Fandom High School

"Not all comedy on TV is fiction," Mitchell began. For some godforsaken reason, he'd thought it was a good idea to take them out onto the dorm lawn for class today. He had his reasons. "Actually, the medium allows a lot of reflection on what's going on right then and there in the world, because as far as visual media goes, the internet is the only thing faster than the telly."

In some senses, anyway.

"They can respond to anything that happens in the news almost instantly. Like sports." Grin. "So we're going for something a bit recent now. Apres Match, since it's football season." Beat. "Proper football. I want you lot to watch the next few clips, and then... take a jersey--" He pointed at the stack of red-and-blue jerseys by his side, "--the ball, and play some football. If you can't work out the rules, just... pay attention to the program."

Another slight pause. "But play nice. I don't want this turning into the Battle of Nuremberg."

"We'll be talking about the difference between multiple-camera and single-camera sitcoms today," Mitchell announced to the class. You know, in case they wanted to know that.

There was very little out of the ordinary about this, beyond the fact that the entire class had been asked to meet on the beach. Mitchell had brought in some beanbags (and, all right, gotten some of the cleaning staff to help out), a laptop balancing on the prime beanbag.

There was also tea and coffee.

"For a long while, sitcoms were recorded in front of a studio audience, like you," he continued. "To best splice that up into something you could actually show on television, they simply put multiple cameras up above the stage, so they could alternate between different viewpoints. The audience's laughter was also recorded, so it could be put under the action going on on screen to show where the jokes were, and get the people watching at home to laugh along." A pause. "In theory, at least. More and more, companies started filming things in this set-up without an audience, and adding in canned laughter afterward. Sometimes, that led to really stupid jokes. Here's a hint for aspiring directors: putting canned laughter in after a line doesn't make that line funny."

He rubbed his hands together. "This became the accepted standard for a long while, although there were several series shot with a single-camera set-up in the 1960s. But as time went on, if you were filming a comedy, you were going to do it with multiple cameras. You had your abberations, sure. Every once in a while, a sitcom would come along, big or small, that used a single camera. Near the end of the 90's, people were starting to chafe at the bit. The Evening Sports came on; they used a single camera. After them, Chris in the Center came around. With that one, Pandora's Box had been opened. Multiple-camera sitcoms became far less plentiful, the laugh track was thrown out the window, and a more filmic approach to comedy was chosen."

He patted the laptop. "I'm going to show you three clips," he said, "And I want you to tell me what the chosen camera set-up does for the story. A while back, I asked you all to find something in your life you could make a sitcom about. Which camera set-up would you use, you think?"

"And this week, we're starting with the actual comedy," Mitchell said, without really seguing much. "Not to disparage anyone's jokes, but I think some of you are dearly in need of some education."

He clapped his hands.

"Let's start at the beginning," he said. "Like most genres in television, the TV comedy was birthed from the radio tradition. In fact, in the old days, some sitcoms on TV ran concurrent with similar shows on the radio, such as Hancock's Half Hour. Sadly, a lot of these series have been lost, such as Pinwright's Progress, which was never recorded in a fashion it could be recovered in."

Mitchell had seen it. Not that he'd brag about it.

"So sadly, we have to look to the sixties for the real material. If you stay in Britain, at least. The 'sitcom', the situational comedy, was always the most prevalent kind of TV comedy. The other two options were stand-up and sketch comedy; the former involved a single person, sometimes two, talking to the audience. The second involved unrelated short bits of comedy, stuffed into a single show. Like meta for Monty Python, but we'll be getting to that next week. Sitcoms, on the other hand, had a consistent storyline set in a situational background. Like a family, or a business."

He pushed himself up out of his chair. "So much for the boring background," he said, "We're here to watch TV, right? Early fifties, and the sixties. We'll show some examples of British and American sitcoms and see about the differences."

Beat.

"And then I want you all to tell me which part of your life would work the best as a sitcom. Just for the fun of it."

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