Going Live
Being a producer is all about being “prepared”. We get to go step by step to make sure our show runs as smoothly as possible and then have the power to check over stories, rundowns and videos before they hit the air. We generally know what we are going to see when the show begins.
Doing a live shot is the opposite. It’s completely unpredictable, and is a risk we are accountable for up to the minute it airs…
This week our producer team originally wanted to go live in West Hollywood in front of the Halloween party set-up but then decided we’d “play it safe” and stay local in front of USC’s costume carnival. We chose an experienced reporter/producer as our talent and had a well-trained and reliable stream-box worker behind the camera. We thought we would be set.
While formatting the live shot we had to double-check that we had backup stories for each segment. If there was a potential for any glitch, we needed to have something else that we could “un-float” and fall back on. So not only was the formatting complicated in that sense, but then we also had to make sure we had everything written in clearly. We wanted our team in the field to know exactly what was going on. It was key to make sure each line was explicit.
Come show time we felt ready. We had our rundown triple-checked at that point and went to the studio looking good. Once we were on the air though it was a completely different story, the tables completely turned. As we went to go live the feed wasn’t coming through clearly, we had patchy shots coming in so decided to go back to the anchors. That’s when we found out that the anchors didn’t have their earpieces in and couldn’t hear us talking to them (big mix-up). So the anchors began reading a story that wasn’t relevant until we ended up a minute over our allotted time. The whole show was affected, and many other pieces had to be cut because of it.
Lesson learned.
I feel like this week was a challenge that we needed. But we faced it, fixed it, and learned what we can do in the future to make our live shots smoother. As always, the most important take-away is communication. Everyone needs to be on the same page, and once we are, I see our shows only getting better!
