Rooster Teeth Productions

Rooster Teeth Productions

Type	Private
Founded	2003
Headquarters	Austin, Texas
Key people	Burnie Burns Gavin Free Joel Heyman Matt Hullum Ben King Geoff Ramsey Jason Saldaña Gustavo Sorola Nathan Zellner
Industry	Machinima
Products	Red vs. Blue The Strangerhood Other machinima Rooster Teeth Shorts Rooster Teeth Comics
Website	http://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 an unsuccessful website called drunkgamers.com, a reviewing site in which Burnie Burns, Gustavo (Gus) Sorola, and Geoff Ramsey reviewed video games while drunk in order to try and 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, 2003 and ended on June 28, 2007, with the release of episode 100. Red vs. Blue gained a huge fan base and continues to be the main focus of Rooster Teeth's work.

Early 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.^[2] The film helped Hullum and Heyman to find work in Los Angeles, California, but otherwise had limited success.^[3] Working for a local company named Telenetwork, Burns later met Geoff Ramsey and Gustavo Sorola, and the three formed drunkgamers, a website where the three reviewed various video games while drunk.^[4] According to Ramsey, the group tried to receive free games to review, but "incurred the wrath" of several game developers in doing so.^[5]

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.^[6]

Machinima

Red vs. Blue

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.^[5] The idea for a serial came next,^[5] and a trailer for Red vs. Blue was posted in 2002.^[7] 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 work on the series.^[8]

In a parody of science fiction films and games^[9] and of military life,^[10] 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.^[11] However, the series became popular quickly, receiving 20,000 downloads in a single day.^[12] Accordingly, Burns conceived an extension of the plot.^[13] The series' fifth and supposedly final season officially ended with episode 100, released on June 28, 2007.^[14] However, the group has continued to released new material, including two additional complete seasons and numerous PSA announcements. These PSAs included a five-part mini-series to promote Halo 3.^[15]

Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles won several awards, including four from the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences.^[16] Writing for the New York Times, Clive Thompson credited the series as the first machinima production "to break out of the underground".^[17] Red vs. Blue videos have been shown in Xbox demo kiosks,^[18] and content that is included with the premium "Legendary" edition of Halo 3.^[19] Members of the cast were also featured in an Easter egg in the campaign mode of Halo 3.

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

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 one full-length series, Reconstruction. At PAX, Rooster Teeth showed a preview of a new series, Red vs. Blue: Animated, still under development. The series is a blend of 3-D effects and cel animation, as opposed to machinima. On June 15, 2009, Rooster Teeth released a new series, Recreation, that picked up where Reconstruction ended. In August 2009, RT productions began releasing videos based on Halo 3: ODST in partnership with Bungie, as part of marketing for the game.

At PAX 2009, Burnie Burns revealed that there would be another Red vs. Blue series scheduled for 2010. Titled Resolutions, the show will pick up after the events of Recreation.^{[citation needed]} No further details of the series has yet been revealed.

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.^[20] 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.^[21] Its first season of 17 episodes completed on April 27, 2006.^[22] In 2005, the group collaborated with Paul Marino^[23] on Strangerhood Studios, a spin-off commissioned by the Independent Film Channel.^[24] This spin-off was the first machinima series to be commissioned for broadcast^[24] and won an award for Best Editing at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.^[25]

Also in 2006, Rooster Teeth partnered with Maybeck Productions to create PANICS, a short series that chronicles the adventures of Alpha Team and their "awesome rides".^[24] The four publicly released episodes were released between September 27, 2005 and October 18, 2005,^[26] and a prequel was released with F.E.A.R. - Director's Edition.^[27] The mini-series won an award for Best Writing at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.^[25]

In mid-2006, Electronic Arts commissioned Rooster Teeth to direct^[28] commercials for their EA Sports brand of games, including Madden NFL 2007 and NCAA Football 2007, for broadcast on television.^[29] Rooster Teeth released some of this work on their website.^[30] 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.^[31] 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."^[31] In response, Rooster Teeth posted a director's cut, in which Clark plays and dominates every position.^[32]

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.

Other products

Web comic

In 2006, Rooster Teeth Productions formed its own webcomic series, Rooster Teeth Comics. The strip satires 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 two years of the comic have been released in separate collected edition books. Luke and Griffon just recently released the 500th comic in the series.

Grifball

In late 2007, Rooster Teeth created a Halo 3 multiplayer game-type called Grifball, played on the maps Foundry and Sandbox. 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 realised 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.^[33] 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. Because of this, 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.^[34] Rooster Teeth has organized their own official Grifball leagues, covering the United States, the United Kingdom and Oceania.

Achievement Hunter

During 2008, a website dedicated to finding gaming achievements was created, called AchievementHunter.com. The site is run by Geoff Ramsey and a select handful of members from the Rooster Teeth community, who also make regular contributions in the form of video guides. Unlike many other achievement-dedicated websites, Achievement Hunter is highly dependent on public contributions. Because of this, it is able to have highly indepth guides across many games, even expanding its focus from Xbox 360 games to those on PC, PS3, and even the iPhone.

Live action

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 and actor Joel Heyman, and actor Shannon McCormick.^[35] Rooster Teeth staff and guest actors were used in minor and extra roles. The series also lead to the release of an iPhone app called the Awesome Button.

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. A second season will depend on reception to the first season.^[36]

Rooster Teeth is now hoping to produce a live-action full-length film.^[37]

The Drunk Tank Podcast

In late 2008 Rooster Teeth released their first audio podcast available for download through the iTunes Store and Zune Marketplace. The podcast features four of the staff members (and occasionally a guest like Gavin, Matt or Jack) talking about video games, movies, recent news, etc. Most episodes are released every Wednesday.

Filmography

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rooster Teeth Productions

• Rooster Teeth Productions
• The Rooster Tooths Network - Unofficial Resource Network for Rooster Teeth Productions
• UT graduate blends video games, parody