Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: hell Stuff Works in a love of all things tech,
Speaker 1: and it's time for another Friday classic episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: This episode is the first interview we ever did for
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. Chris Pallette and I got the opportunity to
Speaker 1: speak with Mr Bernie Burns of Rooster Teeth Productions, and uh,
Speaker 1: I had been a huge fan of Rooster Teeth leading
Speaker 1: up to this interview, so my objectivity was probably at
Speaker 1: an all time low, but I thought it would be
Speaker 1: nice to revisit this classic episode, give you guys a
Speaker 1: chance to hear it in case you had not heard
Speaker 1: it back then, and I'll have more to say about
Speaker 1: it toward the end, but for now, enjoy. So, guys,
Speaker 1: this is a very special episode of tech Stuff, something
Speaker 1: that we hope to do more of in the future.
Speaker 1: We've got a special interview lined up with Mr Bernie
Speaker 1: Burns of Rooster Teeth Productions. They are the company that
Speaker 1: make Red versus Blue. So we've got the interview ready
Speaker 1: to go and we're going to insert it right here,
Speaker 1: We've got Bernie Burns on the line. Bernie is the
Speaker 1: founder of Rooster Teeth Productions, the producers of the popular
Speaker 1: web series Red Versus Blue, among other things. Bernie, how
Speaker 1: are you. I'm doing find Jonathan, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: I am I'm okay. Chris, how are you doing? Great?
Speaker 1: Thanks for asking. You're welcome, Chris, and I want you
Speaker 1: to be left out. So Bernie, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you. Really, you're a pioneer in web content, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to web videos and something beyond just
Speaker 1: the the one hit wonder web videos that that we're
Speaker 1: sort of the the earmark of internet video when it
Speaker 1: first started to take off, And I kind of wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to you about how you got into that
Speaker 1: and the development of Rooster Teeth produce actions over time,
Speaker 1: and where you're at today. So to start, you were
Speaker 1: actually involved in creating content for the web before there
Speaker 1: was even a Rooster Teeth, right, that's right, I mean
Speaker 1: really back before video was even trually possible on the Internet. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean you can download a I think one of
Speaker 1: the first things video I was I ever downloaded from
Speaker 1: the net was the first episode of South Park or
Speaker 1: what became South Park, and that was ten minutes short
Speaker 1: that I think was eighty meigs and it was the
Speaker 1: size of a postage stamp on the screen. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I started off writing for video game sites. I started
Speaker 1: writing off for writing for what we're called everything Nothing
Speaker 1: sites where they were sort of like blogs, but there
Speaker 1: were more articles. You know, A modern day equivalent would
Speaker 1: be almost like Slate or The Escapist, where their articles
Speaker 1: that are kind of thematic, but they could really be
Speaker 1: about anything. So what led you into starting the whole
Speaker 1: red versus Blue video phenomen non. Well, I was a
Speaker 1: filmmaker and I live in Austin, Texas, and so in
Speaker 1: college I built a non linear editor video capture device
Speaker 1: that could capture. Back then it was VHS tapes, so
Speaker 1: we transfer film to VHS and then we would capture
Speaker 1: the VHS and edited online. So then after making a
Speaker 1: couple of movies with some friends in Austin, uh, they
Speaker 1: moved out to l A to start their entertainment careers.
Speaker 1: I stayed in Austin because I had a very good
Speaker 1: tech job, and I was always just trying to find
Speaker 1: ways to make uh, you know, films or make short
Speaker 1: little videos. And I had all this equipment laying around,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, why don't I just take some
Speaker 1: of these videos I'm producing and start putting them online.
Speaker 1: Forget a way to do that, and so started encoding
Speaker 1: them in quick time and dive x back then, and
Speaker 1: we'll just upload them to a site. And I did
Speaker 1: a few of those before I made the first episode
Speaker 1: of Red Versus Blue and that immediately caught on. So
Speaker 1: for for our listeners who may not be familiar with
Speaker 1: Red Versus Blue, can you can you get sort of
Speaker 1: a bird's eye view of what the series is and
Speaker 1: and uh, you know the vehicle you use to create
Speaker 1: the series? Sure, So what we do in a nutshell, uh,
Speaker 1: is we use the video game Halo uh to produce
Speaker 1: short comedic cartoons essentially, um, and we use the graphics
Speaker 1: engine that's in Halo to do all of our animation.
Speaker 1: And probably the best way to describe it for something
Speaker 1: for someone who's never seen anything like it before, it's
Speaker 1: almost like using the video game characters as virtual puppets. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not doing animation cell by cell or
Speaker 1: you know, sitting down and plotting on all the character moves.
Speaker 1: We're actually controlling them in real time. So it's a
Speaker 1: little bit like animation, and it's a little bit like
Speaker 1: live action shooting, and that we do takes, we do rehearsals,
Speaker 1: and the performance that you're seeing is actually a recorded
Speaker 1: live performance by someone controlling the character in real time.
Speaker 1: That's that's really a very clever way of creating films.
Speaker 1: And of course we now call this mashinima, but back
Speaker 1: then that term probably wasn't very much in use at
Speaker 1: the time you guys were first getting into Red versus Blue, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny, we didn't know what it was called. We
Speaker 1: didn't know this was the movement that people were doing
Speaker 1: this kind of thing. So we thought we were brilliant
Speaker 1: and we had been invented this new technique of shooting,
Speaker 1: and we were actually wondering what we're gonna call it,
Speaker 1: and uh, we we got a phone call from Paul Marino,
Speaker 1: who was the head of the Academy of Machinima, Arts
Speaker 1: and Sciencests in New York, and you know, they said
Speaker 1: they wanted us to come out and do a presentation
Speaker 1: about Reversus Blue, and um, there was an awards ceremony
Speaker 1: that they had been nominated for and yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: we first found out about the word mishinima. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: and you said that you were It took off almost immediately.
Speaker 1: Was that like from episode one you immediately saw a
Speaker 1: real interest in this or did it take a few
Speaker 1: before it started looking like you really had a hit
Speaker 1: on your hands. No, it was pretty idiot. We put
Speaker 1: up the we put up the first episode and we
Speaker 1: along with it, we put up a p s A
Speaker 1: which was just the characters looking into the screen and
Speaker 1: talking and um, we were doing jokes about it. Was
Speaker 1: it was so long ago as weapons of mass destruction. Uh,
Speaker 1: this was back in two thousand and three, very very
Speaker 1: timely at the time, was very very topical. Um and uh.
Speaker 1: We were linked. The first episode of the series was
Speaker 1: linked on farc and slash dot and Penny Arcade, and
Speaker 1: so it went from three thousand views the first day
Speaker 1: that we put up the episode to the next day
Speaker 1: we had about fifteen thousand views on it. By the
Speaker 1: time we put out the second video. Quarter of a
Speaker 1: million people showed up the day of the first day
Speaker 1: to watch the second video. And Yeah, by the end
Speaker 1: of the month, we were up to about seven hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand viewers a week within within four weeks.
Speaker 1: That's that's meteor. It was, it was, it was the
Speaker 1: biggest problem for us was figuring out how to get
Speaker 1: it out there. Yeah, the bandwidth is shoes. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we were we were paying tons of money to
Speaker 1: deliver it because I mean, I'm sure you remember back
Speaker 1: in the day, people would get banned with bills when
Speaker 1: they would put up, you know, things on servers and
Speaker 1: then get a popular site. Um, And so we were
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to host what we're at
Speaker 1: the time pretty massive files. I mean these were, you know,
Speaker 1: seventy megabyte files people were downloading in you know, two
Speaker 1: thousand and to two thousand and three. It was it
Speaker 1: was hard to figure out how to stir all that.
Speaker 1: And YouTube didn't exist at the time, so we couldn't
Speaker 1: just throw it up on YouTube and hope for the best,
Speaker 1: you know. I have I have a question, um about
Speaker 1: what's your recording schedule? Look like, I mean, how many
Speaker 1: of these how fast can you do one of these videos?
Speaker 1: And and about how long does it take to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, from beginning to end. When you're talking about
Speaker 1: scripting and going through rehearsals and things like that how
Speaker 1: long does that take. Well, we're a lot faster than
Speaker 1: we used to be, just soon as we've been doing
Speaker 1: it for nine seasons that we're we're just going into
Speaker 1: season ten right now. But if you look at like
Speaker 1: a pick Star movie and the Machinima what we produced
Speaker 1: is not on the fidelity of of a picture movie.
Speaker 1: We do more custom animation now. But um, the big
Speaker 1: thing about machiniam is how efficient it is. So a
Speaker 1: pictar movie might take a team of three to people
Speaker 1: the course of three years. Um, we can produce five
Speaker 1: minutes a week with about this is now just a
Speaker 1: glacting voice actors who you have to have a different
Speaker 1: actor for every character. But we can produce five minutes
Speaker 1: a week with about three people. Uh, and that'll take
Speaker 1: us about you know, thirty four hours to do that.
Speaker 1: So every year we put out of a full feature
Speaker 1: on DVD and we can do that with production crew
Speaker 1: of anywhere between you know, three to five people. Now
Speaker 1: now that in later seasons we've been adding more custom
Speaker 1: animation just because of Sinima got more popular, we found
Speaker 1: we had to do more to stand out. And you know,
Speaker 1: like anything, it's like if it stays the same it'll
Speaker 1: it'll get stale. So we had to kind of evolved
Speaker 1: the series while it was in place, and so now
Speaker 1: we have a much bigger team. Now we have a
Speaker 1: team of about twenty people that work on it, uh
Speaker 1: and they do a lot of custom animations, some really
Speaker 1: fun action scenes, fighting scenes, that kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: when you guys were first exploring motion capture, UH, when
Speaker 1: did you guys actually sit down and consciously make that decision?
Speaker 1: And was that a huge challenge? Was it that or what?
Speaker 1: Was it surprisingly easy compared to everything else he had
Speaker 1: been doing. Well, we we made one higher that made
Speaker 1: it a lot easier, and that was Monty Home. I'm
Speaker 1: a big consumer of all things internet as well, so
Speaker 1: I'm always online, always like looking at you know, online video.
Speaker 1: I just I love it, and um, it's it's fun
Speaker 1: to spot people who are doing cool new stuff. And
Speaker 1: Montyon put up a video where he custom animated master
Speaker 1: Chief from Halo fighting Sammy's from Metroid and it was
Speaker 1: the models were okay, in the texture okay, but the
Speaker 1: animation was outrageously sophisticated and the choreography of what he
Speaker 1: was doing. And so we can't acted him, and we
Speaker 1: tried to work with them like two or three years
Speaker 1: before we were finally able to hire him, and that
Speaker 1: was in season eight, and so we essentially built an
Speaker 1: animation pipeline. That's he's the centerpiece of it. We built
Speaker 1: it around him, essentially cool. Well, jumping back again back
Speaker 1: to the early days, about how long did it did
Speaker 1: it take before you realize that you actually had a
Speaker 1: viable company on your hands? I mean, the show was
Speaker 1: a hit, but there's a big difference between something that
Speaker 1: ends up getting really viral on the internet and then
Speaker 1: turning that into something that can actually sustain itself as
Speaker 1: a business. Did that happen right away as well? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it came in the sense that we all
Speaker 1: of a sudden had these major expenses for That's what
Speaker 1: a great way to start a business, right Well, if
Speaker 1: you know, if there's a massive expense side of this,
Speaker 1: then they're they're they're theoretically should be some kind of
Speaker 1: revenue help service that I mean, there's there's obviously a
Speaker 1: demand for this, so if you sit the demand will
Speaker 1: generate bills. Uh, we kind of see a little proactive
Speaker 1: and figure a way to generate some revenue from it,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I think there's a big opinion
Speaker 1: that a common opinion. I should say that if you
Speaker 1: make something on the Internet and you get a ton
Speaker 1: of views, um, that the ad companies just show up
Speaker 1: like the ad trucks shows up in your driveway. It does.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work that way. Getting advertisers for content is
Speaker 1: very hard, and it's always been hard. It was never
Speaker 1: it was never easy to do it on the internet. UM.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of places that will abstract that
Speaker 1: for you now, a lot of a lot of video
Speaker 1: services that will do that for you. But it's a
Speaker 1: very difficult process, and so we had to go through
Speaker 1: and figure out a way to build a business model. UM.
Speaker 1: We actually built one that was based not on advertising,
Speaker 1: and we reran on that for five years. UM. We
Speaker 1: just in merchandise, UM, premium memberships and DVD sales, and
Speaker 1: that's how we funded the company for the first five years.
Speaker 1: We never we never ran a single ad on anything. Uh.
Speaker 1: For the first round of the show actually rings me
Speaker 1: to the question about the sponsorship the premium memberships that
Speaker 1: you rant. I've been a fan of Red versus Blue
Speaker 1: since season one. Well, I've been following it since season one,
Speaker 1: and so I'm familiar with the idea of you became
Speaker 1: a premium member and you would get access to certain videos.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you get access early, sometimes you get exclusive access,
Speaker 1: and also for the first few seasons, I remember, you
Speaker 1: would even get the DVD at the end of the season,
Speaker 1: which our premium member. Yeah. Yeah, so, uh so clearly
Speaker 1: building a community was an important part of your business
Speaker 1: model as well, right, and we built a community site
Speaker 1: to that. We knew that eventually the popularity of the
Speaker 1: show would wane, or at the very least that people
Speaker 1: watching the show, you know, the individuals would you know,
Speaker 1: say well, I can't watch something for you know, ten years. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, people just naturally fall out, and so we
Speaker 1: wanted to have something in place to hold people as
Speaker 1: like our portion of the Internet, so the Peple would
Speaker 1: always know where they can find us. And when we
Speaker 1: put new things out, it would be great to be
Speaker 1: able to show it to people, to get that initial
Speaker 1: seed of a of a new project. And that's that
Speaker 1: was probably one of the smartest things we did, was
Speaker 1: making sure that we carved out our own portion of
Speaker 1: the Internet. Yeah, it's it's still a very popular portal.
Speaker 1: I mean, if people want to go and check out
Speaker 1: the you have several different your l's that all lead
Speaker 1: into this kind of uh hub really of all the
Speaker 1: different products Rooster Teeth does, because it's not just Red
Speaker 1: Versus Blue, although we'll get into that in a little bit.
Speaker 1: I did have another question about the tone of Red
Speaker 1: Versus Blue and the early seasons the Blood Gulch Chronicles
Speaker 1: in particular, which is the first five seasons of Red
Speaker 1: Versus Blue. Uh, it was it was almost exclusively comedic,
Speaker 1: and then you began to experiment by inserting some more
Speaker 1: dramatic elements into the storyline, sometimes with uh tertiary characters
Speaker 1: who were not playing directly with your main cast. What time,
Speaker 1: at what point did you decide to do that? Was
Speaker 1: that something you had wanted to do from the big
Speaker 1: getting or as you were going, were you thinking, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, we could actually try something new here
Speaker 1: and try and do almost like an action movie type
Speaker 1: script parallel to the comedic stuff we're doing on this
Speaker 1: other side. Yeah, So it was essentially when it first started, essentially,
Speaker 1: like somebody described it as stripes in Space, which I
Speaker 1: think is a great way to describe it. It's just
Speaker 1: just it's very lighthearted. It's a it's a military comedy
Speaker 1: which which focuses on a lot of bureaucracy humor, which
Speaker 1: I think crosses over a lot of industries, not just
Speaker 1: you know, the military, but also business and school and
Speaker 1: everything else. UM. I was always as a as a writer,
Speaker 1: I was always writing though background threads so that the
Speaker 1: story could stay consistent. If you base it in a universe,
Speaker 1: you know, then it seems more honest. And I was
Speaker 1: doing all of that. And when we got towards the
Speaker 1: end of the fifth season, UM, I was talking with
Speaker 1: people about stories in the background that we're going that
Speaker 1: audience members had picked up on. But I had this
Speaker 1: whole fleshed out uh universe kind of behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: and I was talking with somebody here about it, and
Speaker 1: I strive it all. Was writing on the white board
Speaker 1: about all these things, and they said, maybe you should
Speaker 1: show this to the audience, you know, I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: you should, Maybe you should put this out there. And
Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, maybe, maybe, you know, maybe we should.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's interesting to us. And you know, our
Speaker 1: philosophy here is, um if we make things that we like,
Speaker 1: we just have faith that there's enough people on the
Speaker 1: internet that are like us that they'll like it too.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's just a natural evolution. Like I said,
Speaker 1: it's you know, we started off the very first episode
Speaker 1: of the very first season saying, all these guys, do
Speaker 1: we stand around and talk? That's what they were doing
Speaker 1: last week. That's what let't me doing five minutes from
Speaker 1: now and for five seasons. You know, it's it works
Speaker 1: very well standing around and talking, but you really do
Speaker 1: run the risk of becoming sale five years on the
Speaker 1: internet is is like a it's like a glacier, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's like an eon. It seems like, um, so
Speaker 1: that's the rise and fall of my space. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know we talked about that to you, like
Speaker 1: the when I was talking earlier about the carving out
Speaker 1: your own space on the internet. It's like a lot
Speaker 1: of people that today, you know, they don't do that.
Speaker 1: There's a big opinion that the the web is dead
Speaker 1: and that you should just go all in on Facebook
Speaker 1: or all in on YouTube or what you know, whatever
Speaker 1: the darling uh site of the moment happens to be.
Speaker 1: But I mean, we've been doing this for so long.
Speaker 1: I remember when if we just spend all of our
Speaker 1: time building up our Facebook or assuming are MySpace friends
Speaker 1: in two thousand three and two thousand four, we would
Speaker 1: I think, you know, um, you know, we're dealing with
Speaker 1: rever or something like that. You know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's it's Twitter, Twitter follower accounts, and you know, Facebook
Speaker 1: like seemed very important right now, but five years from
Speaker 1: now they probably won't seem all that important. You have.
Speaker 1: The biggest shifts that I see right now are really
Speaker 1: more platform shifts. So it's more like the emphasis now
Speaker 1: is on mobile as opposed to the desktop and laptop models,
Speaker 1: which that makes more sense. I mean, that's an access thing,
Speaker 1: not a not a you know, this is the particular
Speaker 1: website that's in vogue right now. Well, oh no, go ahead,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. No, it's crazy. It's crazy how much mobile
Speaker 1: has taken off. I mean, it's just it's just insane. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we talk about that all the time here at
Speaker 1: how Stuff works as well. I mean, it's it's completely
Speaker 1: changed the way that we create certain types of content.
Speaker 1: Because there are some kinds that are perfect for the
Speaker 1: mobile platform, and that's just people love them. There are
Speaker 1: other types that just don't quite fit as well. It's
Speaker 1: a real challenge to try and find the balance there. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: I think web video is one of those that it
Speaker 1: transcends the platform you don't have, you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about that as much. UM. Let me ask you
Speaker 1: also about some of the tricks you guys did working
Speaker 1: within the confines of a video game universe and actually
Speaker 1: within the actual physics engine of the video game itself. Uh,
Speaker 1: watching some of the behind the scenes stuff, I love
Speaker 1: the idea that you guys got really creative were the
Speaker 1: ways you shot the series, especially early on when there
Speaker 1: weren't as many tools for you to use, tools that
Speaker 1: I think have been built into games like Halo because
Speaker 1: of the work you've done when they didn't exist back then.
Speaker 1: You found really creative ways of getting around it. The
Speaker 1: one I think of off the top of my head
Speaker 1: is using a tank as a crane for crane shots, right.
Speaker 1: I mean that's goes back to how it's a lot
Speaker 1: like live action. It's like, we want to get a
Speaker 1: shot where we raised up, how do we do how
Speaker 1: do we do that? Um? There wasn't any ability within
Speaker 1: the retail game to raise the camera above eye level.
Speaker 1: I mean the entire first three seasons of the show.
Speaker 1: You're seeing the entire show through another character's eyes that
Speaker 1: never appeared on screen. It's it's literally a camera man um.
Speaker 1: And so we would walk him around in order to
Speaker 1: set up shots and to meet a camera. And so
Speaker 1: we thought, well, how can we do this? I thought,
Speaker 1: why don't we just put him on the end of
Speaker 1: the barrel of the tank. Can just slowly raise the
Speaker 1: tank barrel up, and sure enough, that allowed us to
Speaker 1: get a crane shot with it. Likewise, we would put
Speaker 1: people on the tops of banshees and fly them around
Speaker 1: if we wanted to get a really high view of
Speaker 1: the cannon or something like that. Yeah, we had to
Speaker 1: be really creative. In a later season, one of the
Speaker 1: things we would also just employ like some of the
Speaker 1: oldest trips that there are in filmmaking. Um, we had
Speaker 1: a character, a baby alien, so we need a small alien. Well,
Speaker 1: you can't shrink a character in the game, so we
Speaker 1: would just do forced perspective where we would set the
Speaker 1: alien far back in the shot and because there's no
Speaker 1: depth of field in the game, it's an infinite focus. Um,
Speaker 1: we would just set up the scene so that one
Speaker 1: character is really far away and they just happened to
Speaker 1: look a lot smaller, and it worked perfectly. I mean
Speaker 1: it it's it's the illusion was great. It's see you know,
Speaker 1: just like old things that used to do back in
Speaker 1: the days when they would you know, shoot King Kong
Speaker 1: and voyage the Moon. I imagine getting eyelines in this
Speaker 1: series is a bit of a challenge. It definitely is.
Speaker 1: I mean there's nothing in the game where it's like
Speaker 1: everyone looks in the same direction, you know, And so
Speaker 1: we're we're probably the best people in the world at
Speaker 1: playing Halo in a very specific way. Like ever, if
Speaker 1: you ever point us in a matchmaking game where all
Speaker 1: the players on the team have to look in the
Speaker 1: same direction or all run in the same line while
Speaker 1: looking at their feet, we would we would kill at that.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, if we ever created Days of our
Speaker 1: Lives game within Halo, you guys will rock it. Yes,
Speaker 1: we would be the dramatic reaction team. Well, let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of the other content that Rister Teeth produces.
Speaker 1: I mean, Red versus Blue is probably what got you
Speaker 1: guys on the map for most people, but you do
Speaker 1: a lot of other, uh things as well, including some
Speaker 1: live action stuff. When did you guys decide to start
Speaker 1: producing live action shorts. Well that's our that's our background
Speaker 1: is live action. And I mean we start off like
Speaker 1: I made a feature film. In college. I was a
Speaker 1: computer science student, but I want to learn how to
Speaker 1: uh make films because that's from premedic computer science and
Speaker 1: surprisingly not a lot of stuff transferred. So I had
Speaker 1: a bunch of I have like organic chemistry as a
Speaker 1: as an elective on my transcript um and so I
Speaker 1: had a bunch of hours on campus where I was
Speaker 1: trying to kill time, and I found the student run
Speaker 1: TV station down there, t STV, and started meeting film
Speaker 1: students and wanting to get involved in video editing in
Speaker 1: film production. But I did not want to go and
Speaker 1: sit through um film classes. So I thought, you know what,
Speaker 1: Robert Darriguez just made El Mariachi at ut I went
Speaker 1: to the University of Texas. He made elm Actually just
Speaker 1: a few years ago, there was this idea that you
Speaker 1: could just make an independent movie and set the world
Speaker 1: on fire. So I thought, why don't I just make
Speaker 1: a feature film, uh, you know, spend ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: doing that as opposed to spending it in a classroom,
Speaker 1: and then I'll probably know everything I need to know
Speaker 1: about filmmaking by the time it's over. Well, that took
Speaker 1: about eighteen months to get that done. You know, we
Speaker 1: we actually did shoot a feature on film on sixteen
Speaker 1: millimeter film. That was a long process, but uh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's just how I got involved with it. And
Speaker 1: I uh, um, you know it was it was worked
Speaker 1: out pretty well. I mean, you know, I own a
Speaker 1: production company and I don't have a degree in in
Speaker 1: any kind of entertainment. I have a computer science degree
Speaker 1: that just hangs on my wall and I never use
Speaker 1: Chris and I have more to say with Mr Burning
Speaker 1: Burns of rooster Teeth, But before we do, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. So, who are
Speaker 1: the writers on your on your staff? I know you
Speaker 1: write red versus blue, right, Yes, that's right, I write
Speaker 1: versus blue. Uh. And you know the actors add a
Speaker 1: ton when they get in the booth. Uh. All the
Speaker 1: actors know their characters so well now that they you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I'll just like have blanks that they can fill
Speaker 1: in for ad libs, you know, where they add a
Speaker 1: lot in as well. Uh. And then we have a
Speaker 1: team of writers upstairs, um that work on our shorts,
Speaker 1: and that's a that's a very collaborative effort. Um. They
Speaker 1: have a whole team like a writing room where they
Speaker 1: go in and pitch ideas and then they take them
Speaker 1: away and then come back with scripts and trade them
Speaker 1: off in new drafts. It's a it's a very fun process. Cool. Well,
Speaker 1: and we're pretty familiar with the writing process around here too.
Speaker 1: It's not not this similar, although we of course write
Speaker 1: articles and not not not scripts. But tell me about
Speaker 1: the Immersion series, which kind of married this video game
Speaker 1: and and live action short thing into an increasingly hilarious
Speaker 1: series of misadventures. Well, that was kind of fun. That
Speaker 1: was had this idea that we could take things from
Speaker 1: video games and test them in real life. And I
Speaker 1: had the idea for a while and eventually I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I should make one of these because
Speaker 1: someone else is going to do this if we don't.
Speaker 1: And that's a big thing on the internet. Man. It
Speaker 1: seems like by the time you think of an idea,
Speaker 1: you should go look it up because somebody's probably already
Speaker 1: done it, you know, if things move that fast. And
Speaker 1: so this this idea, this probably gives you a good
Speaker 1: example of what the whole series was about when you
Speaker 1: play a Grand Theft auto game or one of those
Speaker 1: open world urban environment games, when you drive a car,
Speaker 1: you drive from a third person perspective. Your your view
Speaker 1: of the car is behind the car, and that's not
Speaker 1: the way you drive a car in the real world.
Speaker 1: So we thought, okay, let's try that. Let's set up
Speaker 1: a car in real life that is a third person perspective.
Speaker 1: So we blacked out the windshield safety first uh and
Speaker 1: blackout the entire cockpit, and then suspended a camera on
Speaker 1: a rig behind the vehicle and then ran that down
Speaker 1: to a monitor that was on the dashboard of the car.
Speaker 1: So you're in the car, driving it through a course
Speaker 1: and you're looking at the car from behind, your views
Speaker 1: from behind the car. And we shot that episode. It
Speaker 1: took us about six hours to shoot the pilot um
Speaker 1: to the driving part of it, and then we spent
Speaker 1: another four hours out there afterwards because everyone in the
Speaker 1: crew want to drive the car, which we had a
Speaker 1: blast doing it. It It was great. It reminds me there's
Speaker 1: a guy there was a It was more of an
Speaker 1: art project than anything else, but there was a guy
Speaker 1: who an MMO suit that did a sort of the
Speaker 1: same thing, but it was just a it was just
Speaker 1: a person in a in a suit where you have
Speaker 1: a helmet that has a monitor built into it. There's
Speaker 1: a rig that's uh that warned like a backpack that
Speaker 1: suspends the camera above and behind to give that that
Speaker 1: MMO view of a character running around the world. So
Speaker 1: the only view you had of yourself was as a
Speaker 1: third person. And of course they added spikes on the
Speaker 1: helmet to give it that authentic MMO feel. And apparently
Speaker 1: anyone who put this on would first spend the first
Speaker 1: half hour struggling to interact with the world in a
Speaker 1: way that wasn't going to feel like it was going
Speaker 1: to kill them because it was so weird to be
Speaker 1: have an out of body experience like that. And then
Speaker 1: the next half hour was spent stomping around and swinging
Speaker 1: your arms around because you look like the incredible Hulk.
Speaker 1: So yeah, walk up to people and ask them for quests,
Speaker 1: right exactly, Yes, Yeah, that was yeah. No, there there
Speaker 1: are people who are still in therapy because of that.
Speaker 1: Are project. So if we did a funnel one like
Speaker 1: that where we tested what it would be like to
Speaker 1: be in a side scrolling environment where we had a
Speaker 1: wireless rig that we can send a video signal to
Speaker 1: to goggles that the person would wear, and we shot
Speaker 1: them from a ninety degree angle directly from their side.
Speaker 1: And so we had like a Mario course that these
Speaker 1: guys had to navigate while only being able to see
Speaker 1: themselves from the side. So what short straw that Gus
Speaker 1: and Jeff draw that they have to be in all
Speaker 1: of these They drew the academic short straw. They should
Speaker 1: have just been better in school and they would have
Speaker 1: better career opportunities and they wouldn't have to be subjected
Speaker 1: to all this terrible stuff. We we we got to the
Speaker 1: point whe we were torturing them. I think, I mean
Speaker 1: we we did this one thing where we tested video
Speaker 1: game foods. You know, when you're playing a video game
Speaker 1: and your character is hurt, if he eats a steak,
Speaker 1: then he immediately feels better. I don't know what they
Speaker 1: think the healing properties of food are in video games.
Speaker 1: So we took him out. We did tell them this.
Speaker 1: We took him out drinking until two in the morning
Speaker 1: and to celebrate something. It was all a ruse. And
Speaker 1: then the next day we showed up in the production
Speaker 1: crew at their house at five in the morning. They
Speaker 1: just I mean they literally just gone to bed so
Speaker 1: they would woke up and they were just miserable, and
Speaker 1: we just do like fed him food for about an
Speaker 1: hour and a half, big hams and pizzas and strawberries.
Speaker 1: Everything you see in a game that is supposed to
Speaker 1: cure you. And let's put it this way, it did
Speaker 1: not cure them. Gess. To learn more, visit the Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth's website and you can watch all of these or
Speaker 1: get the DVDs if you want to be able to
Speaker 1: have them for posterity's sake. Uh well, let's also talk.
Speaker 1: There's another another project, Achievement Hunter, which is again hosted
Speaker 1: by Rooster Teeth, which is all about achievements on Xbox
Speaker 1: three sixty games, although you guys also cover other games
Speaker 1: occasionally as well. Right, yes, we cover It's the achievement
Speaker 1: focus does seem to make it seems although achievements are
Speaker 1: bleeding into bobile games and Steam games as well. Um,
Speaker 1: it does seem to think it's like a three sixty
Speaker 1: um site, but no, they cover all different games like
Speaker 1: they've been covering a lot of the Star Wars Old
Speaker 1: Republic MMO lately. But it's just it's a celebration of
Speaker 1: video game culture, which which we love. We love online
Speaker 1: culture and video game culture, and we're actually had holding
Speaker 1: a convention uh in Austin this year rt X, which
Speaker 1: is the intersection of gaming and online culture. But schieven
Speaker 1: Hunter has been a huge, huge success. Um, it's just
Speaker 1: been It's something that you know, we kind of kicked
Speaker 1: around for a while of you know, recording actual gameplay
Speaker 1: from our footage from gameplay video games and then commenting
Speaker 1: on it. And uh we Jeff Ramsey, who plays Griffin
Speaker 1: our Reverend Blue series, he ended up, he hited up
Speaker 1: the project and he has just been. Man, it's been
Speaker 1: an enormous thing. We're about to hit uh one billion
Speaker 1: total views on YouTube across all of our videos and achievement.
Speaker 1: Hunter has been a huge part of that. That is incredible.
Speaker 1: And I also should have ad the the successive Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth has been truly phenomenal and that your effects. You know,
Speaker 1: you guys talk about how you have absorbed video game culture,
Speaker 1: but you've also become part of it. I mean you
Speaker 1: several people from Rooster Teeth have been featured in games
Speaker 1: as voiceover talent and other things. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about some of those. You know, we actually
Speaker 1: are trying to go through and compile a list of
Speaker 1: the places where Rischarchie's has been referenced to Rivers Blue
Speaker 1: has been referenced um, just in most recently. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a reference in the World Warcraft expansion where
Speaker 1: there's a I forget the name of the thing, but
Speaker 1: it's essentially like a parody of Blood Gulch, And there's
Speaker 1: a character in there that's based on griff um Uh
Speaker 1: in there. And then we just did a like a commentary,
Speaker 1: a bonus commentary for gun Stringer Twisted Pixel. And then
Speaker 1: we always it's funny things. We always send up been achievements,
Speaker 1: references and achievements, Like there's a lot of Red versus
Speaker 1: Blue referential achievements. Um, there's Wanting Gears of War. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a dishwasher, Samurai dishwasher. They just put out a
Speaker 1: new version of the game that has the Caboose is
Speaker 1: Achievable system as part of the game. And the coolest
Speaker 1: things ever is that we got to be voices in
Speaker 1: Halo three. I mean that was that was an honor
Speaker 1: to actually participate in the game that we're obviously such
Speaker 1: huge fans in and that's that's pretty incredible. It's like
Speaker 1: a full circle right there. Well, when we started Reversus
Speaker 1: Blue me when you have your you know, your initial
Speaker 1: meetings and you know you're talking about, well, what's the
Speaker 1: coolest thing that could happen? I mean, we thought the
Speaker 1: coolest thing that could happen, by far was that we
Speaker 1: somehow get referenced in an actual Halo video game or
Speaker 1: like some kind of east Rin because Bungee has always
Speaker 1: pretty put east Rings in their games. And getting getting
Speaker 1: to play marines and contribute, you know, contribute our voices
Speaker 1: to the game. That was just it was nuts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic that that that turned out that way, especially
Speaker 1: that Bungee ended up being such fans of your work,
Speaker 1: because if they had gone another way, especially when we
Speaker 1: see things like on tech stuff, we talked about a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff like uh, intellectual property and patent wars
Speaker 1: and about this sort of litigious side to a lot
Speaker 1: of companies. Uh, it could have gone a totally different way.
Speaker 1: It could have been that one episode went up and
Speaker 1: then you've got to cease and desist and then no
Speaker 1: more opportunity. So I'm so glad that this was a
Speaker 1: case where a company said, no, they're they're adding benefit
Speaker 1: to what we do. We enjoy their work. We want
Speaker 1: to see them succeed. Well, I mean, I think that
Speaker 1: would be what you're saying about the episode going up
Speaker 1: and then it gets pulled out. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people say that is the expectation of what would happen. Um,
Speaker 1: And certainly that was in our minds as we were
Speaker 1: doing it. And UM, you know, I can't speak for them,
Speaker 1: you know, why they made the decisions they made, but
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Microsoft took a look at it
Speaker 1: and said, you know, here's something that's innovative and creative,
Speaker 1: and let's see what happens, you know. And that's that
Speaker 1: was the attitude they took, like, let's let's just go
Speaker 1: forward and see where this goes. And I met with
Speaker 1: them and told them, you know, here's the plans for
Speaker 1: what I want to do with it. More importantly, here's
Speaker 1: what we're not trying to do. Um, you know, we're
Speaker 1: just trying to have some fun and do something and
Speaker 1: we're huge fans of Halo, and um, you know, let's
Speaker 1: see what happened turned into a three relationship and has
Speaker 1: now turned into a tenny relationships. So I can't. I
Speaker 1: cannot say enough good things about the risk that Microsoft
Speaker 1: took on us and how much that is mentor business,
Speaker 1: because they have been very open and and very cool, fantastic. Well,
Speaker 1: I I have just two more questions. Here's the second
Speaker 1: to last one. This was one that was suggested by
Speaker 1: a follower of mine on Twitter. Um, how frequently are
Speaker 1: you mistaken as the guy who does the voice for Caboose?
Speaker 1: All all? It's so insulting. It's uh, yeah, Caboose is
Speaker 1: easily our most popular character, and uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: uh whenever we go to conventions, it's, oh, here's Vernie.
Speaker 1: He plays the Uh he's the writer and director and
Speaker 1: created a show and plays the lead character because I
Speaker 1: write it. Of course I make myself lead character and like, hey,
Speaker 1: that's great. Where's Caboose? Yeah? And often it's like, it's
Speaker 1: not so much getting mistaken for Caboose, it's the it's
Speaker 1: the raw disappointment that you see in people's faces when
Speaker 1: they realize that you're not Caboose. That's when you had
Speaker 1: the gut check as an artist. I um no, I
Speaker 1: I can sort of identify with that because a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, not so much now, but a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, I bore a passing resemblance to Jamie
Speaker 1: Hyneman of MythBusters. I can see that now, you say that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that. So yeah, I have different glasses now.
Speaker 1: The glasses apparently are what made it. But I had
Speaker 1: two people within the span of a week make that
Speaker 1: that comment to me. And Dragon Con, which some Rooster
Speaker 1: Chief people have been to in the past. But Dragon
Speaker 1: Con here in Atlanta was hosting several members of the
Speaker 1: build team from MythBusters as guests, and so I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this will be fun. I'll go and buy a military beret,
Speaker 1: I'll wear an Oxford shirt, and I'll just show up
Speaker 1: as Jamie. I'm clearly I'm clearly not Jamie, but that's
Speaker 1: gonna be my costume. And um. Then I discovered the
Speaker 1: joy and and and heartbreak of revealing to people that
Speaker 1: I was not actually Jamie from MythBusters and see that
Speaker 1: moment of realization where they're their joy turned to disappointment.
Speaker 1: I actually disappointed an entire battalion of the first Stormtrooper
Speaker 1: Brigade that was you never want to pist off armored
Speaker 1: people with gunn no no, But it is funny to
Speaker 1: watch them all like deflate. At the same time, it
Speaker 1: kind of made you feel like what it would have
Speaker 1: been like to be on Coruscant when they revealed that
Speaker 1: the Death Star had exploded. Yeah, guys, all right, you
Speaker 1: know we had a good run. Um, so here's my
Speaker 1: last one. Are there any other projects that you're working
Speaker 1: on that you would like to talk about. We've talked
Speaker 1: about the live action stuff and Red Versus Blue and
Speaker 1: rt X. Is there anything specific you would like to
Speaker 1: to mention to our listeners. Well, yeah, it's a crazy thing. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's pretty irreverent. Uh, it's a lot different
Speaker 1: tone than this interview even. But our podcast on that
Speaker 1: that's on iTunes is the Roster Chief podcast is actually
Speaker 1: turned into one of our biggest it um and I
Speaker 1: just love making it. We just talked about we just
Speaker 1: get on Mike and talk for an hour about you know,
Speaker 1: what's going on, you know with video games, what's going
Speaker 1: on with online culture, what's going on you know in
Speaker 1: curt events, and you know, and our interpretation of it,
Speaker 1: which is basically our misunderstanding of it all. Uh, and
Speaker 1: it's just fun. It's just you know, working at Rooster Teeth.
Speaker 1: It's it's a bunch of friends working together and so um,
Speaker 1: it's fun to get on there for an hour and
Speaker 1: just jaw with your buddies and um. You know, we're
Speaker 1: working on some ways to punch up the podcast and
Speaker 1: maybe change the way we delivered a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: But we're really looking forward to this year to growing
Speaker 1: the podcast and also bringing people out to Austin July
Speaker 1: seventh and eighth for r t X, which is our
Speaker 1: convention here. We're really excited about that. Fantastic And yes,
Speaker 1: I am also a fan of your podcast. And I
Speaker 1: should mention that both the Rooster Teeth podcast and Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff we're mentioned as the rewind best of two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven on iTunes. Yeah, so we've got we've got that
Speaker 1: in common going for us. Yeah. The show that you
Speaker 1: guys do is is incredibly hilarious, especially if you can
Speaker 1: get one of the more clueless members of Rooster teach
Speaker 1: on like or or you know, or just Joel. If
Speaker 1: Joel's on there and and all you have to do
Speaker 1: is say one thing and you realize that he's gone
Speaker 1: off on a completely different tangent and he's really angry
Speaker 1: about it for no apparent reason. For no apparent reason,
Speaker 1: now you can see why he plays the voice of cabouse. Yes.
Speaker 1: Before we hear the rest of the interview with Mr
Speaker 1: Bernie Burns, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Well, Bernie,
Speaker 1: this has been a great time. It's it's been one
Speaker 1: of those things I've always wanted to do. I've, like
Speaker 1: I said, I've been a fan of the show from
Speaker 1: season one and I'm glad we had this opportunity. And
Speaker 1: we did do an episode on tech stuff about Mishinima.
Speaker 1: Uh oh, I guess that was one of our first episodes.
Speaker 1: We're coming up on episode four hundred before too long,
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, people are still listening. So this was
Speaker 1: really and we we talked a lot about Red Versus
Speaker 1: Blue in our MISSIONEMA podcast, so this was really a
Speaker 1: thrill for me. Thank you so much for joining us,
Speaker 1: and we really do appreciate it. Guys, if you have
Speaker 1: not checked out Rooster Teeth, I do recommend you go
Speaker 1: and look at their stuff, watch some Red Verses Blue,
Speaker 1: watch some of their live action and uh and really
Speaker 1: pay attention because these guys have found a way before
Speaker 1: almost anyone else did to make new media work in
Speaker 1: a sustainable way and build a business out of it.
Speaker 1: And that that, to me, is probably the best story
Speaker 1: out of all of this, is that not only do
Speaker 1: you guys create great content, but you found a way
Speaker 1: to make that, you know, pay for itself and and
Speaker 1: to actually keep it going over time and not just
Speaker 1: be Wow. That was incredible. I just wish they could
Speaker 1: have found a way to make it work. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: make it sounds so legitimate. I'm gonna record that and
Speaker 1: play back at dinner parties. All right, you have my
Speaker 1: permission to do that. That's fine, especially if you if
Speaker 1: you if you subscribe to text stuff, that would that
Speaker 1: would help us out, because you know, every listener counts.
Speaker 1: You got it all right? Awesome, Thank you so much, Bernie,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Out of I appreciated after having
Speaker 1: done that episode on Machinema a while back. It was
Speaker 1: nice to have the perspective of somebody who's really involved
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, someone who's actually gone through and done it.
Speaker 1: It was that was a real thrill for me as well,
Speaker 1: just to hear about, you know, experimenting with this new
Speaker 1: form of media. Yeah, that's also very exciting. So guys,
Speaker 1: we're hoping we can do more of these, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was really surprised. I just want to say,
Speaker 1: I was really surprised by how similar it was to
Speaker 1: live action in some respects. Um, you know, of course
Speaker 1: they have to use tricks, or had to use tricks,
Speaker 1: especially in the beginning, but I was, I was surprised
Speaker 1: lining up shots and things like that. Yeah, this stuff
Speaker 1: that you want to think about when you're playing a
Speaker 1: video game, like, oh yeah, we totally could tell a
Speaker 1: story like this. Well, if you don't have that that
Speaker 1: background where you know how to line up shots and
Speaker 1: you know the importance of that kind of composition, then
Speaker 1: you might make something that's amusing, but you're not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to make something that's that's going to last a
Speaker 1: long time. But these guys had not just the writing talent,
Speaker 1: but also the the technical talent to create a compelling
Speaker 1: looking shot using, let's be honest, very limited tools. I mean,
Speaker 1: the video game is not designed to give you a
Speaker 1: lot of flexibility, So hats off to them. And of
Speaker 1: course now a lot of those tools have been built
Speaker 1: into those video games so that you can have a
Speaker 1: free floating camera that has no limitations and you can
Speaker 1: put it anywhere you want, which now you've got more
Speaker 1: options than any any live action director would have without
Speaker 1: the use of of c g I. I hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff, and thanks
Speaker 1: once again to Mr Bernie Burns for agreeing to be
Speaker 1: our experimental guinea pig test subject with the first ever
Speaker 1: interview on text Stuff. It was intimidating to speak with him.
Speaker 1: I had such a huge fan of his I've had
Speaker 1: the chance to meet him a couple of times since then.
Speaker 1: He's always been incredibly gracious and Rooster Teeth continues to
Speaker 1: make really interesting content, both in comedy and in other fields. Uh.
Speaker 1: They now encompass multiple companies that have been making online
Speaker 1: content for quite some time, and it ranges from the
Speaker 1: scripted comedies of things like Red Versus Blue, and then
Speaker 1: there's the anime series Ruby, which has become a real
Speaker 1: phenomenon for Rooster Teeth, and then they have their unscripted
Speaker 1: stuff like Achievement Hunter, their various podcasts. So they're really
Speaker 1: a an online entertainment empire at this point. So if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with them, check them out. They probably
Speaker 1: make something that you like and maybe one of their
Speaker 1: lesser known series, or maybe you'll end up ending, you know,
Speaker 1: watching the exact same stuff I watched week after week.
Speaker 1: I'm still a fan years later, So guys, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening. If you have any suggestions for episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, send them in my way. Use the
Speaker 1: email address tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or draw me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for both of those Text Stuff hs W. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to follow us on Instagram and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, because it how stuff works dot com