Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tex Stuff from how stuff looks dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor and how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as usual is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: The man in black fled across the desert and the
Speaker 1: gun Slinger followed. It's interesting that you would pick black
Speaker 1: Well also, that kind of gives a suggestion of maybe
Speaker 1: like a desert. And uh, we have a special guest
Speaker 1: on today's episode who is from well calling us from Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: which is not just a desert, but that's what came
Speaker 1: to mind, right. So, guys, this is a very special
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff, something that we hope to do
Speaker 1: more of in the future. We've got a special interview
Speaker 1: lined up with this, the Bernie Burns of Rooster Teeth Productions.
Speaker 1: They are the company that make Red versus Blue. So
Speaker 1: we've got the interview ready to go and we're going
Speaker 1: to insert it right here. We've got Bernie Burns on
Speaker 1: the line. Bernie is the founder of Rooster Teeth Productions,
Speaker 1: the producers of the popular web series Red Versus Blue,
Speaker 1: among other things. Bernie, how are you I'm doing find Jonathan,
Speaker 1: how are you doing? I am I'm okay. Chris, how
Speaker 1: are you doing great? Thanks for asking. You're welcome, Chris.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to be left out. So Bernie,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to you. Really, you're a pioneer
Speaker 1: in web content, especially when it comes to web videos
Speaker 1: and something beyond just the the one hit wonder web
Speaker 1: videos that that we're sort of the the earmark of
Speaker 1: internet video when it first started to take off, and
Speaker 1: I kind of wanted to talk to you about how
Speaker 1: you got into that and the development of Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: Productions over time and where you're at today. So to start,
Speaker 1: you were actually involved in creating content for the web
Speaker 1: before there was even a Rooster Teeth, right, that's right,
Speaker 1: I mean really back before video was even really possible
Speaker 1: on the Internet. Um, I mean you can download a
Speaker 1: I think one of the first things video wise ever
Speaker 1: downloaded from the net was the first episode of south
Speaker 1: Park or what became south Park, and that was ten
Speaker 1: minutes short that I think was eighty megs and it
Speaker 1: was the size of a postage stamp on the screen.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I started off writing for video game sites.
Speaker 1: I started writing off for writing for what we're called
Speaker 1: everything Nothing sites where they were sort of like blogs,
Speaker 1: but there were more articles. You know, modern day equivalent
Speaker 1: would be almost like Slate or The Escapist, where their
Speaker 1: articles that are kind of thematic, but they could really
Speaker 1: be about anything. So what led you into starting the
Speaker 1: whole red versus Blue video phenomenon. 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 captured device
Speaker 1: that could catch her. Back then it was VHS tapes,
Speaker 1: so we transfer film to VHS and then we would
Speaker 1: capture the VHS and edited online. So then after making
Speaker 1: a couple of movies with some friends in Austin, uh,
Speaker 1: they 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 did a
Speaker 1: few of those before I made the first episode of
Speaker 1: Red Versus Blue and that immediately caught on. So for
Speaker 1: for our listeners who may not be familiar with Red
Speaker 1: Versus Blue, can you can you get sort of a
Speaker 1: bird's eye view of what the series is and and uh,
Speaker 1: you know the vehicle you use to create the series. Sure,
Speaker 1: So what we do in a nutshell, uh, is we
Speaker 1: use the video game Halo uh to produce short comedic
Speaker 1: cartoons essentially, um, and we use the graphics engine that's
Speaker 1: in Halo to do all of our animation. And probably
Speaker 1: the best way to describe it for something for someone
Speaker 1: who's never seen anything like it before, it's almost like
Speaker 1: using the video game characters as virtual puppets. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not doing animation cell by cell or you know,
Speaker 1: sitting down and plotting on all the character moves. We're
Speaker 1: actually controlling them in real time. So it's a little
Speaker 1: bit like animation, and it's a little bit like live
Speaker 1: 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 mishinima, 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: these kind of things. So we felt 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 Scientists 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 no award ceremony
Speaker 1: that they we had been nominated for, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how we first found out about the word mishinima. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so and you said that you were it took off
Speaker 1: almost immediately. Was that like from episode one you immediately
Speaker 1: saw a real interest in this Or did it take
Speaker 1: a few before it started looking like you really had
Speaker 1: a hit on your hands. No, it was pretty immediate.
Speaker 1: We put up the We put up the first episode
Speaker 1: and end we along with it, we put up a
Speaker 1: p s A which was just the characters looking into
Speaker 1: the screen and talking and um, we were doing jokes
Speaker 1: about it. It was so long ago as weapons of
Speaker 1: mass destruction. Uh, this was back in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: very very timely at the time, was very very topical.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. We were linked the first episode of
Speaker 1: the series was linked on Fark and slash dot and
Speaker 1: penny Arcade, and so it went from three thousand views
Speaker 1: the first day that we put up the episode to
Speaker 1: the next day we had about fifteen thousand views on it.
Speaker 1: By the time we put out the second video. A
Speaker 1: quarter of a million people showed up the day of
Speaker 1: the first day to watch the second video. And but yeah,
Speaker 1: by the end of the month, we were up to
Speaker 1: about seven hundred and fifty thousand viewers a week within
Speaker 1: within four weeks. That's that's it was. It was. It
Speaker 1: was the biggest problem for us was figuring out how
Speaker 1: to get it out there. Yeah, the bandwidth issues, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we were we were paying tons of money
Speaker 1: to deliver it because I mean, I'm sure you remember
Speaker 1: back in the day, people will get bannedidth 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. As 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 Pixar movie and the machinima, what we produced is
Speaker 1: not on the fidelity of a Pixel movie. We do
Speaker 1: more custom animation now. But um, the big thing about
Speaker 1: Sinim is how efficient it is. So a Pixar movie
Speaker 1: might take a team of three people the course of
Speaker 1: three years. Um, we can produce five minutes a week
Speaker 1: with about This is now just neglecting voice actors, who
Speaker 1: you have to have a different actor for every character.
Speaker 1: But we can produce five minutes a week with about
Speaker 1: three people. Uh, and that will take us about you know,
Speaker 1: thirty or forty hours to do that. So every year
Speaker 1: we put out of a full feature on DVD, and
Speaker 1: we can do that with perruption crew of anywhere between
Speaker 1: you know, three to five people. Now, now that in
Speaker 1: later seasons we've been adding more custom animation. Just because
Speaker 1: of cinema got more popular, we found we had to
Speaker 1: do more to stand out. And you know, like anything,
Speaker 1: it's like if it stays the same, it'll it'll get stale.
Speaker 1: So we had to kind of evolved the series while
Speaker 1: it was in place. And so now we have a
Speaker 1: much bigger team now. We have a team of about
Speaker 1: twenty people that work on it, uh and they do
Speaker 1: a lot of custom animations and really fun on action scenes,
Speaker 1: fighting scenes, that kind of thing. So when you guys
Speaker 1: were first exploring motion capture, UH, when did you guys
Speaker 1: actually sit down and consciously make that decision? And was
Speaker 1: that a huge challenge? Was it that or what? Was
Speaker 1: it surprisingly easy compared to everything else he had been doing. Well,
Speaker 1: we we made one higher that made it a lot easier,
Speaker 1: and that was Monty Home. I'm a big consumer of
Speaker 1: all things internet as well, so I'm always online, always
Speaker 1: like looking at you know, online video. I just I
Speaker 1: love it, and um, it's it's fun to spot people
Speaker 1: who were doing cool new stuff. And montyme put up
Speaker 1: a video where he custom animated master Chief from Halo
Speaker 1: fighting Sammy's from Metroid and it was the models were
Speaker 1: okay in a texture okay, but the animation was outrageously
Speaker 1: sophisticated and the choreography of what he was doing. And
Speaker 1: so we contacted him and we tried to work with
Speaker 1: them for like two or three years before we we're
Speaker 1: finally able to hire him. And that was in season eight,
Speaker 1: and so we essentially built an animation pipeline. That's he's
Speaker 1: the centerpiece of it. We built it around him, essentially. Cool. Well,
Speaker 1: jumping back again back to the early days, about how
Speaker 1: long did it did it take before you realize that
Speaker 1: you actually had a viable company on your hands? I mean,
Speaker 1: the show was a hit, but there's a big difference
Speaker 1: between something that ends up getting really viral on the
Speaker 1: internet and then turning that into something that can actually
Speaker 1: sustain itself as a business. Did that happen right away
Speaker 1: as well? Well? I mean it came in the sense
Speaker 1: that we all of a sudden had these major expenses
Speaker 1: for that's what a great way to start a business, right? Well,
Speaker 1: if 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 demand
Speaker 1: for this. So if you sit still, the demand will
Speaker 1: generate bills. Uh, you have to a proactive figure a
Speaker 1: way to generate some revenue from it. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's a big opinion, uh that a common opinion.
Speaker 1: I should say that if you make something on the
Speaker 1: internet and you get a ton of views. Um, that
Speaker 1: the ad companies just show up like the ad trucks
Speaker 1: shows up in your driveway. It does. It doesn't work
Speaker 1: that way. Getting advertisers for content is very hard and
Speaker 1: it's always been hard. It was never it was never
Speaker 1: easy to do it on the internet. UM. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of places that will abstract that for you now,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of video services that will
Speaker 1: do that for you. But it's a very difficult process,
Speaker 1: and so we had to go through and figure out
Speaker 1: a way to build a business model. UM. We actually
Speaker 1: built one that was based not on advertising, and we
Speaker 1: reran on that for five years. UM. We just did merchandise, UM,
Speaker 1: premium memberships and DVD sales, and that's how we funded
Speaker 1: the company for the first five years. We never we
Speaker 1: never ran a single ad on anything, uh for the
Speaker 1: first round of the show. Yeah. That actually brings me
Speaker 1: to the question about the sponsorship, the premium membership that
Speaker 1: you rant. I've been a fan of Red Versus Blue
Speaker 1: since season one. 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
Speaker 1: videos 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
Speaker 1: season when you are premium member. Yeah yeah, so, uh so,
Speaker 1: clearly building a community was an important part of your
Speaker 1: business model as well, right, and we built a community
Speaker 1: site to that. We knew that eventually the popularity of
Speaker 1: the show would wane, or at the very least that
Speaker 1: people 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 uh as,
Speaker 1: like our portion of the internet, so that people 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 beginning,
Speaker 1: or as you were going, were you thinking, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what, we could actually try something new here and
Speaker 1: try and do almost like an action movie type script
Speaker 1: parallel to the comedic stuff we're doing on this other side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it was essentially when it first started, essentially, like
Speaker 1: somebody described it as Stripes in Space, which I think
Speaker 1: is a great way to describe it. It's just just
Speaker 1: it's very lighthearted. It's a it's a military comedy which
Speaker 1: which focuses on a lot of bureaucracy humor, which I
Speaker 1: think crosses over a lot of industries, not just you know,
Speaker 1: the military, but also business and school and everything else. UM.
Speaker 1: I was always as a as a writer, I was
Speaker 1: always writing though background threads so that the story could
Speaker 1: stay consistent. If you base it in a universe, you know,
Speaker 1: then it seems more honest. And I was doing all
Speaker 1: of that. And when we got towards the end of
Speaker 1: the fifth season, UM, I was talking with people about
Speaker 1: stories in the background that we're going that audience members
Speaker 1: had picked up on. But I had this whole fleshed out,
Speaker 1: uh you know verse kind of behind the scenes, and
Speaker 1: I was talking with somebody here about it and I
Speaker 1: described it all, was writing on the on the white
Speaker 1: board about all these things, and they said, maybe you
Speaker 1: should show this to the audience, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe you should, Maybe you should put this out there.
Speaker 1: And 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 we were doing five minutes from now,
Speaker 1: and for five seasons. You know it's it works very
Speaker 1: well standing around and talking, but you really do run
Speaker 1: the risk of becoming stale. Five years on the internet
Speaker 1: is is like a it's like a glacier, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's like an eon. It seems like, um, that's
Speaker 1: the rise and fall of my Space. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know we talked about that to you, like the
Speaker 1: when I was talking you earlier about the carving out
Speaker 1: your own space on the internet. It's like a lot
Speaker 1: of people today, you know, they don't do that. There's
Speaker 1: a big opinion that the the web is dead and
Speaker 1: that you should just go all in on Facebook or
Speaker 1: all in on YouTube or what you know, whatever the
Speaker 1: darling uh site of the moment happens to be. But
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been doing this for so long. I
Speaker 1: remember when if we just spent all of our time
Speaker 1: building up our Facebook or assuming are MySpace friends in
Speaker 1: two thousand three and two tho four, we would I
Speaker 1: think you know, uh, you know we're dealing with rever
Speaker 1: or something like that. You know, it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: it's Twitter, Twitter follower accounts, and you know, Facebook like
Speaker 1: seemed very important right now, but five years from now
Speaker 1: they probably won't seem all than important. Yeah. The biggest
Speaker 1: shifts that I see right now are really more platform shifts.
Speaker 1: So it's more like the emphasis now is on mobile
Speaker 1: as opposed to the desktop and laptop models, which that
Speaker 1: makes more sense. I mean, that's an access thing, not
Speaker 1: a not a you know, this is the particular website
Speaker 1: that 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 changed, uh,
Speaker 1: the way that we create certain types of content. Because
Speaker 1: there are some kinds that are perfect for the mobile
Speaker 1: platform and that's just people love them. There are other
Speaker 1: types that just don't quite fit as well. It's a
Speaker 1: 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 has 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 just goes back to how it's a
Speaker 1: lot like live action. It's like we wanted to get
Speaker 1: a shot where we raised up, how do we do?
Speaker 1: How do we do that? Um, there wasn't any ability
Speaker 1: within 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 the 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 and just slowly raised 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 canyon or something like that. Yeah, we had to
Speaker 1: be really creative. Um. In a later season. One of
Speaker 1: the things we would also just employ like some of
Speaker 1: the oldest tricks that there are in filmmaking. Um, we
Speaker 1: had a character, a baby alien, so we need a
Speaker 1: small alien. Well, you can't shrink a character in the game,
Speaker 1: so we would just do forced perspective where we would
Speaker 1: set the alien far back in the shot and because
Speaker 1: there's no depth of field in the game, it's an
Speaker 1: infinite focus. Um, we would just set up the scene
Speaker 1: so that one character is really far away and they
Speaker 1: just happen to look a lot smaller. And it worked perfectly.
Speaker 1: I mean it it the illusion was great. It's you
Speaker 1: know just like old things they used to do back
Speaker 1: in the days when they would you know, shoot King
Speaker 1: Kong and voyage the Moon. I imagine getting eyelines in
Speaker 1: this 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 probably the best people in the world at playing
Speaker 1: Halo in a very specific way. Like ever, if you
Speaker 1: ever put us in a matchmaking game where all the
Speaker 1: players on the team have to look in the same
Speaker 1: direction or all run in the same line while looking
Speaker 1: at their feet, we would we would kill at that.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, we ever created Days of our Lives
Speaker 1: game within Halo, you guys will rock it. Yes, we
Speaker 1: would be the dramatic reaction team. Well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the other content that Rister Teeth produces. I mean,
Speaker 1: Red versus Blue is probably what got you guys on
Speaker 1: the map for most people, but you do a lot
Speaker 1: of other, uh things as well, including some live action stuff.
Speaker 1: When did you guys decide to start producing live action shorts? Well,
Speaker 1: that's our that's our background is live action, and I
Speaker 1: mean we start off like I made a feature film
Speaker 1: in college. I was a computer science student, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to learn how to uh make films because that's
Speaker 1: from premedic computer science, and surprisingly not a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff transferred. So I had a bunch of I have
Speaker 1: like organic chemistry as a as an elective on my
Speaker 1: transcript um, and so I had a bunch of hours
Speaker 1: on campus where I was trying to kill time, and
Speaker 1: I found the student run TV station down there, t STV,
Speaker 1: and started meeting film students and wanting to get involved
Speaker 1: in video editing in film production. But I did not
Speaker 1: want to go and sit through um film classes. So
Speaker 1: I thought, you know what, Robert Arriguez just made El
Speaker 1: Mariachi at ut I went to the University of Texas.
Speaker 1: He made elm act just a few years ago. There
Speaker 1: was this idea that you could just make an independent
Speaker 1: movie and set the world on fire. So I thought,
Speaker 1: why don't I just make a feature film, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: spend ten thousand dollars doing that as opposed to spending
Speaker 1: it in a classroom, and then I'll probably know everything
Speaker 1: I need to know about filmmaking by the time it's over. Well,
Speaker 1: that took about eighteen months to get that done, you know,
Speaker 1: we we actually did shoot a feature on film on
Speaker 1: sixteen 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 work
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 used basically. So,
Speaker 1: uh so, who are the writers on your on your staff?
Speaker 1: I know you write red versus blue? Right, Yes, that's right,
Speaker 1: I write versus blue. Uh. And you know the actors
Speaker 1: add a ton when they get in the booth. Uh.
Speaker 1: All the actors know their characters so well now that
Speaker 1: they you know, sometimes I just like have blanks that
Speaker 1: they can fill in for ad libs, you know, where
Speaker 1: they add a lot in as well. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: we have a team of writers upstairs, um that work
Speaker 1: on our shorts. And that's a it's a very collaborative effort. Um.
Speaker 1: They have a whole team like a writing room where
Speaker 1: they go in and pitch ideas and then they take
Speaker 1: them away and then come back with scripts and trade
Speaker 1: them off in new drafts. It's a it's a very
Speaker 1: fun process. Cool well, and we're pretty familiar with the
Speaker 1: writing process around here too, it's not not this similar,
Speaker 1: although we of course write articles and not not not scripts.
Speaker 1: But tell me about the Immersion series, which kind of
Speaker 1: married this video game and and live action short thing
Speaker 1: into an increasingly hilarious series of misadventures. Well, that was
Speaker 1: kind of fun. That was had this idea that we
Speaker 1: could take things from video games and test them in
Speaker 1: real life. And I had the idea for a while
Speaker 1: and eventually I said, you know what, I should make
Speaker 1: one of these because someone else is going to do
Speaker 1: this if we don't. And that's a big thing on
Speaker 1: the internet. Man. It seems like by the time you
Speaker 1: think of an idea, you should go look it up
Speaker 1: because somebody's probably already done it, you know, and things
Speaker 1: move that fast. And so this, this idea, this probably
Speaker 1: gives you a good example of what the whole series
Speaker 1: was about. When you play a Grand Theft auto game
Speaker 1: or one of those open world urban environment games, when
Speaker 1: you drive a car, you drive from a third person perspective.
Speaker 1: Your your view of the car is behind the car,
Speaker 1: and that's not the way you drive a car in
Speaker 1: the real old, So we thought, okay, let's try that.
Speaker 1: Let's set up a car in real life that is
Speaker 1: a third person perspective. So we blacked out the windshield
Speaker 1: safety first, UH and black out the entire cockpit, and
Speaker 1: then suspended a camera on a rig behind the vehicle
Speaker 1: and then ran that down to a monitor that was
Speaker 1: on the dashboard of the car. So you're in the
Speaker 1: car driving it through a course and you're looking at
Speaker 1: the car from behind your viewers from behind the car.
Speaker 1: And we shot that episode. He took us about six
Speaker 1: hours to shoot the pilot um to the driving part
Speaker 1: of it, and then we spent another four hours out
Speaker 1: there afterwards because everyone in the crew want to drive
Speaker 1: the car, which we said. We had a blast doing it.
Speaker 1: It was great. It reminds me there was a guy
Speaker 1: there was a It was more of an art project
Speaker 1: than anything else, but there was a guy who built
Speaker 1: an MMO suit that did sort of the same thing,
Speaker 1: but it was just a It was just a person
Speaker 1: in a in a suit where you have a helmet
Speaker 1: that has a monitor built into it. There's a rig
Speaker 1: that's UH worn like a backpack that suspends the camera
Speaker 1: above and behind to of that that MMO view of
Speaker 1: a character running around the world, so the only view
Speaker 1: you had of yourself was as a third person, and
Speaker 1: of course they added spikes on the helmet to give
Speaker 1: it that authentic MMO feel. And apparently anyone who put
Speaker 1: this on would first spend the first half hour struggling
Speaker 1: to interact with the world in a way that wasn't
Speaker 1: going to feel like it was going to kill them
Speaker 1: because it was so weird to be have an out
Speaker 1: of body experience like that, And then the next half
Speaker 1: hour was spent stomping around and swinging your arms around
Speaker 1: because you look like the incredible Hulk. So, yeah, walk
Speaker 1: up to people and ask them for quests, right exactly, Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was yeah. No, there there are people who are
Speaker 1: still in therapy because of that art project. So we
Speaker 1: did a funny one like that where we tested what
Speaker 1: it would be like to be in a side scrolling
Speaker 1: environment where we had a wireless rig that we can
Speaker 1: send a video signal to to goggles that the person
Speaker 1: would wear, and we shot them from a ninety three
Speaker 1: angle directly from their side, and so we had like
Speaker 1: a Mario course that these guys had to navigate while
Speaker 1: only being able to see themselves from the side. So
Speaker 1: what short straw that Gus and Jeff draw that they
Speaker 1: have to be in all of these They drew the
Speaker 1: academic short straw. They should have just been better in
Speaker 1: school and they would have better career opportunities and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to be subjected to all this terrible stuff.
Speaker 1: We we got to the point where we were torturing them,
Speaker 1: I think, I mean we we did this one thing
Speaker 1: where we tested video game foods. You know, when you're
Speaker 1: playing a video game and your character is hurt, if
Speaker 1: he eats a steak, then he immediately feels better. I
Speaker 1: don't know what they think the healing properties of food
Speaker 1: are in video games. So we took them out. We
Speaker 1: didn't tell them this. We took him on drink until
Speaker 1: two in the morning and to celebrate something. It was
Speaker 1: all a ruse. And then the next day we showed
Speaker 1: up in the production crew at their house at five
Speaker 1: in the morning. They just, I mean they literally just
Speaker 1: gone to bed so they would woke up and they
Speaker 1: were just miserable, and we just like fed him food
Speaker 1: for about an hour and a half, big hams and
Speaker 1: pizzas and strawberries. Everything you see in a game that
Speaker 1: is supposed to cure you, and let's just it this way,
Speaker 1: it did not cure them. Yes. To learn more, visit
Speaker 1: rooster Teeth's website and you can watch all of these
Speaker 1: or get the DVDs if you want to be able
Speaker 1: to have them for posterity's sake. Uh. Well, let's also
Speaker 1: talk there's another another project, Achievement Hunter, which is again
Speaker 1: hosted by rooster Teeth, which is all about achievements on
Speaker 1: Xbox three sixty games, although you guys also cover other
Speaker 1: games occasionally as well. Right, yes, we cover it's the
Speaker 1: achievement focus does seem to make it teams, although achievements
Speaker 1: are 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: uh site, but now they cover all different games, like
Speaker 1: they've been covering a lot of the Star Wars Older
Speaker 1: public 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 holding a
Speaker 1: convention uh in Austin this year rt X, which is
Speaker 1: the intersection of gaming and on like culture. But Achievement
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 hit it
Speaker 1: up the project and he's 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 add the the successive Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: 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 Richarchiefs has been referenced. The Rivers and
Speaker 1: Blue has been referenced, um just in most recently. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a reference in the World of Warcraft
Speaker 1: expansion where there's a I forget the name of the thing,
Speaker 1: but it's essentially like a parody of Blood Gulch And
Speaker 1: there's a character in there that's based on griff um
Speaker 1: Uh in there. And then we just did a like
Speaker 1: a commentary, a bonus commentary for gun Stringer Twisted Pixel,
Speaker 1: and then we always it's funny these we would end
Speaker 1: up been achievements, references and achievements, Like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of Red versus Blue referential achievements. Um, there's Wanting Gears
Speaker 1: of War. Um, there's a dishwasher, Samurai dishwasher. They just
Speaker 1: put out a new version of the game that has
Speaker 1: the Caboose is achievable system as part of the game.
Speaker 1: And what the coolest things ever is that we got
Speaker 1: to be voices in Halo three. I mean that was
Speaker 1: that was an honor to actually participate in the game
Speaker 1: that we're obviously such a huge fans in. That's that's
Speaker 1: pretty incredible. That's like a full circle right there. Well,
Speaker 1: when we started Reversus Blue, mean, when you have your
Speaker 1: you know, your initial meetings and you know you're talking about, well,
Speaker 1: what's the coolest thing that can happen. I mean, we
Speaker 1: thought the coolest thing that can happen, by far was
Speaker 1: that we somehow get referenced in an actual Halo video
Speaker 1: game or like some kind of east Rin because Bungee
Speaker 1: had always pretty put east Eggs in their games. And
Speaker 1: getting getting to play marines and contribute, you know, contribute
Speaker 1: our voices to the game. That was just it was nuts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic that, uh, that that turned out that way,
Speaker 1: especially 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 a 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: Then 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 relationship. 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 meant to
Speaker 1: our business because they have been very open and and
Speaker 1: very cool, fantastic. Well, I I have just two more questions.
Speaker 1: Here's the second to last one. This was one that
Speaker 1: was suggested by a follower of mine on Twitter. Um,
Speaker 1: how frequently are you mistaken as the guy who does
Speaker 1: the voice for Caboose? All all, it's so insulting. It's uh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Caboose is easily our most popular character. And uh, you
Speaker 1: know it's uh. Whenever we go to conventions, it's, oh,
Speaker 1: here's Bernie. He plays the Uh. He's the writer and
Speaker 1: director and created the show and plays the lead character.
Speaker 1: Because I write it. Of course I make myself lead character,
Speaker 1: and like, hey, that's great, where's Caboos? Yeah? And and
Speaker 1: often it is like, it's not so much getting mistaken
Speaker 1: for Caboose, it's the it's the raw disappointment that you
Speaker 1: see in people's faces when they realize that you're not Caboose.
Speaker 1: That's the problem when you have the gut check as
Speaker 1: an artist, I um no, I I can sort of
Speaker 1: identify it with that, because a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: not so much now, but a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: I bore a passing resemblance to Jamie Hyneman of MythBusters.
Speaker 1: I could see that now you say that, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: 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 piss off armed
Speaker 1: people with no no. It is funny to watch them
Speaker 1: all like deflate. At the same time, it kind of
Speaker 1: made you feel like what it would have been like
Speaker 1: to be on Coruscant when they revealed that the Death
Speaker 1: Star had exploded. Yeah, guys. All right, you know we
Speaker 1: had a good run. Um, so here's my last one.
Speaker 1: Are there any other projects that you're working on that
Speaker 1: you would like to talk about. We've talked about the
Speaker 1: live action stuff and Red Versus Blue and r t X.
Speaker 1: Is there anything specific you would like to to mention
Speaker 1: 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 Rishi podcast has actually turned
Speaker 1: into one of our biggest hits. Um, and I just
Speaker 1: love making it. We just talked about we just get
Speaker 1: on Mike and talked 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: current events, and you know and our interpretation of it,
Speaker 1: which is basically our misunderstanding of what of it all? Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's just fun. It's just you know, working 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 the show that
Speaker 1: you guys do is is incredibly hilarious, especially if you
Speaker 1: can get one of the more clueless members of Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth on Mike's art or or you know, or just Joel.
Speaker 1: If Joel's on there and and all you have to
Speaker 1: do is say one thing and you realize that he's
Speaker 1: gone off on a completely different tangent and he's really
Speaker 1: angry about it for no apparent reason. For apparent reason,
Speaker 1: now you can see why he played the voice of Caboose. Yes, well, well, Bernie,
Speaker 1: this has been a great time. I'm it's it's been
Speaker 1: a one of those things I've always wanted to do. I.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I've been a fan of the show
Speaker 1: from season one, and I'm glad we had this opportunity.
Speaker 1: And 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 Mishinima 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, watched some Red Versus 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, why
Speaker 1: you make it sound so legitimate. I'm gonna record that
Speaker 1: and play it back at dinner parties. All right, you
Speaker 1: have my permission to do that. That's fine, especially if
Speaker 1: you if you if you subscribe to text stuff, that
Speaker 1: would that would help us out, because you know, every
Speaker 1: listener counts it. All right, awesome, Thank you so much, Bernie,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Well, I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that interview. I think it went pretty well, don't you, Chris, Yes, definitely.
Speaker 1: So we only have one little, uh little glitch in
Speaker 1: the middle there that we could tell anyway. We'll be
Speaker 1: able to tell more once this goes live. But I
Speaker 1: wouldn't call your one question a glitch though, Chris, Well,
Speaker 1: it's being a little hard in yourself. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a perfectionist. What can I say? And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: after having done that episode on Machinema a while back,
Speaker 1: it was nice to have the perspective of somebody who's
Speaker 1: really involved with it. Yeah, someone who's actually gone through
Speaker 1: and done it. It was that was a real thrill
Speaker 1: for me as well, just to hear about, you know,
Speaker 1: experimenting with this new form of media. Yeah, that's also
Speaker 1: very exciting. So guys, we're hoping we can do more
Speaker 1: of these, right, Yeah, I was. I was really surprised.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, I was really surprised by
Speaker 1: how similar it was to live action in some respects um,
Speaker 1: you know, of course they have to use tricks, or
Speaker 1: had to use tricks, especially in the beginning, but I was,
Speaker 1: I was surprised. Yeah, lining up shots and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this stuff that you want to think about when you're
Speaker 1: playing a video game, like, oh, yeah, we totally could
Speaker 1: tell a story like this. Well, if you don't have
Speaker 1: that that background where you know how to line up
Speaker 1: shots and you know the importance of that kind of composition,
Speaker 1: then you might make something that's amusing, but you're not
Speaker 1: necessarily going to make something that's that's going to last
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, that 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. Yes, so it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of again come full circle from the days
Speaker 1: when you were pretty much limited to whatever your character
Speaker 1: could see. So yeah, great time there. I'm so glad,
Speaker 1: huge thanks to Bernie Burns of Rooster Teeth doing that.
Speaker 1: And guys, we want to do more interviews in the future,
Speaker 1: so we're hoping that if you have someone or a
Speaker 1: company you think that we should interview for tech Stuff
Speaker 1: in the future, let us know. We uh, we can't
Speaker 1: guarantee that we're going to be able to get everyone.
Speaker 1: It all depends on their schedule in our schedule, but
Speaker 1: we will try our best to to land some more
Speaker 1: cool interviews in the near future. You can let us
Speaker 1: know on Facebook or Twitter are handled. There is text
Speaker 1: stuff hsw or shoot us an email. That address is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at Discovery dot com and Chris and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you again really soon. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow the house Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I Find app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready, are you