Alliance Digital Gives UFC Winning Post Punch

By Andrew Lippe
Ultimate Fighting Championship events have become a must see spectacle for those interested in the world of Mixed Martial Arts. Zuffa, the promotion company that represents the UFC will once again turn to Alliance Digital to provide five Avid Adrenalines for UFC 88 in September. The Avid Adrenalines are essential to the UFC’s adoption of a tapeless workflow. “We are moving forward with the Avid EVS tapeless workflow. It gives us the flexibility to change a lot of things that we would not have been able to do in the past,” says Curtis Edge, the director of post production for the UFC.
Curtis represents Zuffa LLC, the company that promotes for Ultimate Fighting Championship, and World Extreme Cage Fighting. The UFC uses 13 cameras from Sony and Ikegami to the capture the intense action. “We use handheld cameras around the Octagon and we use fixed cameras on the outside of the Octagon,” says Edge.
The UFC mobile providers include Game Creek Video and NEP. “We are such a new sport that, come football season we are hard pressed to get the better trucks,” says Edge. “However we have a great relationship with Game Creek and we use their trucks when we can.”
Edge’s team pre produces everything for the show that is not live including packages for fighters on the card and little vignettes before each fight. The UFC repurposes content to DVD, the web and also to cable VOD.
““We don’t lay footage to tape and carry it over to truck any more. We push it between the Avid and EVS,” says Edge. “On our last show we had changes made to the very opening of the show which I was able to get it back to the truck five minutes before we went to air.” If that had to be run over like in the past the graphic would have never been able to get to air.