look live (n)
A taped reporter stand-up that's designed to give the impression it's a live shot.

Saw this post on Lost Remote the other day. It featured a reporter's unedited, taped 'look lives' accidentally airing at the top of a newscast. (Did I forget to mention it featured the F-BOMB?)



[link to WMA video clip (vartv.com)]

I know it's the reporter who was swearing, but I feel bad. Once he taped that thing it was totally out-of-his-control. The photographer could've cued the tape wrong. The live truck guy could've played the wrong clip. An editor back at the station....well, you get the picture.

I personally seen/recorded worse things in the raw video. I once had a reporter tell the people watching to 'go away', and then called a guy an asshole in the take after that. [NO: I'm not naming names. YES: I still have the tape.]

Where was I? Oh yeah...

I found the clip amusing, but horrifying because that could easily happen to me (and by 'me' I mean the reporter I'm with). There's always one crew from our station that has to tape a 'look live' at the end of the night. There's a bunch of random reasons that a station would choose to do a 'look live' [can't get live shot from a certain location, crew moved to different story, overtime issues]. Some stations have a problem with it, and there's good arguments for either side.

When we do 'look lives,' we - very deliberately - do not say the word "live" or show a "live bug" on the corner of the screen. Maybe it's because we pay all these reporters to be on TV, so we squeeze out some extra 'face time' now and again. Can't let all the "lens meat" go to waste.

Anger Management

Taping look lives can be a pain, and there are times where we'll shoot tons of takes. It can be really frustrating, but at least you can get it perfect - rather than have people doing "shout outs" on live television. But, you can't let the rage take over.

Using Wilson as my example, I made a handy chart to illustrate how to overcome and deal with the difficulty of doing look lives:





Hope it helps.