The Greenwich Village building used as the friends’ apartment block in establishing shots

The first season was shot on Stage 5 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California.^[41] The NBC executives had worried that the coffee house setting was too hip and asked for the series to be set in a diner, but eventually consented to the coffee house concept.^[26] The opening title sequence was filmed in a fountain at the Warner Bros. Ranch at 4:00 am, while it was particularly cold for a Burbank morning.^[42] At the beginning of the second season, production moved to the larger Stage 24, which was renamed “The Friends Stage” after the series finale.^[43] Filming for the series began in the summer of 1994 in front of a live audience, who were given a summary of the series to familiarize themselves with the six main characters;^[26] a hired comedian entertained the studio audience between takes.^[15] Each 22-minute episode took six hours to film—twice the length of most sitcom tapings—mainly due to the several retakes and rewrites of the script.^[15]

Although the producers always wanted to find the right stories to take advantage of being on location, Friends was never shot in New York. Bright felt that filming outside the studio made episodes less funny, even when shooting on the lot outside, and that the live audience was an integral part of the series.^[33] When the series was criticized for incorrectly depicting New York, with the financially struggling group of friends being able to afford huge apartments, Bright noted that the set had to be big enough for the cameras, lighting, and “for the audience to be able to see what’s going on”;^[33] the apartments also needed to provide a place for the actors to execute the funny scripts.^[33] The fourth season finale was shot on location in London because the producers were aware of the series’ large following in the UK.^[33] The scenes were shot in a studio with three audiences of 500 each, the show’s largest audiences throughout its run. The fifth season finale, set in Las Vegas, was filmed at Warner Bros. Studios, although Bright encountered people who thought it was filmed on location.^[44]