Is the desk on This American Life's TV show really there?
February 4, 2009 8:06 PM   Subscribe

The opening of every episode of This American Life's TV show has Ira Glass at a desk in the middle of some unlikely location. (YouTube video of some examples.) Are they actually taking the desk to these locations, or is this some fancy video editing? (Or are some real and others faked?)
posted by scottreynen to Media & Arts (8 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
The implication on their website (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/About_TV.aspx) is that they take the desk to multiple locations:
""We're gonna get one of those David Letterman-Jon Stewart-Jay Leno desks, the kind of desk you never see except on TV. But the thing is, we're gonna put the desk out in the world!" One week the desk is on the salt flats in Utah, one week in a garage, one week by nuclear cooling towers. It embraces TV conventions, while kind of winking at them."
Additionally (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/TV_Episode.aspx?episode=1&clip=4#VideoTop):
Ira was filmed on an access road in front of an oil refinery in Linden, New Jersey. For a while we considered using this take because it's just so weird, but then we decided it was just too weird.
posted by Susurration at 8:27 PM on February 4, 2009


At a Boston event for the premier of the series, I remember Ira Glass and the series director saying pretty explicitly that they were hauling the desk all over the place to get those shots. These events were eventually stitched together into a (radio) episode of TAL, but they left out the half-hour conversation between Glass and the director so I don't have a good citation beyond my own crummy memory.
posted by range at 8:37 PM on February 4, 2009


I think I was at the same Boston event that Range was at that was right before season 1 of the TV show aired, and I have a very similar recollection of Ira and the director talking about the difficulties of doing those shots. I think they showed some outtakes as well, which clearly showed that there were outside.

Also, if you watch and listen to the opening's closely you'll note that the sound quality of these intros is distinctly lower quality than the parts that are voice overs, which I think gives additional evidence to the fact that they are actually being shot outside.
posted by dyslexictraveler at 9:27 PM on February 4, 2009


Real desk. Real locations. Here's an outtake.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 9:29 PM on February 4, 2009 [1 favorite]


Range -- I seem to remember them saying the same thing at the NYC release. My memory isn't great, either, but our collective memories are worth something, right?
posted by rdn at 9:36 PM on February 4, 2009


Best answer: The desk was indeed shot on location for every episode of the first season. (The entire desk concept was ditched in favor of the much more manageable Ira-and-his-video-camera convention for season two, though.)
posted by keever at 11:25 PM on February 4, 2009


yeah, real desk. i thought it was incredibly cool.
posted by Heliochrome85 at 7:37 AM on February 5, 2009


Response by poster: Thanks everyone. I'm marking keever's as best answer, because the interview with Ira saying they did try it in a studio for season 2 and didn't like it is the closest to definitive evidence.
posted by scottreynen at 9:57 AM on February 5, 2009


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