A&E's LIVE PD / Is it truly live or live to tape?

prosheditor

Well-known member
I was a little suspicious of A&E's 'live' police ride-along show, LIVE PD, when I saw it back in 2016. Does anyone else think it's actually shot and switched live to tape and then aired later or is it really switched and aired live?

For those not familiar, this show has multiple camera crews doing police ride-alongs in several cities all supposedly shot in realtime simultaneously and switched from a central studio. More than likely they're transmitting from mobile cellular solutions and some locations seem to have two cameras for alternate angles at the same location.

But I've seen too many inconsistencies for it to be a live show such as blurred identities, beeped audio, impossible angles and timeline discrepancies between cuts, to name a few. The random pixelation noise, dropouts and freeze-frames from the mobile transmitters even look fake which is almost like adding camera-shake for dramatic effect. However, it should be noted that a perceived continuity issue of switching between day and night shots is because of different time zones in different cities.

I've shot many ride-alongs with cops for a show on cable and know how it works and what it takes to get it done, like lead-ins shot after an actual incident is shot because you never know when a call will come in so that has to be shot after but everything else was real with no retakes for inserts. LIVE PD just looks too produced to be truly live.
 

Run&Gun

Well-known member
I want to know what they are using for some of the car chase cameras and if it's the show's cameras or they are getting a tap from the police car camera. Some of the chases I have seen, it's a wide shot from the front of the vehicle and a car may be a half-mile to mile down the road in front of them and it will punch in and lock on to the vehicle and is rock-solid stabilized(almost like it was done in "post" or they have some type of probably military derived tracking tech). After a few seconds you forget and think that the police car is RIGHT behind the vehicle and they will "punch back out" and you see how far away they really are.
 
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