Speaker 1: Get in tech with technology with text stuff from dot Com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text stuff. We're going to
Speaker 1: listen to a classic episode today. As I record this,
Speaker 1: we're coming up on the Labor Day weekend and things
Speaker 1: have gone a little crazy hectic, so we're going to
Speaker 1: do a couple of rerun episodes, classic episodes that tie
Speaker 1: back into stuff that has happened recently. So we just
Speaker 1: concluded our two part series about how Bungee works and
Speaker 1: UH and Lawrence Farewell, and I thought it would be
Speaker 1: interesting to go back and listen to an interview that
Speaker 1: Chris Pallette and I did back in February two thousand
Speaker 1: and twelve with Bernie Burns, the founder of Rooster Teeth Productions.
Speaker 1: Of course, Rooster Teeth does lots of different stuff, but
Speaker 1: they got their start doing machinima using the Halo universe,
Speaker 1: excusing the Halo game engine is sort of digital puppets.
Speaker 1: And we got a chance to talk with Mr Burns
Speaker 1: and find out all about how his company got started
Speaker 1: and what they had to do in order to make
Speaker 1: it a success. So, without further ado, here's the We've
Speaker 1: got Bernie Burns on the line. Bernie is the founder
Speaker 1: of Rooster Teeth Productions, the producers of the popular web
Speaker 1: series Red Versus Blue, among other things. Bernie, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing find Jonathan, how are you doing? I am
Speaker 1: I'm okay. Chris, how are you doing great? Thanks for asking.
Speaker 1: You're welcome, Chris. I don't want you to be left out.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Bernie, I wanted to talk to you. Really,
Speaker 1: you're a pioneer in web content, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to web videos and something beyond just the the one
Speaker 1: hit wonder web videos that that we're sort of the
Speaker 1: the earmark of internet video when it first started to
Speaker 1: take off, and I kind of wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you about how you got into that at and the
Speaker 1: development of Rooster Teeth Productions over time, and where you're
Speaker 1: at today. So to start, you were actually involved in
Speaker 1: creating content for the web before there was even a
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth, right, That's right, I mean really back before
Speaker 1: video was even really possible on the Internet. Um, I
Speaker 1: mean you can download a I think one of the
Speaker 1: first things video wise I ever downloaded from the net
Speaker 1: was the first episode of south Park or what became
Speaker 1: south Park, and that was ten minutes short that I
Speaker 1: think was eighty megs and it was the size of
Speaker 1: a postage stamp on the screen. But yeah, I started
Speaker 1: off writing for video game sites. I started writing off
Speaker 1: for writing for what we're called everything Nothing sites, where
Speaker 1: they were sort of like blogs, but there were more articles.
Speaker 1: You know, A modern day equivalent would be almost like
Speaker 1: Slate or The Escapist, where their articles that are kind
Speaker 1: of thematic, but they could really be about anything. So
Speaker 1: what led you into starting the whole red versus Blue
Speaker 1: video phenomenon. Well, I was a filmmaker and I live
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas, and so in college I built a
Speaker 1: non linear editor video capture device that could capture. Back then,
Speaker 1: it was VHS tapes, so we transfer film to VHS
Speaker 1: and then we would capture the VHS and edit it online.
Speaker 1: So then after making a couple of movies with some
Speaker 1: friends in Austin, uh, they moved out to l A
Speaker 1: to start their entertainment careers. I stayed in Austin because
Speaker 1: I had a very good tech job and I was
Speaker 1: always just trying to find ways to make uh, you know,
Speaker 1: films or make short little videos. And I had all
Speaker 1: this equipment laying around, and I thought, well, why don't
Speaker 1: I just take some of these videos I'm producing and
Speaker 1: start putting them online. Forget a way to do that,
Speaker 1: and so started encoding them in quick time and dive
Speaker 1: x back then and we'll just upload them to a site.
Speaker 1: And I did a few of those before I made
Speaker 1: the first episode of Red Versus Blue and that immediately
Speaker 1: caught on. So for for our listeners who may not
Speaker 1: be familiar with Red Versus Blue, can you can you
Speaker 1: get sort of a bird's eye view of what the
Speaker 1: series is and and uh, you know the vehicle you
Speaker 1: use to create the series. Sure, So what we do
Speaker 1: in a nutshell, uh, is we use the video game Halo,
Speaker 1: uh to produce short comedic cartoons essentially, um, and we
Speaker 1: use the graphics engine that's in Halo to do all
Speaker 1: of our animation. And probably the best way to describe
Speaker 1: it for something for someone who's never seen anything like
Speaker 1: it before, it's almost like using the video game characters
Speaker 1: as virtual puppets. Um. You know, we're not doing animation
Speaker 1: cell by cell or you know, sitting down and plotting
Speaker 1: on all the character moves. We're actually controlling them in
Speaker 1: real time. So it's a little bit like animation, and
Speaker 1: it's a little bit like live action shooting and that
Speaker 1: we do takes, we do rehearsals, and the performance that
Speaker 1: you're seeing is actually a recorded live performance by someone
Speaker 1: controlling the character in real time. That's that's really a
Speaker 1: very clever way of creating films. And of course we
Speaker 1: now called this machinima, but back then that term probably
Speaker 1: wasn't very much in use at the time you guys
Speaker 1: were first getting into Red Versus Blue, Right, Yeah, it's funny,
Speaker 1: we didn't know what it was called. We didn't know
Speaker 1: this was the movement that people were doing these kind
Speaker 1: of things. So we thought we were brilliant and we
Speaker 1: had been invented this new technique of shooting, and we
Speaker 1: were actually wondering what we're gonna call it. And uh,
Speaker 1: we we got a phone call from Paul Marino, who
Speaker 1: was the head of the Academy of Machinima Arts and
Speaker 1: Scientists in New York, and you know, they said they
Speaker 1: wanted us to come out and do a presentation about
Speaker 1: Reversus Blue, and um, there was no awards ceremony that
Speaker 1: they had been nominated for. And yeah, that's how we
Speaker 1: first found out about the word mishinima. Yeah, so, and
Speaker 1: 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 immediate. We put
Speaker 1: up the we put up the first episode, and we
Speaker 1: along with it, we put up p s A, which
Speaker 1: was just the characters looking into the screen and talking
Speaker 1: and um, we were doing jokes about it. Was it
Speaker 1: 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 the first day to
Speaker 1: watch the second video. And yeah, by the end of
Speaker 1: the month, we were up to about seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand viewers a week within within four weeks. That's
Speaker 1: that's meteor. It was. It was. It was the biggest
Speaker 1: problem for us was figuring out how to get it
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, the bandwidth, this shues. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we were we were paying tons of money to deliver
Speaker 1: it because I mean, I'm sure you remember back in
Speaker 1: the eight people would get banned with bills when they
Speaker 1: would put up, you know, things on servers and then
Speaker 1: get a popular site. Um, And so we were trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to host what we're at the
Speaker 1: 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 two thousand and three. It was it was
Speaker 1: hard to figure out how to stir all that. And
Speaker 1: YouTube didn't exist at the time, so we couldn't just
Speaker 1: 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 Pixar movie and the missinima, what we produce is
Speaker 1: not on the fidelity of of a picture movie. We
Speaker 1: do more custom animation now. But um, the big thing
Speaker 1: about MACHINEAM is how efficient it is. So a Pixar
Speaker 1: movie might take a team of three people the course
Speaker 1: of three years. Um, we can produce five minutes a
Speaker 1: week with about This is now just neglecting voice actors
Speaker 1: who 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'll take us about you know,
Speaker 1: thirty forty hours to do that. So every year we
Speaker 1: put out of a full feature on DVD, and we
Speaker 1: can do that with a production 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 Sinima 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, some really fun 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 you 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 are 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 okay,
Speaker 1: in the texture okay, but the animation was outrageously sophistic
Speaker 1: it and the choreography of what he was doing. And
Speaker 1: so we contacted him and we tried to work with
Speaker 1: it for like two or three years before we were
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 it.
Speaker 1: He's the centerpiece of it. We built it around him,
Speaker 1: essentially cool. Well, jumping back again back to the early days,
Speaker 1: about how long did it did it take before you
Speaker 1: realize that you actually had a viable company on your hands?
Speaker 1: I mean, the show was a hit, but that there's
Speaker 1: a big difference between something that ends up getting really
Speaker 1: viral on the internet and then turning that into something
Speaker 1: that can actually sustain itself as a business. Did that
Speaker 1: happen right away as well? Well, I mean it came
Speaker 1: in the sense that we all of a sudden have
Speaker 1: these major expenses for striving. That's what a great way
Speaker 1: to start up business, right. Well, you know, if there's
Speaker 1: a massive expense side of this, then they're they're they're
Speaker 1: theoretically should be some kind of revenue stream help service
Speaker 1: that I mean there's there's not is the demand for this,
Speaker 1: So if you sit still, the demand will generate bills. Uh,
Speaker 1: we kind have get a little proactive here and figure
Speaker 1: a way to generate some revenue from it. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, I think there's a big opinion, Uh that
Speaker 1: a common opinion, I should say that if you make
Speaker 1: something on the Internet and you get a ton of views, um,
Speaker 1: that the ad companies just show up like the ad
Speaker 1: trucks shows up in your driveway. It does. It doesn't
Speaker 1: work that way. Getting advertisers for content is very hard,
Speaker 1: and it's always been hard. It was never it was
Speaker 1: never easy to do it on the internet. UM. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of places that will abstract that for
Speaker 1: you now, a lot of a lot of video services
Speaker 1: that will do that for you. But it's a very
Speaker 1: difficult process, and so we had to go through and
Speaker 1: 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 did 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 runt of the show. Yeah, it actually
Speaker 1: brings me to the question about the sponsorship the premium
Speaker 1: memberships that you ran. I've been a fan of Red
Speaker 1: Versus Blue since season one. I've been following it since
Speaker 1: season one, and so I'm familiar with the idea of
Speaker 1: you became a premium member, and you would get access
Speaker 1: to certain videos. Sometimes you get access early, sometimes you
Speaker 1: get exclusive access. And also for the first few seasons,
Speaker 1: I remember, you would even get the DVD at the
Speaker 1: end of the season when you're a premium member. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh so, clearly building a community was an important
Speaker 1: part of your business model as well, right, and we
Speaker 1: built a community site to that. We knew that eventually
Speaker 1: the popularity of the show would wane, or at the
Speaker 1: very least that people watching the show, you know, the
Speaker 1: individuals would you know, say well, I can't watch something
Speaker 1: for you know, ten years. Um, you know, people just
Speaker 1: naturally fall out, and so we wanted to have something
Speaker 1: in place to hold people as like our portion of
Speaker 1: the Internet, so that people would always know where they
Speaker 1: could find us. And when we put new things out,
Speaker 1: it would be great to be able to show it
Speaker 1: to people, to get that initial seed of a of
Speaker 1: a new project. And that's that was probably one of
Speaker 1: the smartest things we did, was making sure that we
Speaker 1: carved out our own portion of the Internet. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's still a very popular portal. I mean, people want
Speaker 1: to go and check out the You have several different
Speaker 1: you r ls that all lead into this kind of
Speaker 1: uh hub really of all the different products Rooster Teeth does,
Speaker 1: because it's not just Red Versus Blue. Although we'll get
Speaker 1: into that in a little bit. I did have another
Speaker 1: question about the tone of Red Versus Blue and the
Speaker 1: early seasons the Blood Gulch Chronicles in particular, which is
Speaker 1: the first five seasons of Red Versus Blue. Uh, it
Speaker 1: was it was almost exclusively comedic, and then you began
Speaker 1: to experiment by inserting some more dramatic elements into the storyline,
Speaker 1: sometimes with uh tertiary characters who were not playing directly
Speaker 1: with your main cast. What time, at what point did
Speaker 1: you decided to do that? Was that something you had
Speaker 1: wanted to do from the beginning, or as you were going,
Speaker 1: were you thinking, hey, you know what, we could actually
Speaker 1: try something new here and try and do almost like
Speaker 1: an action movie type script parallel to the comedic stuff
Speaker 1: we're doing on this other side. Yeah, So it was
Speaker 1: essentially when it first started, essentially, like somebody described it
Speaker 1: as Stripes in Space, which I think is a great
Speaker 1: way to describe it. It's just just it's very lighthearted.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a military comedy which which focuses on
Speaker 1: a lot of bureaucracy humor, which I think crosses over
Speaker 1: a lot of industries, not just you know, the military,
Speaker 1: but also business and school and everything else. I was
Speaker 1: always as a as a writer, I was always writing
Speaker 1: though background threads so that the story could stay consistent.
Speaker 1: If you base it in a universe, you know, then
Speaker 1: it seems more honest. And I was doing all of that.
Speaker 1: And when we got towards the end of the fifth
Speaker 1: season UM, I was talking with people about stories in
Speaker 1: the background that we're knowing that audience members had picked
Speaker 1: up on. But I had this whole fleshed out uh
Speaker 1: universe kind of behind the scenes, and I was talking
Speaker 1: with somebody here about it and I described it all,
Speaker 1: was writing on the on the white board about all
Speaker 1: these things, and they said, maybe you should show this
Speaker 1: to the audience, you know, I mean, maybe you should,
Speaker 1: Maybe you should put this out there. And I thought, yeah, maybe, maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we should. It's it's it's interesting to us.
Speaker 1: And you know, our philosophy here is UM, if we
Speaker 1: make things that we like, we just have faith that
Speaker 1: there's enough people on the Internet that are like us
Speaker 1: that they'll like it too. So yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: natural evolution. Like I said, it's you know, we started
Speaker 1: off the very first episode of the very first season saying,
Speaker 1: all these guys, do we stand around and talk? That's
Speaker 1: what they were doing last week. That's what we'll be
Speaker 1: doing five minutes from now and for five seasons. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it works very well standing around and talking, but
Speaker 1: you really do run the risk of becoming stale. Five
Speaker 1: years on the internet is is like a looks like
Speaker 1: a glacier. You know, it's it's like an eon. It
Speaker 1: seems like, um, 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 we're 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 spent 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, uh, 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. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: biggest shifts that I see right now are really more
Speaker 1: platform shifts. So it's more like the emphasis now is
Speaker 1: 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 excused back to how it's a lot
Speaker 1: like live action. It's like we wanted 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 literally a camera man, um.
Speaker 1: And so we would walk him around in order to
Speaker 1: set up shots and to be the camera. And so
Speaker 1: we thought, well, how can we get 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 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 ban cheese and fly them
Speaker 1: around if we wanted to get a really high view
Speaker 1: of the canyon or something like that. Yeah, we had
Speaker 1: to be really creative. Um. In a later season. One
Speaker 1: of the things we we would also just employ like
Speaker 1: some of the oldest tricks that there are in filmmaking. Um,
Speaker 1: we had a character, a baby alien, so we need
Speaker 1: a small alien. Well, you can't shrink a character in
Speaker 1: the game, so we would just do forced perspective where
Speaker 1: we would set the alien far back in the shot
Speaker 1: and because there's no depth of field in the game,
Speaker 1: it's an infinite focus. Um, we would just set up
Speaker 1: the scene so that one character is really far away
Speaker 1: and they just happened to look a lot smaller and
Speaker 1: it worked perfectly. I mean, if the illusion was great. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, just like old things that used to do
Speaker 1: back in the days when they would you know, shoot
Speaker 1: King Kong and voyage the Moon. I imagine getting eyelines
Speaker 1: in this series is a bit of a challenge. It
Speaker 1: definitely is. I mean there's nothing in the game where
Speaker 1: it's like everyone looks in the same direction, you know,
Speaker 1: And so we're we're probably the best people in the
Speaker 1: world at playing Halo in a very specific way. Like ever,
Speaker 1: if you ever put it in in a matchmaking game where
Speaker 1: all the players on the team have to look in
Speaker 1: the same direction or all run in the same line
Speaker 1: while looking at their feet, we would we would kill
Speaker 1: at that. So so yeah, we ever created Days of
Speaker 1: our 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. Was a computer
Speaker 1: science student, but I wanted to learn how to uh
Speaker 1: make films because that's from premedic computer science, and surprisingly
Speaker 1: not a lot of stuff transferred. So I had a
Speaker 1: bunch of I have like organic chemistry as a as
Speaker 1: an elective on my transcript um and so I had
Speaker 1: a bunch of hours on campus where I was trying
Speaker 1: to kill time, and I found the student run TV
Speaker 1: station down there, t STV, and started meeting film students
Speaker 1: and wanting to get involved in video editing in film production.
Speaker 1: But I did not want to go and sit through
Speaker 1: um film classes. So I thought, you know what, Robert
Speaker 1: Arriguez just made El Mariachi at ut I went to
Speaker 1: the University of Texas. He made elm Actually just a
Speaker 1: few years ago, there was this idea that you could
Speaker 1: just make an independent movie and set the world on fire.
Speaker 1: So I thought, why don't I just make a feature film, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, spend ten thousand dollars doing that as opposed
Speaker 1: to spending it in a classroom, and then I'll probably
Speaker 1: know everything I need to know about filmmaking by the
Speaker 1: time it's over. Well that took about eighteen months to
Speaker 1: get that done. You know, we we actually did shoot
Speaker 1: a feature on film on sixteen millimeter film. That was
Speaker 1: a long process, but uh yeah, that's that's just how
Speaker 1: I got involved with it, and I uh um, you
Speaker 1: know it was it was worked out pretty well. I
Speaker 1: mean that, you know, I own a production company and
Speaker 1: I don't have a degree in in any kind of entertainment.
Speaker 1: I have a computer science degree that just hangs on
Speaker 1: my wall and I never use basically. So, uh so,
Speaker 1: who are the writers on your on your staff? I
Speaker 1: 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'll 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 that'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 or urban environment games,
Speaker 1: when you drive a car, you drive from a third
Speaker 1: person perspective. You're your view of the car is behind
Speaker 1: the car, and that's not the way you drive a
Speaker 1: car in the real world. So we thought, okay, let's
Speaker 1: try that. Let's set up a car in real life
Speaker 1: that is a third person perspective. So we blacked out
Speaker 1: the windshield safety first, UH and blacked out the entire cockpit,
Speaker 1: and then suspended a camera on a rig behind the
Speaker 1: vehicle and then ran that down to a monitor that
Speaker 1: was on the dashboard of the car. So you're in
Speaker 1: the car, driving it through a course and you're looking
Speaker 1: at the car from behind your views 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 afterward because everyone in the crew want to drive
Speaker 1: the car. We said, we had a blast doing it. 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 a rig
Speaker 1: that's UH warned like a backpack that suspends the camera
Speaker 1: above and behind to give 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 uh, apparently anyone who
Speaker 1: put this on would first spend the first half hour
Speaker 1: struggling to interact with the world in a way that
Speaker 1: wasn't going to feel like it was going to kill
Speaker 1: them because it was so weird to be have an
Speaker 1: out of body experience like that. And then the next
Speaker 1: half hour was spent stomping around and swinging your arms
Speaker 1: around because you look like the incredible Hulk. So yeah,
Speaker 1: walk up to people and ask them for quests, right exactly. 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 fun 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 could
Speaker 1: send a videos signal to to goggles that the person
Speaker 1: would wear, and we shot them from a ninety degree
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 we got to a 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 drinking 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 at their house at five in
Speaker 1: the morning. They just I mean they literally just gone
Speaker 1: to bed so they would woke up and they were
Speaker 1: just miserable, and we just like fed him food for
Speaker 1: about an hour and a half, big hams and pizzas
Speaker 1: and strawberries. Everything you see in a game that is
Speaker 1: supposed to cure you, and let's just put it this way,
Speaker 1: did not cure them. Yes, to learn more, visit the
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 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: uh site, But no, 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 online culture. But Achievement Hunter
Speaker 1: has been a huge, huge success. Um, it's just been
Speaker 1: It's something that you know, we kind of kicked around
Speaker 1: for a while of you know, recording actual gameplay from
Speaker 1: our footage from gameplay video games and then commenting on it.
Speaker 1: And uh we Jeff Ramsey, who plays Griffin our Reverend
Speaker 1: Blue series, he headed up, he hit it up the
Speaker 1: project and he has just been. Man, it's been an
Speaker 1: enormous thing. We're about to hit uh one billion total
Speaker 1: 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 effect. 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 Richarchie's has been referenced. Rivers and Blue
Speaker 1: has been referenced. Um, just in most recently, Um, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a reference in the World of Warcraft expansion
Speaker 1: 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 always 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 one in
Speaker 1: Gears of War. Um, there's a dishwasher, Samurai dishwasher. They
Speaker 1: just put out a new version of the game that
Speaker 1: has the Caboose is Achievable system as part of the game.
Speaker 1: And the coolest things ever is that we got to
Speaker 1: be voices in Halo three. I mean that was that
Speaker 1: was an honor to actually participate in the game that
Speaker 1: we're obviously such a huge fans in Doable. It's like
Speaker 1: a full circle right there. Well, when we started Reversus Blue, mean,
Speaker 1: when you have your you know, your initial meetings and
Speaker 1: you know you're talking about, well, what's the coolest thing
Speaker 1: that can happen. I mean, we thought the coolest thing
Speaker 1: that can happen, by far was that we somehow get
Speaker 1: referenced in an actual Halo video game or like some
Speaker 1: kind of Eastern because Bungee had always pretty put East
Speaker 1: Riggs in their games and getting getting to play marines
Speaker 1: and contribute you contribute our voices to the game. That
Speaker 1: was just it was nuts. Yeah, it's fantastic that, uh,
Speaker 1: that that turned out that way, especially that Bungee ended
Speaker 1: up being such fans of your work, because if it
Speaker 1: had gone another way, especially when we see things like
Speaker 1: on tech stuff, we talked about lot of stuff like uh,
Speaker 1: intellectual property and patent wars and about this sort of
Speaker 1: litigious side to a lot of companies. Uh, it could
Speaker 1: have gone a totally different way. It could have been
Speaker 1: that one episode went up and then you've got a
Speaker 1: cease and desist and then no more opportunity. So I'm
Speaker 1: so glad that this was a case where a company said, no,
Speaker 1: they're they're adding benefit to what we do. We enjoy
Speaker 1: their work, we want to see them succeed. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that would be what you're saying about the
Speaker 1: episode going up and then it gets pulled out. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people say that is the expectation
Speaker 1: of what would happen. Um, And certainly that was in
Speaker 1: our minds as we were doing it. And UM, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't speak for them, you know, why they made
Speaker 1: the decisions they made, but I mean, you know, Microsoft
Speaker 1: took a look at it and said, you know, here's
Speaker 1: something that's innovative and creative, and let's see what happens,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's that was the attitude they took, like,
Speaker 1: let's let's just go forward and see where this goes.
Speaker 1: And I met with them and told them, you know,
Speaker 1: here's the plans for what I want to do with it.
Speaker 1: More importantly, here's what we're not trying to do. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're just trying to have some fun and
Speaker 1: do something and we're huge fans of Halo, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, let's see what happened turned into a three
Speaker 1: relationship and has now turned into a tenny relationship. So
Speaker 1: I can't I cannot say enough good things about the
Speaker 1: risk that Microsoft took on us and how much that
Speaker 1: is meant to our business because they have been very
Speaker 1: open and very cool, fantastic stake well, I I have
Speaker 1: just two more questions. Here's the second to last one.
Speaker 1: This was one that was suggested by a follower of
Speaker 1: mine on Twitter. Um, how frequently are you mistaken as
Speaker 1: the guy who does the voice for Caboose? All all?
Speaker 1: It's so insulting. It's uh, Yeah, Caboose is easily our
Speaker 1: most popular character. And uh, you know, it's uh. Whenever
Speaker 1: we go to conventions, it's, oh, here's Birdie. He plays
Speaker 1: the Uh. He's the writer and director and created a
Speaker 1: show and plays the lead character. Because I write it.
Speaker 1: Of course I make myself lead character, and like, hey,
Speaker 1: that's great, where's Caboose? Yeah? And and often it's like,
Speaker 1: it's not so much getting mistaken for Caboose, it's the
Speaker 1: it's the raw disappointment that you see in people's faces
Speaker 1: when they realize that you're not Caboose. That's the problem
Speaker 1: when you have the gut check as an artist. I
Speaker 1: um no, I I can sort of identify with that,
Speaker 1: because a couple of years ago, not so much now,
Speaker 1: but a couple of years ago I bore a passing
Speaker 1: resemblance to Jamie Hyneman of MythBusters. I could see that
Speaker 1: now you say that, Yeah, I can see that, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I have different glasses. Now. The glasses apparently are what
Speaker 1: made it. But I had two people within the span
Speaker 1: of a week make that that comment to me. And
Speaker 1: Dragon Con, which some Rooster Teeth people have been to
Speaker 1: in the past. But Dragon Con here in Atlanta was
Speaker 1: hosting several members of the build team from MythBusters as guests,
Speaker 1: and so I thought, oh, this will be fun. I'll
Speaker 1: go and buy a military beret, I'll wear an Oxford shirt,
Speaker 1: and I'll just show up as Jamie. I'm clearly I'm
Speaker 1: clearly not Jamie, but that's gonna be my costume. And um.
Speaker 1: Then I discovered the joy and and and heartbreak of
Speaker 1: revealing to people that I was not actually Jamie from
Speaker 1: MythBusters and see that moment of realization where they're their
Speaker 1: joy turned to disappointment. I actually disappointed an entire battalion
Speaker 1: of the first Stormtrooper Brigade that was you never want
Speaker 1: to pist off armored people with gunn no no, But
Speaker 1: it is funny to watch them all like deflate. At
Speaker 1: the same time, it kind of made you feel like
Speaker 1: what it would have been like to be on Coruscant
Speaker 1: when they revealed that the death Star had exploded. I
Speaker 1: guess it's over. 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 Rush Chief podcast has actually
Speaker 1: turned into one of our biggest hits. 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: current 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 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: seven and eight 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 aur 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 no 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. It's It's been one
Speaker 1: of those things I've always wanted to do. I 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 Missinama.
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. Watched 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, why
Speaker 1: you make this 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 uh subscribe to text stuff,
Speaker 1: that would that would help us out, because you know,
Speaker 1: every listener counts it. All right, awesome, Thank you so much, Bernie,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Out of appreciate it. We have
Speaker 1: to thank Bernie Burns yet again, even though that that
Speaker 1: interview happened two years ago, I have to thank him
Speaker 1: for giving us the time with that interview. We greatly
Speaker 1: appreciated it. And as a personal note, I mean I
Speaker 1: was a huge Rooster Tief fan from the early early days,
Speaker 1: so it was a thrill just to get a chance
Speaker 1: to speak with him. At any rate, we're planning on
Speaker 1: doing more interviews in the future. So if there are
Speaker 1: any particular people out there that you think tex Stuff
Speaker 1: should interview. Maybe there's someone that you think would be
Speaker 1: a really interesting panelist. There might be a topic that
Speaker 1: they're an expert on that you've always wanted to hear
Speaker 1: talk on a podcast, let me know. Or if there's
Speaker 1: someone else in the podcasting world that you would like
Speaker 1: to hear as a guest host, let me know that too.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of friends out there, and we've
Speaker 1: got a lot of possibilities lined up, and I'm really
Speaker 1: excited about all of that. So if you guys want
Speaker 1: to say in, it right in and tell me. That
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler.
Speaker 1: The handle at all three is text stuff hs W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon for moral
Speaker 1: thiss and thousands of other topics. VI isit how staff
Speaker 1: works dot com.