Make Your Live Shot Come Alive
Given that I had never produced a live shot prior to my duties as a producer at ATVN, it was very exciting to do it for the first time. It was so exciting that I had no standards by which to abide. I kind of just wanted to incorporate as many as possible.
The first time I included live shots in our show, I decided to have all of our reporters give us live hits. Because of the importance of their stories, I thought they all deserved the urgency that viewers feel when they see a different person other than the anchor taking charge of a story right from the get-go.
That day, we had a package about the UC Berkeley student who was found dead near USC, the person of interest in the sexual battery cases and a look into what might have caused the Metro train crash that left one student hospitalized.
I knew all those stories were substantial enough to merit a live shot. By that, I mean that because some of these stories were still developing, there was a chance we could get an update on the story during the show and include it either in the live introduction or the tag.
At that point, I feel like I realized that I had a few options for every live shot. Three came to mind at that moment. I could either have a:
- live shot out in the field
- live shot in the Media Center using the roving camera
- reporter introduce his/her story live in-studio using the monitor
I decided that the missing student was the story that was in its most developmental stage, so a live shot would help deliver that message of urgency. Aside from that, the Row was buzzing with (quiet) activity regarding the Berkeley student. The type of live shot I used for the other two were interchangeable for the most part, except for one thing. I knew we had better visuals for the Metro safety story, so I thought that would benefit from the big video wall in the Media Center.
The sexual battery story didn’t have the best visuals, but it still had some important findings from which we were able to make a monitor graphic with which I was pleased.
After deciding which stories deserved a live shot and what kind of live shot, then came the tough part: rehearsing and executing them.
At around 4 p.m., hours after I had decided on the live shots, I realized live shot rehearsal would severely cut down on the time our reporters had to actually edit their packages.
We had to make sure the reporter that would be doing the live shot from the field was out the door by 5 p.m. That ended up working fine when we got a huge update on the story, which transformed her story from a package into a series of voiceovers and soundbites. This meant editing would be easier and we wouldn’t have to worry about recording a track.
For the other reporters, it didn’t make much of a difference. They both finished editing at around 5:55 p.m., which is normal. It would’ve been great to rehearse their live introductions and tags at least once, but they both did a great job on their first try. That helped me a lot as a producer.
What did prove tricky was cuing and editing our “authentic” live shot in the field. Because our reporter was blocks away come 5 p.m., it meant we had to call her if we were going to make any changes to her script. Furthermore, we had to be on the phone with our field producer, or star multimedia journalist, to make sure our reporter knew when to read her voiceovers.
Overall, I was very pleased with these live shots. In the future, however, I’ll make sure to pay close attention to what our reporters’ live tags say so as to ensure that our viewers get why the information is so timely and couldn’t have been pre-recorded.
