sultan of sweet. He's the best in the business and that box he's wheeling around
is his fortune. Inside Carroll's laugh machine are ten tape players containing gasps
guffaws chuckles applause the works. On top of the console are 40 buttons that Carroll
plays like a virtuoso conductor. Watch him warm up for a sweetening session on the sitcom, Webster.
Once he's hooked up and his laugh orchestra tuned, Pratt and Webster producer Bruce
Johnson watch the show scene by scene as it was recorded with the natural studio laughter.
[music]
>>Is this for real, Larry?
>>Narration: Usually Pratt has a free hand in deciding where the new laughs will go.
Here's the same scene sweetened.
[music]
[laughter]
[big laughter]
>>Carroll Pratt: The laughs are arranged horizontally across the keyboard from a very small laugh
[laughter]
up to what we would have is probably our largest laugh today.
[big laughter]
>>That's the boffo laugh huh? >>Right and of course there are combinations and
you might want to build an innuendo from something small and...
[laughter]
as a slow build or a sight impact laugh.
[laughter]
>>Narration: Laugh sweetening is not only used to increase laughter on a sitcom
but serves a purely technical purpose as well.
>>Bruce Johnson: A lot of times in editing or in pickups uh which is reshooting scenes
after the audience has gone home for technical reasons, usually uh pardon me
he'll bridge those gaps uh sometimes in editing we choose to pull up the picture
therefore cutting off the laugh, up-cutting the picture uh he'll smooth that out.
>>Let's give a little uh [indistinct] your pushing it >>Oh, okay
>>Pratt: I went into this with a feeling that laugh tracks were really a bad thing
but I'm convinced that correctly done where it doesn't antagonize the audience
by being overdone or pushy a laugh track does help the enjoyment.
>>Narration: For a laugh man the trick is to identify with the viewer
and Pratt is highly regarded in the business for doing just that.
>>Johnson: One of the reasons that Carroll is the best is he brings the objectivity and he
will stop himself and regulate himself and ask to do it over.
He'll ask Larry, can we stop and can we go back and do it over.
I was too much. My timing was off. He is uh very honestly self-critical.
>>How about a book?
[laughter]
>>You're pushing it!
[laughter]
>>Pratt: For years it was felt that if you have a laugh machine use it to the hilt.
If a little bit is good a lot is better. And little by little the American
public became so sophisticated they knew it was happening and it uh it called
for a lessening and I think, what 20 years later we are, we're softening the laugh track and
being a little, a little more honest in our approach.
>>Narration: Some viewers find laugh tracks obnoxious and hope that the need for
canned laughter will pass. That doesn't seem likely. Meanwhile Carroll Pratt's off to another
session and at one hundred dollars an hour he's smiling all the way.