WWE Gets Ready to Rumble with Sapphire & Continuum
By Jim Bask
The WWE universe is about as diverse as its wild, larger-than-life wrestling characters. The award-winning media organization reaches 650 million homes across the globe with original programming on the WWE Network, reality shows on E!, and films that are both produced and released through WWE Films. The heart and soul of the brand remains its weekly wrestling-related TV programs, including Raw, Smackdown, Main Event, and 205Live.
“We have seven staff editors, but none of us are specialists,” says Ken Berchem, Lead Editor. “We do our best to be all things to all people.” In addition to the staff editors, WWE also has over 100 producers who edit. “It is our job to teach, assist, and finalize the countless hours of work they generate and try to keep the standards as high as possible,” continues Berchem. “My talent for creating efficient workflows and best practices put me in a position to lead the way in our newly established Avid production environment.” Berchem helped the team transition to 135 Avid Media Composer stations in the summer of 2015. To go along with its new workflow, WWE also purchased 40 Sapphire floats and 40 Continuum licenses.
Raw and Smackdown air live each week — 52 weeks a year. There are no reruns. The shows are produced on site with a team in their Stamford (CT) studio constantly creating content to send to the truck to air. “Requests for new packages and changes to existing ones can be called in at the drop of a hat,” notes Berchem. “We need to be able to work as quickly and efficiently as possible. Sapphire and Continuum are more than just helpful tools for us. They are essential for us to put out content as quickly as we can while retaining a high-end look.”
Customer Footage: WWE from Boris FX on Vimeo.
The packages are music-driven, quickly cut, and highly-stylized. “We use Sapphire and Continuum to help steer the emotion of our pieces. In the course of a 3 minute package, we’ll typically use 3-5 different looks. Anger, aggression, victory, whatever the piece calls for,” states Berchem. “I like to approach each piece with the mindset of giving it a new look, which is why we’re constantly exploring the toolsets and layering different effects in hopes of finding something unique.”