EXW Adrenaline Rush TV

[royb]

Watched the first episode last night. Let's be honest: if you had never heard of EXW before, would you have lasted more than five minutes? Right from Lawrence 'XXX' Tyler's introduction, it was painfully amateurish, highlighted by particularly bad camerawork.

Two of the three matches appeared to use footage from only one camera, which is basically inexcusable for any 'professional' presentation. Making things worse, the view of the wrestlers was frequently obscured by ropes, referee or simply poor framing.

Audio was basically poor to non-existent, and there were glitches such as adverts appearing at the wrong time, or Tyler fluffing his lines, which should have been edited out. There was hardly any effort to get new viewers up to speed on the wrestlers, and little reason to tune in next week.

It really seemed like a half-assed presentation, with EXW rushing in to an endeavor for which they appeared very ill-equipped. If I was a sponsor, I'd frankly have been embarrassed. I'll probably tune in again next week, but really, the show's long-term chances, based on the first episode, are about as crappy as that 'Charlie's Angels' remake.

[Will Nolte]

Been hearing a lot of complaints about this from people.

My official comment on this subject is "heh heh no comment."

[Toom E. Guci]

Ok, now that I have been able to sit down & watch an episode..it is time for me to give my input on what I thought of the tv show after it's second episode.

For starters, I do like the recap at the beginning so fans like me get an idea of what they missed. But the recap also showed me why folks complained about the first show. And honestly, it looks like nothing's changed from show to show.

I also liked the blood dripping opening, as well as the official opening. Those were honestly, 2 really good edit jobs & the official opening gets you a good idea of the faces you will see.

I also liked how the names were shown when the wrestlers were introduced. Definetly a way to make themselves different from other companies.

So yes, there were aspects that I, as a viewer really enjoyed. All everybody has talked about is the negative, but I also saw positives in there.

The locker room segment was well done with Val Venis & the roster...especially since none of us in the arena saw it. And the pre tape outside was also a nice touch & a good way to make the fans who showed up a part of the show.

Now here comes my negatives for the show. The lighting needs to change. It was way to bright for tv & causing quit a bit of onscreen auras. Hopefully somebody can work with the Celebrity Theatre techs to fix that as I doubt that's EXW's fault.

The hard camera needs to stay just that...the hard camera. No zoom ins, no pans, no movement at all. That's why it's called the Hard Camera....it's job is to stay in place & give you a full shot without any change. The Hard Camera on Raw, Smackdown, & Impact does not move.

The ring side cameramen have to not be afraid. Get in the ring for ring introductions. Get in the ring for promo's. All those segments look like we are looking up from the ground.

The ring side cameras moved around way to fast at times & other times, they looked like an earthquake was going on. There was not a lot of steadiness on their part.

I seem to remember the Mike James/Willie Mack match being longer. I understand cutting some of it for TV Time..but maybe the Shadow Fox/Adam Smasher match could have been dropped or changed to next week's show. Afterall, next week's show will have some more from that night.

And maybe with the house as small as it was...they should have asked the fans to sit in a more centralized location to get the feeling that there was a lot of fans there. Honestly, the only time you saw fans was when the wrestlers came out the entryway. Other then that, you did not see fans AT ALL!!

I'm not going to say it was a horrible TV show here, but it wasn't great either. Yes, there's quite a bit of room for improvement here. And I know the first episode had a lot of feedback from fans in various areas...Facebook, www.maskedblogster.com, www.benbarlow.com, & Twitter....but this episode looks like only 1 thing was listened to: less camera shots of the referee's ass.

I know it's not easy filming this type of stuff, also. I used to film for RPW & I used to film football games. It's not an easy task. But you got to know what you're doing & try to be three steps ahead of the wrestlers. And after 2 shows, it looks like the camermen are just going out there, lost!

[Will Nolte]

Much better than the last show. The lighting was improved as well. Editing flowed much better.

The Mike/Willie match suffered from a bad edit due to the "commercial break". When we came back from the break it felt like we'd jumped way ahead and we missed a lot, maybe that was due to not being able to use replay shots like they use on RAW/Smackdown. Including one highspot that happened during the break could have eased this.

The biggest issue I saw was the screwup with the aspect ratio. I don't know if the problem was caused in editing or AZTV did it. Clearly the show was filmed in 16:9 like normal but the image got squeezed into a 4:3 ratio causing everything to distort. It can easily be fixed on most tvs/cable boxes, but a lot of people don't know this and probably watched it wrong the whole time.

[royb]

After forgetting to watch or even record the past couple of episodes - seriously, that's how much of an impact the debut had on me - I caught another one tonight, and... Actually, I was pleasantly surprised, at least from a technical aspect.

Highs (h/t to Mr. Highs and Lows, naturally!):
* The camerawork was infinitely better, with one hard camera and a couple of mobile ones. The former was perhaps a little too far back from the stage, but it actually had the look and feel of a "proper" wrestling show. Much improved.
* The rest of the presentation generally seemed a lot slicker too, from the opening titles to the graphics. Effort had gone into this.
* Moving XXX Tyler from an uncomfortable position next to a monitor, to the announcers' table seemed to help.

Lows:
* Awful lighting on Rexx's opening promo. You couldn't actually see his lips move.
* Oh, look: two luchadores who look just each other. Where have I seen that lately? And two of the matches were basically just repeats.
* They really need to avoid shots showing entirely empty sections at the CT. I dunno how - put up curtains on those sides maybe?
* A main event that lasted about as long as most divas matches - was it *massively* edited, or did it really run for four minutes?

Still some way to go but overall, I would actually tune in again, which definitely was not the case after the first episode. Credit due to all those responsible for the improvement.

[Toom E. Guci]

All the matches were pretty much the same length in time period in person.