Acquired
01:34:33 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:34:33] S1: We're doing nonfiction storytelling. Yes. [01:34:36] S0: Yes. It is an incredibly specialized skill to be able to not spoil the interwoven place where the storylines converge, but make them all funny along the way and make all the payoff happen at all the right time. But it's a thing they figured out that no one else ever did before. [01:34:56] S1: I think I can tell you why. This is how every truly great stand up routine [01:35:02] S0: ends. Yeah. [01:35:04] S1: This is where they're coming from. This is the DNA of the show. [01:35:06] S0: The callbacks to the other jokes. [01:35:08] S1: Yeah. Yeah. At the end of a truly, truly great stand up routine, there's a moment where you realize that everything throughout the whole twenty minutes or sixty minutes always interwoven and building to this moment. Yes. And that's what they do with the TV show. [01:35:23] S0: No situation is, is there for filler. Nothing nothing wasted. [01:35:27] S1: Yep. [01:35:27] S0: So that sort of takes us to what else makes this show different. We've talked about the fact that they are despicable characters, which is not, like, novel now. A lot of people figured out, you know, we can put Michael Scott on TV, deeply flawed characters who aren't just like, oh, dad Yep. That never learn from their mistakes. [01:35:46] S1: That's thanks to Seinfeld that Right. People can
01:35:46 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:35:46] S1: That's thanks to Seinfeld that Right. People can [01:35:48] S0: do that now. You know, they're neurotic. Every situation that they're in is largely their own fault for getting into it. That's super relatable. But there's a lot of structural things about the show also, like the interwoven plot lines that make it unique and that are difficult to pull off and that were just novel. So a typical sitcom that has a two act structure has seven scenes. That's it in twenty two minutes. Seinfeld, first of all, was two to three times as many. So you'd have 14 to 25 scenes per episode, but they just threw out the act structure. Right. Plots often don't dissolve. [01:36:29] S1: Yeah. [01:36:29] S0: Yes. On the set, they... Actually, Larry originally wanted it to be single cam instead of a multicam setup to basically resemble a movie. And for anyone who's unfamiliar, multicam is sort of a proscenium style show where you have sets and you have four cameras, and they're all catching the same action. You might be able to get away with only running the action once because you're catching it from every angle, and you're just lighting it. It's gonna be really bright, but you're lighting it from every angle so that any of the four cameras at any given time kinda works. [01:37:02] S1: Yep. It's like theater.
01:37:02 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:37:02] S1: Yep. It's like theater. [01:37:03] S0: Single cam is, probably more expensive because you have to run the action multiple times. You probably have to relight it every time you're shooting it from a different angle. So if you're shooting character a and then the next run through, you're gonna shoot character b, there's a pause and relight step. It has kind of a more cinematic feel. NBC was able to push back enough to say we're not doing single cam for this show, but they brought in a lot of single camera elements to it. So it it did have more filmic lighting. It often used a pretty high number of location shoots for a sitcom where they would actually not shoot it on the stage that had the sets that were prebuilt for Jerry's apartment, for the coffee shop. [01:37:45] S1: Think about the number of Seinfeld scenes that are out on the street or in Central Park or in an airport or in some other location. [01:37:51] S0: Right. And that adds all this expense of packing up the whole cast and crew and getting them out there, especially when you're you're shooting every week. They borrowed a lot from cinema that was uncommon on TV at the time. It's not overacted. I think in a lot of sitcoms when I watch them today, anything pre Seinfeld, I'm like, oh my god. It's so overdone. Like, stop selling me on your fake emotion. Seinfeld is not that. In fact, Jerry can barely act, and he's laughing through the entire thing. But since it's the situation that's funny, it totally plays. And I think Jerry's chuckle kinda, like, is a cue for you to laugh along with him.
01:37:51 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[01:37:51] S0: Right. And that adds all this expense of packing up the whole cast and crew and getting them out there, especially when you're you're shooting every week. They borrowed a lot from cinema that was uncommon on TV at the time. It's not overacted. I think in a lot of sitcoms when I watch them today, anything pre Seinfeld, I'm like, oh my god. It's so overdone. Like, stop selling me on your fake emotion. Seinfeld is not that. In fact, Jerry can barely act, and he's laughing through the entire thing. But since it's the situation that's funny, it totally plays. And I think Jerry's chuckle kinda, like, is a cue for you to laugh along with him. [01:38:23] S1: Oh, man. The scenes with, Jerry Stiller who plays Frank Costanza, George's dad, are just... They're so good. All the other actors are just... They're cracking up, and you can tell. [01:38:33] S0: God, he's so good, Jerry Stiller. There's no artificial laugh track. So this is like a purity thing for Larry and Jerry as stand ups. If they didn't earn the laugh, they're not putting a fake laugh in. [01:38:46] S1: Right. From from the live audience that was there at [01:38:49] S0: the point. Single laugh you hear on Seinfeld is the live audience laughing at that joke. [01:38:54] S1: Yes. Even for the scenes that were recorded offset, they would play them on video screens to the live audience when they were there for the taping and then record the laughter from the screens.
01:38:54 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:38:54] S1: Yes. Even for the scenes that were recorded offset, they would play them on video screens to the live audience when they were there for the taping and then record the laughter from the screens. [01:39:06] S0: Yes. Which has two jobs. One is record the laugh, but two is they need to know if those jokes are funny, and they need to change the episode if it's not. It's like a real time feedback mechanism because these guys come from stand up. [01:39:20] S1: Yep. Exactly. [01:39:21] S0: And then the last one that I didn't really realize until last night, I was watching a bunch of episodes, and my wife and I were talking about this. It was kind of this light bulb moment for me. Seinfeld episodes are not live camera switched. They are edited in post. So, normally, what would happen is at a sitcom, you'd be sitting in a proscenium. There'd be a live audience. The actors are on the stage. There's someone at a control board saying camera a, camera b, camera c. Okay. Now back to camera a. Camera b, go in for the two shot. Great. Cut to camera b. Like, they're they're directing it. [01:39:56] S1: Right.
01:39:56 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:39:56] S1: Right. [01:39:57] S0: In Seinfeld, they they do some live switching, but that's kinda to get a feel. All of the real work is done in post, which gives them the flexibility to do two things. One, to make all the cuts much tighter. The scenes can be shorter, and you can get more scenes in and more situational jokes. And two is it lets you tell jokes you couldn't otherwise do. So if you think about the episode, the contest, where, David, you you mentioned, being master of your own domain, there's a joke where the way the joke is told is they're cutting to each of those characters, and you're seeing them lay in bed, and they're either restless and they can't sleep, or they're sleeping like a baby. And that's the joke as it cuts around. That's impossible to do in a live Switch show because there's no way to make those cuts in front of a live audience. You have to just go record all the material and then have a whole step after that of sitting there in a editing bay making the cuts be the jokes. [01:41:00] S1: And, of course, that adds production complexity and expense. It's kind of a way to get closer to the single cam Yes. Film like ethos. That's exactly right. It's hard,