LIVE shots need action, otherwise they’d be called DEAD shots!
A very insightful professor at USC once asked the class to ponder over the idea of LIVE shots. He showed us a series of LIVE shots from reputable news stations: NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS and Fox News. I think it’s safe to say that they were all good, but they weren’t comparable. The delivery of the LIVE shots shown was well done, but the content and the location of the LIVE shots is what made some, in my view, more effective.
Some news stations get a thrill from having a LIVE shot just to say, “we’re LIVE.” But, a LIVE shot is more than just a reporter who is live at some random scene. There needs to be purpose and content; most importantly, it’s supposed to connect people to the news.
For this week, it almost seemed too easy. A protest is almost always synonymous with “LIVE shot.” So when I learned that a protest against U.S. military intervention in Libya was being staged in Westwood, I set my hopes on sending a reporter to Westwood.
Protests are perfect for this because there is almost always something happening – LIVE action. When this is the case, people get a sense of what it is like to be in that location. When you get a viewer to connect to the news in such an intimate way, you’ve produced a successful newscast.
