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Post by Old Baby on Oct 14, 2015 19:23:18 GMT -5
I think my biggest pet peeve of invisible cameras is when a wrestler will just stare off into space to wait for the segment to fade out, rather than just leaving to do whatever they were presumably going to do next. Or when they cut to someone standing in front of their locker putting on their wrestling gear, and someone walks in to have a conversation with them, neither of them acknowledging the presence of a camera there 1) watching them change clothes and 2) eavesdropping on the conversation.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2015 19:27:10 GMT -5
I think my biggest pet peeve of invisible cameras is when a wrestler will just stare off into space to wait for the segment to fade out, rather than just leaving to do whatever they were presumably going to do next. Or when they cut to someone standing in front of their locker putting on their wrestling gear, and someone walks in to have a conversation with them, neither of them acknowledging the presence of a camera there 1) watching them change clothes and 2) eavesdropping on the conversation. I'd like to apply to be Nikki Bella's Pervy camera guy that's a job I can sink my teeth into.
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Post by Nickybojelais on Oct 14, 2015 20:27:20 GMT -5
If we still had GTV this wouldn't be a problem
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Post by HMARK Center on Oct 14, 2015 21:50:37 GMT -5
It's one of the worst creations of the modern professional wrestling era. It saps almost all of the personality from a product, making it overproduced/overdirected and bland.
Pro wrestling has long thrived on a simple formula: you book a match between two or more wrestlers, then use a story or simple narrative to create stakes for that match, and then allow the wrestlers themselves to sell the importance of that upcoming match to the audience in an effort to drive up ticket sales and a palpable sense of "I HAVE to see Mr. Babyface get his hands on that no-goodnik Mr. Heel!", or whatever combination.
The promo was a crucial building block in this formula, and the beauty of the wrestling promo is that it is, by its very nature, personality driven. Not every wrestler is a great promo, but if a poor promo guy at least had a good story/matchup to work with, he could probably sell it by simply believing in the material he's been presented with, or communicating via manager. This creates a clear connection between the audience and the wrestlers, whether you are supposed to love or hate them; it makes their motivations clear, it demonstrates what type of person/character they are, and if they start altering their promos a little to better suit a current feud, it clues in the audience that the stakes are now officially even higher. Plus, most promos were typically very brief, all things considered, which allowed guys to focus on their strengths and not be forced into any meandering or poor acting; the goal was to sell tickets, the goal was to hype the audience, the goal wasn't to kill time or set up a segment that would follow the very next commercial break.
The backstage camera format both removes the promo, and almost removes the personality from selling a wrestling angle. Instead, everything comes down to the writers and the director of the segment, with little room for personality on the part of the talent involved. They must fit a single style, format, and directorial style, because they are created to exist within a consistent television universe...which would be fine, if WWE wasn't a product with multiple weekly shows and no offseason. The fact that Kevin Dunn is often directing only makes matters worse, as it's been made clear that he's completely against altering his presentation style, meaning that all these segments will involve somebody walking in from off screen to draw a crowd pop, somebody walking off while the other person just stares out into space, etc. etc. etc. The segments usually involve wrestlers reacting to things, typically an authority figure booking them into an impromptu match (something else that needs to die a quick death, or at least be severely scaled back), rather than being proactive in addressing rivals in more passionate, personality driven feuds. Finally, they also remove the audience and the possibility of connecting it with the wrestlers; you cannot have Dusty Rhodes "reaching out to you" during "Hard Times" if he's pretending the cameraman isn't there.
Lucha Underground handles it perfectly: it makes no bones about being a TV show with strange, sometimes fantastical elements, and uses the backstage segments as a chance to show highly stylized, dramatized exchanges between characters. It hides these segments from the audience, because they use the advantage of post-production time to make the backstage stuff extra interesting for the TV audience, its core constituency. ROH and companies like it handle it perfectly in their own way: proper promos, wrestlers directly addressing their feud rivals or situations to the camera, using their speaking ability and passion to raise excitement and sell tickets/PPV buys. WWEs style doesn't accomplish any of this.
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Post by Hit Girl on Oct 15, 2015 1:59:51 GMT -5
This is why Dunn needs to be fired. He's a shitty producer.
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Post by Lance Uppercut on Oct 15, 2015 2:53:52 GMT -5
I've turned the corner on several things.
After watching Lucha Underground and TNA's weird attempts to justify everything, I kind of like it better if you just accept the invisible cameraman as "There is no camera man, you're watching a cut scene in a movie". Just pick, one or the other. It's very confusing that sometimes the wrestler acknowledges the camera, and sometimes they don't.
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Post by Hit Girl on Oct 15, 2015 2:57:20 GMT -5
The old approach was best.
Mean Gene in a tux interviewing a wrestler. No bullshit. Just get the point across and move on with a "Jessie, Gorilla, back to you!"
No staring into the distance or holding an expression.
Very sports-like.
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zappa
Trap-Jaw
Posts: 311
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Post by zappa on Oct 15, 2015 4:48:36 GMT -5
They did that JTV hidden camera from a while back in the Attitude Era to reveal or expose certain situations.
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Post by Hit Girl on Oct 15, 2015 4:55:21 GMT -5
WWE have created a problem because they are now so rigidly locked into how they produce the show, they are unable or unwilling to change things.
That's why everything seems so stale.
They have the same problem on the creative side. Reliance on authority figures, corporate-based angles, the same buzzwords etc...
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