The second ‘Recorded as Live’ TV programme I have decided to analyse is the popular worldwide TV Show, “WWE Superstars”. WWE Superstars is a wrestling entertainment show consisting of a large body of wrestlers who have very varied personalities and many different storylines to work with.
The layout to the arena is seemingly complicated and elaborate, with an audience of around 23,000 people surrounding the wrestling ring. The set is very carefully designed to look good, and in the particular event I saw live, they had added extras to the set e.g. a London Bus featuring the logo of the WWE, as well as a huge Union Jack flag hanging from the rafters and a mini decorated with the Union Jack flags colours.
Pictures of this are below;
In the second picture, you are able to see the titantron, which displays the entire goings on in the arena, as well as promos and backstage segments. The titantron is there so that people are able to see if situated further back in the arena.
There were around eight cameras overall, three of these were situated ring side, to film all of the in-ring action, as well as the commentary, in addition to those, there was one or two cameras on the ramp ready to film the talent coming down from the ring, all of these cameras were so-called “hand-held” cameras, as they were all held on the shoulder of the camera man/women. In addition to these “hand-held” cameras, there were also around three cameras on jibs, two of which were situated in the crowd to film crowd reactions, as well as show signs that the fans had brought, and one other one near ringside, which seemingly was there to show people closer to the ring. There are also many different forms of microphones used for a programme as big as the WWE, including hand-held ones for the in-ring talent, head-sets for the talent on commentary and more than one directional microphone for the audience. For the lighting, I would guess that the lighting rig was large and very complex. The crew for this size programme is likely to be large, consisting of around 80 plus people. The production also demands the use of an OB truck. As this is a high-profiled programme, it requires the use of many different camera angles, including LS, MS, CU, MCU, and VLS.
There are many health and safety risks for this type of programme for the audience aswell as the talent, there could be lighting faults, electricity faults, set failures and pyrotechnic mistakes. The title introduction sequence for this particular show displays the more well-known and used talent, and seemingly sticks to the colour theme of red and blue.
While the on-air talent (the wrestlers) are given a format as to what storyline they are working under, the actual dialogue and moves they do in the ring are often ad-libbed, though there may be slight formatting in the fact they may be told to say or do a certain thing. The likely audience for this show is young children to adults.
