WEBVTT - Classic TechStuff: The Rooster Teeth Interview 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:12.400 Get in tech with technology with text stuff from dot Com. 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:14.920 Hey there, and welcome to text stuff. We're going to 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.040 listen to a classic episode today. As I record this, 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.400 we're coming up on the Labor Day weekend and things 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:24.599 have gone a little crazy hectic, so we're going to 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:28.160 do a couple of rerun episodes, classic episodes that tie 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:32.279 back into stuff that has happened recently. So we just 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:36.360 concluded our two part series about how Bungee works and 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:39.800 UH and Lawrence Farewell, and I thought it would be 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:42.400 interesting to go back and listen to an interview that 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:46.159 Chris Pallette and I did back in February two thousand 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:51.280 and twelve with Bernie Burns, the founder of Rooster Teeth Productions. 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:55.280 Of course, Rooster Teeth does lots of different stuff, but 0:00:55.440 --> 0:01:00.000 they got their start doing machinima using the Halo universe, 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.080 excusing the Halo game engine is sort of digital puppets. 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:06.080 And we got a chance to talk with Mr Burns 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:08.680 and find out all about how his company got started 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:10.600 and what they had to do in order to make 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:17.680 it a success. So, without further ado, here's the We've 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:20.679 got Bernie Burns on the line. Bernie is the founder 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:25.000 of Rooster Teeth Productions, the producers of the popular web 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:27.800 series Red Versus Blue, among other things. Bernie, how are you? 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:31.240 I'm doing find Jonathan, how are you doing? I am 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:35.240 I'm okay. Chris, how are you doing great? Thanks for asking. 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:37.960 You're welcome, Chris. I don't want you to be left out. 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:41.640 Uh So, Bernie, I wanted to talk to you. Really, 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:46.240 you're a pioneer in web content, especially when it comes 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.440 to web videos and something beyond just the the one 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:52.240 hit wonder web videos that that we're sort of the 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:56.320 the earmark of internet video when it first started to 0:01:56.360 --> 0:01:58.240 take off, and I kind of wanted to talk to 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:01.040 you about how you got into that at and the 0:02:01.120 --> 0:02:04.520 development of Rooster Teeth Productions over time, and where you're 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:08.800 at today. So to start, you were actually involved in 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:11.320 creating content for the web before there was even a 0:02:11.400 --> 0:02:15.200 Rooster Teeth, right, That's right, I mean really back before 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:19.480 video was even really possible on the Internet. Um, I 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:21.359 mean you can download a I think one of the 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:23.480 first things video wise I ever downloaded from the net 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:27.239 was the first episode of south Park or what became 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:31.080 south Park, and that was ten minutes short that I 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:33.240 think was eighty megs and it was the size of 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:36.600 a postage stamp on the screen. But yeah, I started 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.320 off writing for video game sites. I started writing off 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:42.280 for writing for what we're called everything Nothing sites, where 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:45.600 they were sort of like blogs, but there were more articles. 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:48.520 You know, A modern day equivalent would be almost like 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:52.920 Slate or The Escapist, where their articles that are kind 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:56.200 of thematic, but they could really be about anything. So 0:02:56.360 --> 0:03:01.240 what led you into starting the whole red versus Blue 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:07.600 video phenomenon. Well, I was a filmmaker and I live 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:11.000 in Austin, Texas, and so in college I built a 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:14.840 non linear editor video capture device that could capture. Back then, 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:18.120 it was VHS tapes, so we transfer film to VHS 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:21.040 and then we would capture the VHS and edit it online. 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:23.360 So then after making a couple of movies with some 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:26.120 friends in Austin, uh, they moved out to l A 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:29.359 to start their entertainment careers. I stayed in Austin because 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:31.519 I had a very good tech job and I was 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:34.120 always just trying to find ways to make uh, you know, 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:38.280 films or make short little videos. And I had all 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:40.080 this equipment laying around, and I thought, well, why don't 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:41.760 I just take some of these videos I'm producing and 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:43.840 start putting them online. Forget a way to do that, 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:47.640 and so started encoding them in quick time and dive 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:51.040 x back then and we'll just upload them to a site. 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:53.240 And I did a few of those before I made 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:56.560 the first episode of Red Versus Blue and that immediately 0:03:56.600 --> 0:04:00.240 caught on. So for for our listeners who may not 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:03.000 be familiar with Red Versus Blue, can you can you 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:05.840 get sort of a bird's eye view of what the 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:09.600 series is and and uh, you know the vehicle you 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:13.200 use to create the series. Sure, So what we do 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:17.839 in a nutshell, uh, is we use the video game Halo, 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:22.920 uh to produce short comedic cartoons essentially, um, and we 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:25.720 use the graphics engine that's in Halo to do all 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:29.400 of our animation. And probably the best way to describe 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:31.719 it for something for someone who's never seen anything like 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:35.560 it before, it's almost like using the video game characters 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:40.000 as virtual puppets. Um. You know, we're not doing animation 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:43.120 cell by cell or you know, sitting down and plotting 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:45.039 on all the character moves. We're actually controlling them in 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:48.560 real time. So it's a little bit like animation, and 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:50.960 it's a little bit like live action shooting and that 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:54.440 we do takes, we do rehearsals, and the performance that 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.119 you're seeing is actually a recorded live performance by someone 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:01.880 controlling the character in real time. That's that's really a 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:05.000 very clever way of creating films. And of course we 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:09.240 now called this machinima, but back then that term probably 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:11.520 wasn't very much in use at the time you guys 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:14.719 were first getting into Red Versus Blue, Right, Yeah, it's funny, 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:16.760 we didn't know what it was called. We didn't know 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:18.680 this was the movement that people were doing these kind 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:20.279 of things. So we thought we were brilliant and we 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:23.760 had been invented this new technique of shooting, and we 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:26.120 were actually wondering what we're gonna call it. And uh, 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:30.200 we we got a phone call from Paul Marino, who 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:33.640 was the head of the Academy of Machinima Arts and 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:36.080 Scientists in New York, and you know, they said they 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:37.720 wanted us to come out and do a presentation about 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:40.359 Reversus Blue, and um, there was no awards ceremony that 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.560 they had been nominated for. And yeah, that's how we 0:05:43.560 --> 0:05:47.080 first found out about the word mishinima. Yeah, so, and 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:50.960 you said that you were. It took off almost immediately. 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:55.039 Was that like from episode one you immediately saw a 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:57.200 real interest in this or did it take a few 0:05:57.240 --> 0:05:59.960 before it started looking like you really had a hit 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.600 on your hands. No, it was pretty immediate. We put 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:07.520 up the we put up the first episode, and we 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:10.240 along with it, we put up p s A, which 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:13.280 was just the characters looking into the screen and talking 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:15.760 and um, we were doing jokes about it. Was it 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:18.440 was so long ago as weapons of mass destruction. Uh, 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:20.880 this was back in two thousand and three, very very 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:25.440 timely at the time, was very very topical. Um and uh. 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:27.640 We were linked the first episode of the series was 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:33.640 linked on farc and slash dot and Penny Arcade, And 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:38.440 so it went from three thousand views the first day 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:42.080 that we put up the episode to the next day 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:45.200 we had about fifteen thousand views on it. By the 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:49.400 time we put out the second video. Quarter of a 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:51.960 million people showed up the day the first day to 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.760 watch the second video. And yeah, by the end of 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.000 the month, we were up to about seven hundred and 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:01.760 fifty thousand viewers a week within within four weeks. That's 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:05.560 that's meteor. It was. It was. It was the biggest 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:07.479 problem for us was figuring out how to get it 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.200 out there. Yeah, the bandwidth, this shues. Yeah, I mean 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:12.880 we were we were paying tons of money to deliver 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:15.440 it because I mean, I'm sure you remember back in 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:17.360 the eight people would get banned with bills when they 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:18.960 would put up, you know, things on servers and then 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:21.920 get a popular site. Um, And so we were trying 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:23.600 to figure out how to host what we're at the 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.320 time pretty massive files. I mean, these were, you know, 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:29.160 seventy megabyte files people were downloading in you know, two 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:31.680 thousand and two thousand and three. It was it was 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:33.160 hard to figure out how to stir all that. And 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:35.240 YouTube didn't exist at the time, so we couldn't just 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:36.720 throw it up on YouTube and hope for the best, 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.000 you know. I have I have a question, um, about 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:43.600 what's your recording schedule look like? I mean, how many 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:46.520 of these how fast can you do one of these videos? 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.160 And and about how long does it take to uh, 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:51.000 you know, from beginning to end. When you're talking about 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:53.560 scripting and going through rehearsals and things like that, how 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.120 long does that take. Well, we're a lot faster than 0:07:56.160 --> 0:07:57.240 we used to be. Just soon as we've been doing 0:07:57.240 --> 0:07:59.360 it for nine seasons that we're we're just going into 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.320 season ten right now. But if you look at like 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:05.440 a Pixar movie and the missinima, what we produce is 0:08:05.440 --> 0:08:08.280 not on the fidelity of of a picture movie. We 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.120 do more custom animation now. But um, the big thing 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:13.760 about MACHINEAM is how efficient it is. So a Pixar 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:17.000 movie might take a team of three people the course 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:21.800 of three years. Um, we can produce five minutes a 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:25.240 week with about This is now just neglecting voice actors 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:27.040 who you have to have a different actor for every character. 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:29.160 But we can produce five minutes a week with about 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:32.240 three people. Uh, and that'll take us about you know, 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:35.520 thirty forty hours to do that. So every year we 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:38.800 put out of a full feature on DVD, and we 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:40.680 can do that with a production crew of anywhere between 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.640 you know, three to five people. Now now that in 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:47.199 later seasons we've been adding more custom animation just because 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:50.040 of Sinima got more popular, we found we had to 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.560 do more to stand out. And you know, like anything, 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:55.440 it's like if it stays the same, it'll it'll get stale. 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:58.800 So we had to kind of evolved the series while 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:01.000 it was in place and so now we have a 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:02.640 much bigger team. Now we have a team of about 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:04.760 twenty people that work on it, uh, and they do 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:07.560 a lot of custom animations, some really fun action scenes, 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:10.640 fighting scenes, that kind of thing. So when you guys 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:15.400 were first exploring motion capture, UH, when did you guys 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:19.079 actually sit down and consciously make that decision? And was 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:21.520 that a huge challenge? Was it that or what? Was 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:25.760 it surprisingly easy compared to everything else you had been doing. Well, 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:28.280 we we made one higher that made it a lot easier, 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:33.360 and that was Monty Home. I'm a big consumer of 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:36.559 all things internet as well, so I'm always online, always 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:38.880 like looking at you know, online video. I just I 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:41.840 love it, and um, it's it's fun to spot people 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:45.280 who are doing cool new stuff. And montyme put up 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:49.840 a video where he custom animated master Chief from Halo 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:56.520 fighting Sammy's from Metroid and it was the models were okay, 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.960 in the texture okay, but the animation was outrageously sophistic 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:02.120 it and the choreography of what he was doing. And 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.440 so we contacted him and we tried to work with 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:06.480 it for like two or three years before we were 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:09.480 finally able to hire him. And that was in season eight, 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:14.280 and so we essentially built an animation pipeline. That's it. 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:16.400 He's the centerpiece of it. We built it around him, 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:21.200 essentially cool. Well, jumping back again back to the early days, 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:24.440 about how long did it did it take before you 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:27.800 realize that you actually had a viable company on your hands? 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:30.400 I mean, the show was a hit, but that there's 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:32.959 a big difference between something that ends up getting really 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:35.280 viral on the internet and then turning that into something 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:38.280 that can actually sustain itself as a business. Did that 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.800 happen right away as well? Well, I mean it came 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:43.560 in the sense that we all of a sudden have 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:48.240 these major expenses for striving. That's what a great way 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:52.680 to start up business, right. Well, you know, if there's 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:54.880 a massive expense side of this, then they're they're they're 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:59.120 theoretically should be some kind of revenue stream help service 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:00.960 that I mean there's there's not is the demand for this, 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:05.640 So if you sit still, the demand will generate bills. Uh, 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:07.280 we kind have get a little proactive here and figure 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:09.280 a way to generate some revenue from it. And um, 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:12.320 you know, I think there's a big opinion, Uh that 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:15.160 a common opinion, I should say that if you make 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:19.000 something on the Internet and you get a ton of views, um, 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:21.520 that the ad companies just show up like the ad 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.480 trucks shows up in your driveway. It does. It doesn't 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:28.760 work that way. Getting advertisers for content is very hard, 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:31.040 and it's always been hard. It was never it was 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:33.080 never easy to do it on the internet. UM. And 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:35.800 there's a lot of places that will abstract that for 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:38.439 you now, a lot of a lot of video services 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:40.560 that will do that for you. But it's a very 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:42.360 difficult process, and so we had to go through and 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:44.760 figure out a way to build a business model. UM. 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:48.920 We actually built one that was based not on advertising, 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:51.920 and we reran on that for five years. UM. We 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:56.320 just did merchandise, UM, premium memberships and DVD sales, and 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:58.160 that's how we funded the company for the first five years. 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:00.960 We never we never ran a single ad on anything. Uh. 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:02.600 For the first runt of the show. Yeah, it actually 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:05.920 brings me to the question about the sponsorship the premium 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:09.079 memberships that you ran. I've been a fan of Red 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:13.080 Versus Blue since season one. I've been following it since 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:16.400 season one, and so I'm familiar with the idea of 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:19.040 you became a premium member, and you would get access 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.240 to certain videos. Sometimes you get access early, sometimes you 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:26.120 get exclusive access. And also for the first few seasons, 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:28.199 I remember, you would even get the DVD at the 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:31.960 end of the season when you're a premium member. Yeah. Yeah, 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:35.960 so uh so, clearly building a community was an important 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:39.199 part of your business model as well, right, and we 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:43.280 built a community site to that. We knew that eventually 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:46.679 the popularity of the show would wane, or at the 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:50.000 very least that people watching the show, you know, the 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:52.439 individuals would you know, say well, I can't watch something 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:55.480 for you know, ten years. Um, you know, people just 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:58.120 naturally fall out, and so we wanted to have something 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:01.880 in place to hold people as like our portion of 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:03.640 the Internet, so that people would always know where they 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:05.600 could find us. And when we put new things out, 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:06.760 it would be great to be able to show it 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:08.960 to people, to get that initial seed of a of 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.160 a new project. And that's that was probably one of 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:13.600 the smartest things we did, was making sure that we 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:17.880 carved out our own portion of the Internet. Yeah, it's 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:20.839 it's still a very popular portal. I mean, people want 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:24.240 to go and check out the You have several different 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:26.920 you r ls that all lead into this kind of 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:30.880 uh hub really of all the different products Rooster Teeth does, 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:32.959 because it's not just Red Versus Blue. Although we'll get 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:35.960 into that in a little bit. I did have another 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:39.160 question about the tone of Red Versus Blue and the 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:42.280 early seasons the Blood Gulch Chronicles in particular, which is 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:45.040 the first five seasons of Red Versus Blue. Uh, it 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:48.439 was it was almost exclusively comedic, and then you began 0:13:48.480 --> 0:13:52.480 to experiment by inserting some more dramatic elements into the storyline, 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:56.760 sometimes with uh tertiary characters who were not playing directly 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:59.960 with your main cast. What time, at what point did 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:01.679 you decided to do that? Was that something you had 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:04.640 wanted to do from the beginning, or as you were going, 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:07.360 were you thinking, hey, you know what, we could actually 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.320 try something new here and try and do almost like 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:15.199 an action movie type script parallel to the comedic stuff 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:18.000 we're doing on this other side. Yeah, So it was 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:21.040 essentially when it first started, essentially, like somebody described it 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:23.080 as Stripes in Space, which I think is a great 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.600 way to describe it. It's just just it's very lighthearted. 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:30.240 It's a it's a military comedy which which focuses on 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:32.960 a lot of bureaucracy humor, which I think crosses over 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.000 a lot of industries, not just you know, the military, 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:39.760 but also business and school and everything else. I was 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:42.160 always as a as a writer, I was always writing 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:48.040 though background threads so that the story could stay consistent. 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:50.520 If you base it in a universe, you know, then 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:53.800 it seems more honest. And I was doing all of that. 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:55.400 And when we got towards the end of the fifth 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:59.160 season UM, I was talking with people about stories in 0:14:59.160 --> 0:15:01.480 the background that we're knowing that audience members had picked 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:04.680 up on. But I had this whole fleshed out uh 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:07.560 universe kind of behind the scenes, and I was talking 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:09.920 with somebody here about it and I described it all, 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:11.920 was writing on the on the white board about all 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:15.080 these things, and they said, maybe you should show this 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:17.160 to the audience, you know, I mean, maybe you should, 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.240 Maybe you should put this out there. And I thought, yeah, maybe, maybe, 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:23.240 you know, maybe we should. It's it's it's interesting to us. 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.320 And you know, our philosophy here is UM, if we 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:28.560 make things that we like, we just have faith that 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:30.480 there's enough people on the Internet that are like us 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:33.440 that they'll like it too. So yeah, it's just a 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:35.640 natural evolution. Like I said, it's you know, we started 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:38.040 off the very first episode of the very first season saying, 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:41.520 all these guys, do we stand around and talk? That's 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:43.040 what they were doing last week. That's what we'll be 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:45.600 doing five minutes from now and for five seasons. You know. 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:48.320 It's it works very well standing around and talking, but 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:51.440 you really do run the risk of becoming stale. Five 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:54.000 years on the internet is is like a looks like 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:56.880 a glacier. You know, it's it's like an eon. It 0:15:56.920 --> 0:16:01.880 seems like, um, that's the rise and fall of my Space. Yeah. Yeah, 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:03.400 and you know we talked about that to you, like 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:06.000 the we're I was talking earlier about the carving out 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:07.560 your own space on the internet. It's like a lot 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:09.920 of people that today, you know, they don't do that. 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:13.280 There's a big opinion that the the web is dead 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:15.960 and that you should just go all in on Facebook 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:18.120 or all in on YouTube or what you know, whatever 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:21.040 the darling uh site of the moment happens to be. 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.240 But I mean, we've been doing this for so long. 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:25.320 I remember when if we just spent all of our 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:28.280 time building up our Facebook or assuming are MySpace friends. 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:30.960 In two thousand three and two thousand four, we would, 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:36.240 I think, you know, uh, you know, we're dealing with 0:16:36.280 --> 0:16:38.480 rever or something like that. You know, it's just it's 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:42.680 it's it's Twitter, Twitter follower accounts and you know, Facebook 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:45.040 like seemed very important right now, but five years from 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:47.880 now they probably won't seem all that important. Yeah. The 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:50.600 biggest shifts that I see right now are really more 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:54.800 platform shifts. So it's more like the emphasis now is 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:58.840 on mobile as opposed to the desktop and laptop models, 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:01.720 which that makes more sense. I mean, that's an access thing, 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:04.600 not a not a you know, this is the particular 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:09.359 website that's in vogue right now. Well, oh no, go ahead, 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.080 I'm sorry. No, it's crazy. It's crazy how much mobile 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:15.160 has taken off. I mean, it's just it's just insane. Yes, yeah, 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:17.240 we we talk about that all the time here at 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:20.200 how stuff works as well. I mean, it's it's completely 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:24.360 changed the way that we create certain types of content. 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:28.159 Because there are some kinds that are perfect for the 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:32.280 mobile platform, and that's just people love them. There are 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:35.280 other types that just don't quite fit as well. It's 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:39.080 a real challenge to try and find the balance there. Fortunately, 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:42.080 I think web video is one of those that it 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:45.119 transcends the platform you don't have. You don't have to 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:49.119 worry about that as much. UM. Let me ask you 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.120 also about some of the tricks you guys did working 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:57.400 within the confines of a video game universe and actually 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:01.520 within the actual physics engine of the video game itself. Uh, 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:04.200 watching some of the behind the scenes stuff, I love 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:06.960 the idea that you guys got really creative were the 0:18:07.000 --> 0:18:10.320 ways you shot the series, especially early on, when there 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:12.720 weren't as many tools for you to use, tools that 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:16.600 I think have been built into games like Halo because 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:19.199 of the work you've done when they didn't exist back then. 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:22.000 You found really creative ways of getting around it. The 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.040 one I think of off the top of my head 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:30.560 is using a tank as a crane for crane shots, right. 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:32.160 I mean that's excused back to how it's a lot 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:34.200 like live action. It's like we wanted to get a 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:36.680 shot where we raised up, how do we do? How 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:39.560 do we do that? Um? There wasn't any ability within 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.240 the retail game to raise the camera above eye level. 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:44.840 I mean the entire first three seasons of the show, 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:47.720 you're seeing the entire show through another character's eyes. That 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:51.439 never appeared on screen. It's literally a camera man, um. 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:53.560 And so we would walk him around in order to 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:56.199 set up shots and to be the camera. And so 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:57.920 we thought, well, how can we get this? I thought, 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:00.639 why don't we just put him on the end of 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:03.080 the barrel of the tank and just slowly raise the 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:05.040 tank barrel up, And sure enough, that allowed us to 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:08.120 get a crane shot with it. Likewise, we would put 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:11.640 people on the tops of ban cheese and fly them 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:13.680 around if we wanted to get a really high view 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:16.719 of the canyon or something like that. Yeah, we had 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:19.000 to be really creative. Um. In a later season. One 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:20.679 of the things we we would also just employ like 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:24.840 some of the oldest tricks that there are in filmmaking. Um, 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.760 we had a character, a baby alien, so we need 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:30.080 a small alien. Well, you can't shrink a character in 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:33.080 the game, so we would just do forced perspective where 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:36.200 we would set the alien far back in the shot 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:39.120 and because there's no depth of field in the game, 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:42.560 it's an infinite focus. Um, we would just set up 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:44.240 the scene so that one character is really far away 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:46.000 and they just happened to look a lot smaller and 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:48.840 it worked perfectly. I mean, if the illusion was great. It's, 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:50.399 you know, just like old things that used to do 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:52.119 back in the days when they would you know, shoot 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:56.119 King Kong and voyage the Moon. I imagine getting eyelines 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:59.399 in this series is a bit of a challenge. It 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:01.520 definitely is. I mean there's nothing in the game where 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:03.639 it's like everyone looks in the same direction, you know, 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:07.480 And so we're we're probably the best people in the 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:12.359 world at playing Halo in a very specific way. Like ever, 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:15.640 if you ever put it in in a matchmaking game where 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:17.560 all the players on the team have to look in 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:19.920 the same direction or all run in the same line 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:22.560 while looking at their feet, we would we would kill 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:26.359 at that. So so yeah, we ever created Days of 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:31.440 our Lives game within Halo, you guys will rock it. Yes, 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:37.280