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Rooster Teeth

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Rooster Teeth Productions
Company typePrivate
IndustryMachinima, Gaming, Film making
Founded2003
HeadquartersAustin, Texas
Key people
Adam Baird
Burnie Burns
Chris Demarais
Kara Eberle
Brandon Farmahini
Gavin Free
Joel Heyman
Matt Hullum
Michael Jones
Michael Stover
Ben King
Miles Luna
Luke McKay
Monty Oum
Jack Pattillo
Geoff Ramsey
Griffon Ramsey
Marshall Rimmer
Kerry Shawcross
Gustavo Sorola
Nathan Zellner
Kathleen Zuelch
ProductsRed vs. Blue
The Strangerhood
Other machinima
Rooster Teeth Shorts
Rooster Teeth Comics
The Rooster Teeth Podcast
Achievement Hunter
Immersion
Number of employees
259 (2016) Edit this on Wikidata
ParentFullscreen Edit this on Wikidata
Websitehttp://www.roosterteeth.com/

Rooster Teeth Productions is a production group from Austin, Texas that specializes in the creation of live action shorts and machinima, or films created using real-time, interactive engines from computer and video games. The name Rooster Teeth is a euphemism for Cockbite, an insult used in one of the group's trailers.[1] Originally, the group ran a website called drunkgamers.com, a reviewing site in which Burnie Burns, Gustavo Sorola, and Geoff Ramsey reviewed video games while drunk in order to try to get games from video game developers. Burnie Burns also created voice-over-enhanced gameplay videos of Bungie Studios' popular first-person shooter video game Halo: Combat Evolved. Eventually, these videos led to the creation of Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, an award-winning comic science fiction series that premiered on April 1, 2006 and ended on June 28, 2007, with the release of episode 100. Red vs. Blue gained a huge fan base and while it continues to be a large focus of Rooster Teeth's work, they have since branched off into live action.

With the conclusion of Immersion on January 5, 2011, Rooster Teeth began production of Red vs. Blue's ninth season.[2] The first episode was released on June 14, 2011, and episodes continue to be released weekly.

Early company history

While attending the University of Texas at Austin, Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum collaborated with actor Joel Heyman on a 1997 independent film called The Schedule.[3] The film helped Hullum and Heyman to find work in Los Angeles, California, but otherwise had limited success.[4] Working for a local company named Telenetwork, Burns later met Geoff Ramsey, Gustavo Sorola, and Jason Saldańa, and the four formed drunkgamers.com, a website where the four reviewed various video games while drunk.[5] According to Ramsey, the group tried to receive free games to review, but "incurred the wrath" of several game developers in doing so.[6]

One of the non-gameplay videos that the drunkgamers crew created during this time was a live-action parody of the Apple Switch ad campaign. This video featured Sorola as the main actor, used Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" as background music, and focused on the lack of games available for the Apple Macintosh computer.[7]

Machinima

Red vs. Blue

Main article: Red vs. Blue
File:RvB ep58 Sarge Donut.jpg
A scene from Red vs. Blue season 4, made using Halo 2, the sequel to Halo: Combat Evolved

Responsible for reviewing games on the Microsoft Xbox, Burns regularly posted gameplay videos of Halo: Combat Evolved and eventually began to add humor to them with voice-overs.[6] The idea for a serial came next,[6] and a trailer for Red vs. Blue was posted in 2002.[8] Six months later, the drunkgamers website closed. However, the following week, the magazine Computer Gaming World asked permission to include the Switch parody in a CD to be included with an issue. To take advantage of the resultant publicity, Rooster Teeth re-encoded the video to point to redvsblue.com, and revived the Red vs. Blue project.[1] Burns also contacted his old friends Matt Hullum and Joel Heyman and convinced them to work on the series.[9]

In a parody of science fiction films and games[10] and of military life,[11] Red vs. Blue tells the story of two groups of soldiers fighting a civil war in a desolate box canyon. Initially, Rooster Teeth expected the series to consist of only six to eight episodes.[12] However, the series became popular quickly, receiving 20,000 downloads in a single day.[13] Accordingly, Burns conceived an extension of the plot.[14] The series' fifth and supposedly final season officially ended with episode 100, released on June 28, 2007.[15] However, the group has continued to release new material, including four additional complete seasons (seasons 6-9) and numerous PSA announcements. These PSAs included a five-part mini-series to promote Halo 3.[16]

In late 2009, animator Monty Oum was hired by RT after his popular Haloid video caught their attention, with his employment being announced at PAX East 2010. He provides pre-rendered character animations to achieve action scenes or character movements in Red vs. Blue that are unable to be done using just the Halo engine. Season eight of Red vs. Blue is the first season of the series to make extensive use of animation, and Burnie revealed in an interview that he and Oum are in the process of creating a completely animated series with no machinima elements.[17]

Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles won several awards, including four from the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences.[18] Writing for the New York Times, Clive Thompson credited the series as the first machinima production "to break out of the underground".[19] Red vs. Blue videos have been shown in Xbox demo kiosks,[20] and content that is included with the premium "Legendary" edition of Halo 3.[21] Members of the cast were also featured in an Easter egg in the campaign mode of Halo 3. Their relationship with Halo developer Bungie has grown to the point that Rooster Teeth commonly produces videos on Bungie's behalf, such as promotional series for Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach in August 2009 and August 2010, respectively, and a video honoring 'Bungie Day' in July 2010 and again for 2011.

Besides The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Rooster Teeth Productions' other Red vs. Blue productions consist of three mini-series—Out of Mind, Recovery One, and Relocated—and three full-length series, Reconstruction, Recreation and Revelation, which compose the Recollections trilogy.

On March 28, 2011, Rooster Teeth released the trailer for "Red vs. Blue" season 9, which is labeled for Summer 2011, and will continue the adventures of the Blood Gulch crew along with agents from Project Freelancer.[22] Red vs. Blue: Season 9 began on June 14th.[23]

Other machinima

A screenshot from Apology, an advertisement that Electronic Arts commissioned from Rooster Teeth

In May 2004, at the E3 gaming convention, Rooster Teeth was introduced to The Sims 2 and realized that the game would be suitable for a series that parodied reality television; Electronic Arts agreed.[24] The result was The Strangerhood, a comedy series that centers on eight strangers who awake one day unaware of where they are or how they arrived there.[25] Its first season of 17 episodes completed on April 27, 2006.[26] In 2005, the group collaborated with Paul Marino[27] on Strangerhood Studios, a spin-off commissioned by the Independent Film Channel.[28] This spin-off was the first machinima series to be commissioned for broadcast[28] and won an award for Best Editing at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.[29]

Also in 2006, Rooster Teeth partnered with Maybeck Productions to create PANICS, a short series that chronicles the misadventures of Bravo Team a group of soldiers sent to investigate a paranormal disturbance .[28] The four publicly released episodes were released between September 27, 2005 and October 18, 2005,[30] and a prequel was released with F.E.A.R. - Director's Edition.[31] The mini-series won an award for Best Writing at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.[29]

In mid-2006, Electronic Arts commissioned Rooster Teeth to direct[32] commercials for their EA Sports brand of games, including Madden NFL 2007 and NCAA Football 2007, for broadcast on television.[33] Rooster Teeth released some of this work on their website.[34] In late November 2006, controversy arose over a Madden NFL 07 commercial, when Indianapolis Colts tight end Dallas Clark complained about his depiction in the commercial.[35] Hit and tackled multiple times in the advertisement by Philadelphia Eagles players, Clark stated, "I haven't seen the commercial, but I'm upset about it. It makes me look like a punk."[35] In response, Rooster Teeth posted a director's cut, in which Clark plays and dominates every position.[36]

Rooster Teeth's other machinima productions are 1-800-Magic, a four-episode mini-series created in 2006 using the game Shadowrun, and Supreme Surrender, a 2008 mini-series made using Supreme Commander.

Live action

Captain Dynamic

In early 2009, Rooster Teeth first ventured into live-action with a mini-series to promote the online game "City of Heroes", entitled Captain Dynamic. It was based around a team of writers who are hired to use the new content creation tools in the game to promote the worst superhero in the world, Captain Dynamic. Directed by Matt Hullum and written by Burnie Burns, the series starred Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies, Rooster Teeth employee actor Joel Heyman, and actor Shannon McCormick.[37] Rooster Teeth staff and guest actors were used in minor and extra roles. The series also led to the release of an iPhone app called the Awesome Button.

Rooster Teeth Shorts

Following the positive reception of Captain Dynamic, Rooster Teeth began producing another live-action series, Rooster Teeth Shorts, a sketch comedy which parodies life at their offices in a similar fashion to the webcomic. The series features the staff of Rooster Teeth, who all play caricatures of themselves, as well as occasional appearances from voice actors from some of their machinima series. The first season ran for twenty episodes, which along with the Captain Dynamic mini-series has been released on DVD.

The second season of RT Shorts debuted on April 23, 2010, with new episodes released weekly via the Rooster Teeth website[38] until a hiatus during late July 2010, during which the team focused all their efforts towards Red vs. Blue episodes. With production on Red vs. Blue complete, weekly RT Shorts episodes began again on August 28, 2010 until the second season's conclusion with its twenty-fourth episode and DVD release in early December.

Shortly before season two's conclusion, Rooster Teeth collaborated with the team behind Mega64, a video game centered comedy series. Together they produced four Rooster Teeth Shorts episodes, which were released on the Rooster Teeth website as the beginning of season three.

Immersion

Immersion is a series in which Burnie and Griffon test the concepts of video games in real life, such as whether the heckling that sometimes occurs in multiplayer video games would negatively affect the performance of real soldiers. Burnie joked in the company's podcast that the series started as an "elaborate way for [them] to do fun stuff and get paid for it".[39] Geoff and Gus were the test subjects in all but one episode.

During PAX East in late March 2010, Rooster Teeth teased the series with a pilot episode that tested how easy it would be to drive a car from a third-person perspective. Nothing was mentioned of Immersion until October 2010, when Burnie stated during the company's podcast, The Rooster Teeth Podcast, that production had begun on further episodes.

Soon after, on November 23, 2010, the company released pictures on Reddit of a door in their office turned into a safe-room door from the video game Left 4 Dead in an effort to build hype for the series' debut the following day. The post became the most popular post of the day on Reddit.[40] Rooster Teeth re-released a tweaked pilot episode the following day to begin the weekly series, which concluded with its seventh episode on January 5, 2011. While further episodes are not currently planned, Rooster Teeth hasn't ruled them out. Burnie stated in his journal, "...you never know what the future might bring".[41]

A new episode of Immersion premiered on June 17, 2011, after five months on hiatus. The episode's filming took place on May 29, 2011, during Rooster Teeth's convention, RTX, as well as 400 participants dressed as zombies. The episode shows Geoff and Gus defending themselves from a horde of zombies.[42]

Future projects

Rooster Teeth moved into a larger office in early September 2010, which they have made into "half a warehouse" in order to allow plenty of room for live action sets.[43] In the future, they hope to produce a live-action feature-length film.[44]

Other products

Webcomic

In 2006, Rooster Teeth Productions formed its own webcomic series, Rooster Teeth Comics. The strip satirizes the staff members in their regular daily lives, although often pushing each member's personality to the extreme for comedic effect. The humorous situations often relate to real life events in the lives of the staff, or other widely recognized current events. It is drawn by Luke McKay, a member of the Rooster Teeth community, and written by Griffon Ramsey, the wife of Geoff Ramsey. The comics are released three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The first four years of the comic have been released in separate collected edition books. On August 20, 2011, Rooster Teeth announced that the webcomics have ended.

Achievement Hunter

During 2008, Geoff Ramsey's interest in gaming achievements led to the realisation that there wasn't a community-based achievements website, and in turn Achievement Hunter was created, which shares the design, user profiles and forums of the main Rooster Teeth website. The site is run by two full-time Rooster Teeth staff Geoff Ramsey and Jack Pattillo, who regularly release achievement guides, easter egg videos and other game-related videos, and select volunteers from the Rooster Teeth community help moderate the website. The most frequent videos are from Jack and Geoff themselves, and Brownman, or Ray, Fragger, and Michael Jones. Unlike many other achievement-dedicated websites, Achievement Hunter is highly dependent on public contributions and so has guides across many different games and platforms, allowing the site to expand its focus from Xbox 360 games to those on PC, PS3, Steam, and even Windows Phone 7.

In early 2010, Ramsey and Pattillo started a weekly series called Achievement Hunter Weekly Update, commonly abbreviated to AHWU. In it, Ramsey talks about upcoming games while Pattillo talks about gaming news. In line with the community-focus of the Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter websites, and similarly to The Rooster Teeth Podcast, the each episode's title sequence is created by a member of the community. Late 2010 saw the introduction of two more regular series, Fails of the Weak and Achievement HORSE. The former is a compilation of mistakes and glitches in Halo: Reach with commentary from Geoff and Jack, and in the latter Geoff and Jack play H-O-R-S-E using obstacle courses built with the Forge mode of Halo: Reach. They further published their videos both on their website, and on other media-sharing sites such as Youtube. Another series is "Rage Quit" in which they take their "test subject, Michael, and have him play a very difficult or very annoying game until he eventually has an aneurysm and we have to rush him to the emergency room.", in Ramsey's words. In August 2011, Michael became a full-time staff member at Achievement Hunter.

Grifball

In late 2007, Rooster Teeth created a Halo 3 multiplayer game-type called Grifball, played on the map Foundry. The idea for the game came from a joke that was cut from an episode promoting the Heroic Map Pack, in which Grif creates the "laziest gametype in the world"; a round of capture the flag where the flag spawns right next to the capture point. Burnie realized that the frantic nature of only having seconds to stop the flag reaching its destination was fun and changed it to the "Assault" gametype so that each team had a point to defend, as well as spawning the players with weapons.[45]

The name "Grifball" comes from a gag in season four of Red vs. Blue when Sarge exclaims, "This is the best game since Grifball", while trying to shoot Grif down from a ledge. In reference to the joke, Burnie changed the game settings so that players who pick up the ball turn orange, Grif's armor color. Players who pick up the ball will either explode when they plant the bomb or will be killed by an enemy, referencing Sarge's hatred of Grif.

The gametype became so popular that Bungie began to regularly include the gametype in the Double EXP Weekends playlist of Halo 3 matchmaking, making it a ranked playlist for a limited time in December, 2009,[46] and adding Grifball courts with identical specifications to the original into other maps. In February 2011, Bungie added Grifball to the matchmaking community playlist, as a permanently available gametype.[47]

Rooster Teeth has organized their own official Grifball leagues, covering the United States, the European Union and Oceania.[48] McFarlane Toys also released a Grifball action figure. Rooster Teeth created a spinoff machinima miniseries of Red vs. Blue based on Grifball, titled Grifball: Expansion, which follows an untalented Grifball team. It was distributed via Halo Waypoint and ran for three episodes. The follow-up miniseries, titled Grifball: Zero Tolerance, Grifball: Franchise Player, and Grifball: Double Agent were released a short time later and also ran for three episodes.BALLSACCK IN NATES LORAS MOUTH

The Rooster Teeth Podcast

On December 9, 2008, after temporarily reviving a feature on their website from their previous website, drunkgamers.com, where the staff talked about different topics of the week while inebriated with accompanying responses in text with pictures, Rooster Teeth released their first audio podcast, The Drunk Tank, available for download through the iTunes Store, Zune Marketplace and their website. It has since become one of the more popular features of the site, at one point becoming the #1 most downloaded podcast on iTunes, as well as a featured podcast in the iTunes Store. New episodes have been released regularly every Wednesday since April 10, 2009, with occasional special episodes or multiple releases in one week. On June 23, 2010, the podcast changed to a .m4a "enhanced" format which allows listeners to use an interactive "link dump" to be able to view more information on the topics of the week's podcast. On August 18, 2010, the podcast was officially implemented into the Rooster Teeth website. To celebrate their 100th episode on February 9, 2011 they released their first ever video podcast which featured Gus Sorola, Geoff Ramsey, Burnie Burns, and Griffon Ramsey.[49] On September 28th, 2010 Sorola announced The Drunk Tank was to be re-christened The Rooster Teeth Podcast to create a more unified public image for the company.[50]

Since its inception, the podcast has usually featured three or four of the Rooster Teeth staff members as well as the occasional guest such as their musical composer Nico Audy-Rowland or friends or family of the staff members. The main staff members of the podcast include Sorola, Ramsey and Burns with heavy recurring roles from Joel Heyman, Jack Pattillo and Griffon Ramsey. The podcast is thus largely comedic commentary on the popular culture of the week, including video games, recent news, website features, sports and upcoming projects as well as highlighting fan-made projects.The podcast also goes onto tangents on subjects not related to what the podcast says it is about in the description. On the Rooster Teeth website the subjects discussed in the podcast can be found under the podcast tab. As the least liked member of the podcast staff (by the staff themselves and the fans), Jack is often shouted at or made fun of by his co-workers. Some fans have gone as far as demanding that Jack be banned from being in the podcast, one of his only redeeming qualities being his voice.

Pilots

Red vs. Blue: Animated

File:Red vs Blue Animated.jpg
Scene from Red vs Blue Animated, showing (from left to right) Grif, Simmons and Church

Red vs. Blue: Animated was a joint production between Rooster Teeth and animation studio Humoring the Fates. The test piece was screened at PAX 2008. The piece sees Church, Simmons and Grif attempting to battle through a Covenant base to free Sarge and Tex from imprisonment.

At PAX East 2010, it was strongly implied by the staff that Red vs. Blue: Animated did not get picked up. Geoff Ramsey commented, "We're just too lazy to work on it—we like our own schedule; we just can't work with someone else's timeframe." At the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, Rooster Teeth declared that a lot of the ideas and aspects of Red vs. Blue: Animated had been assimilated into the original Red vs. Blue machinima series through the addition of pre-rendered CGI.

Filmography

Year Series Notes
2003–2007 Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles Machinima; 5 seasons
2004–2006 The Strangerhood Machinima; 1 season + special episodes
2005 Strangerhood Studios Machinima mini-series
2005 PANICS Machinima mini-series
2006 Red vs. Blue: Out of Mind Machinima mini-series
2007 1-800-MAGIC Machinima mini-series
2007 Red vs. Blue: Recovery One Machinima mini-series
2008–2010 Red vs. Blue: The Recollection Machinima; 3 seasons
2008–Present Achievement Hunter Video game guides; sporadic; 7 seasons currently
2008 Supreme Surrender Machinima mini-series
2009 Red vs. Blue: Relocated Machinima mini-series
2009 Captain Dynamic Live action mini-series
2009–Present Rooster Teeth Shorts Live action; 3 seasons
2010 Grifball: Expansion Machinima mini-series
2010–Present Immersion Live action
2010 Grifball: Zero Tolerance Machinima mini-series
2010–Present Achievement Hunter Weekly Update Subshow of Achievement Hunter - Live action; Weekly; non-seasonal
2010–Present Fails of the Weak Subshow of Achievement Hunter - Machinima; Weekly
2010–Present Achievement Horse Subshow of Achievement Hunter - Machinima; Weekly
2011–Present Rage Quit Subshow of Achievement Hunter - Mini-series; Weekly
2011 Grifball: Double Agent Machinima mini-series
2011 Red vs. Blue: Season 9 Machinima

Notes

  1. ^ a b Oliver.
  2. ^ Burns, January 2011. http://roosterteeth.com/blog/viewEntry.php?id=2659564
  3. ^ Moltenbrey, Gross.
  4. ^ Moltenbrey
  5. ^ Gross; Konow, 1.
  6. ^ a b c Konow, 1.
  7. ^ Mac Gamer Switch Parody.
  8. ^ Konow, 2.
  9. ^ The History of Red vs. Blue.
  10. ^ Leggat
  11. ^ Burns, et al., 2003, Audio Commentary, episode 2.
  12. ^ Burns, et al., 2003, Audio Commentary, episode 4.
  13. ^ Thompson, 1.
  14. ^ Waters.
  15. ^ Sorola.
  16. ^ All New Red vs. Blue Series.
  17. ^ Interview on Episode 61 of Jeskid's World. http://www.jeskidsworld.com/?p=522
  18. ^ Machinima Awards 2003 Results; Mackie Winners Announced!.
  19. ^ Thompson, 2.
  20. ^ Red vs. Blue: The Interview Strikes Back.
  21. ^ Falo 3 Details Explosion.
  22. ^ "Public Trailer for Season 9".
  23. ^ {cite web|title=Countdown to Season 9 Red Vs Blue|url=http://roosterteeth.com/home.php}}
  24. ^ Kosak, 1–2; Thompson, 5.
  25. ^ Williams.
  26. ^ Saldaña.
  27. ^ Burns, et al., 2006, Audio Commentary, Strangerhood Studios episode 6.
  28. ^ a b c Machinima Theater.
  29. ^ a b Mackie Winners Announced!.
  30. ^ FearFans.com.
  31. ^ Gersh.
  32. ^ "Red Vs. Blue: The Cash Is Always Greener".
  33. ^ Hullum, "Working Vacation".
  34. ^ Hullum, "Ahh... Memories".
  35. ^ a b Chappell.
  36. ^ Robinson.
  37. ^ http://captaindynamic.com/members/journal/entry.php?id=2330749
  38. ^ http://redvsblue.com/archive/episode.php?id=1233
  39. ^ Burns, The Rooster Teeth Podcast episode 89
  40. ^ Burns, November 2010. http://roosterteeth.com/blog/viewEntry.php?id=2644219
  41. ^ Burns, January 2011. http://roosterteeth.com/blog/viewEntry.php?id=2659158
  42. ^ Immersion - Horde Mode
  43. ^ Burnie, Jeskid TV interview.
  44. ^ Geoff; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE6Ge8Af9yk
  45. ^ http://www.grifball.com/history.php
  46. ^ Bungie Weekly Update, November 20, 2009
  47. ^ "GrifballHub Matchmaking Details".
  48. ^ http://www.grifball.com/divisions.php
  49. ^ "Big Thanks, Drunk Tank 100th Episode Blog Post". Retrieved 10 April 2011.
  50. ^ "Rooster Teeth Podcast 133 Post". Retrieved 28 September 2011.

References

Further reading

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