This Is Life With Lisa Ling
Over a nine-year run as CNN’s longest-running & critically acclaimed original series, journalist Lisa Ling takes viewers inside hidden communities and explores critical issues of our time. From artificial intelligence to psychedelics, MS-13 gang members to those living outside the gender binary, the series is a compassionate and multi-layered anthology of America of the last decade.
Distribution: CNN / Max
Air Date: 2014-2022
Release: 68 x 60 min
Role: Producer, Post Supervisor
I started on the first season of This Is Life in 2014 as an intern and worked up the ranks to Producer and Post Supervisor. By the end of the series in 2022, I had producing credits on 13 episodes and was involved in post on all 68 episodes.
As a producer, my role included researching, casting and pitching the stories we wanted to tell. Over the years, we gained access to highly restricted and exclusive communities, including in Season 7, when my director and I secured access to the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, CA — an institution housing more men serving life sentences than anywhere else in the state.
But a deeper kind of access often came from trust we built with our participants. Many were at life crossroads and taking a leap of faith inviting us in. As producers, we took this responsibility seriously and would spend lots of time learning the realities they face. As we got deeper, sometimes they would reveal things that even their closest family and friends may know little about — take Season 5, when 42-year-old Steve opened up about their gender fluidity and gave us an unprecedented view inside their closet, or in Season 8, when Celeste and Harmony shared the sexual abuse and retaliation they suffered while serving in the military.