Rooster Teeth Productions
Encyclopedia
Rooster Teeth Productions is a production group from Austin, Texas
that specializes in the creation of live action
shorts, animated peices and machinima
, or films created using real-time, interactive engine
s from computer and video games. The name Rooster Teeth is a euphemism
for Cockbite, an insult used in one of the group's trailer
s. Originally, the group ran a website called drunkgamers.com, a reviewing site in which Burnie Burns
, Gustavo Sorola
, and Geoff Ramsey
reviewed video games while drunk in order to try to get games from video game developers. Burnie Burns also created voice-over
-enhanced gameplay videos of Bungie Studios' popular first-person shooter
video game Halo: Combat Evolved
. Eventually, these videos led to the creation of Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles
, an award-winning comic science fiction
series that was announced in May of 2002, premiered on April 1, 2003 and ended on June 28, 2007, with the release of episode 100. Red vs. Blue gained a huge fan base and while it continues to be the main focus of Rooster Teeth's work, they have also branched off into live action.
With the conclusion of Immersion on January 5, 2011, Rooster Teeth began production of Red vs. Blues ninth season. The first episode was released on June 14, 2011, and the series concluded on November 22, 2011.
, Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum collaborated with actor Joel Heyman
on a 1997 independent film
called The Schedule. The film helped Hullum and Heyman to find work in Los Angeles, California
, but otherwise had limited success. Working for a local company named Telenetwork, Burns later met Geoff Ramsey (then named "Geoff Fink"), Gustavo Sorola, and Jason Saldańa, and the four formed drunkgamers.com, a website where the four reviewed various video games while drunk. According to Ramsey, the group tried to receive free games to review, but "incurred the wrath" of several game developers in doing so.
One of the non-gameplay videos that the drunkgamers crew created during this time was a live-action
parody of the Apple Switch ad campaign
. This video featured Sorola as the main actor, used Peter Tchaikovsky
's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
" as background music, and focused on the lack of games available for the Apple Macintosh
computer.
Responsible for reviewing games on the Microsoft
Xbox
, Burns regularly posted gameplay videos of Halo: Combat Evolved and eventually began to add humor to them with voice-overs. The idea for a series came next, and a for Red vs. Blue was posted in 2002. Six months later, the drunkgamers website closed. However, the following week, the magazine Computer Gaming World
asked permission to include the Switch parody in a CD to be included with an issue. To take advantage of the resultant publicity, Rooster Teeth re-encoded the video to point to redvsblue.com, and revived the Red vs. Blue project. Burns also contacted his old friends Matt Hullum and Joel Heyman and convinced them to work on the series.
In a parody of science fiction films and games and of military life, Red vs. Blue tells the story of two groups of soldiers fighting a civil war
in a desolate box canyon. Initially, Rooster Teeth expected the series to consist of only six to eight episodes. However, the series became popular quickly, receiving 20,000 downloads in a single day. Accordingly, Burns conceived an extension of the plot. The series' fifth and supposedly final season officially ended with episode 100, released on June 28, 2007. However, the group has continued to release new material, including four additional complete seasons (seasons 6-9) and numerous PSA announcements. These PSAs included a five-part mini-series to promote Halo 3
.
In late 2009, animator Monty Oum was hired by RT after his popular Haloid video caught their attention, with his employment being announced at PAX East 2010. He provides pre-rendered
character animation
s to achieve action scenes or character movements in Red vs. Blue that are unable to be done using just the Halo engine. Season eight
of Red vs. Blue is the first season of the series to make extensive use of animation, and Burnie revealed in an interview that he and Oum are in the process of creating a completely animated series with no machinima elements.
Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles won several awards, including four from the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
. Writing for the New York Times, Clive Thompson credited the series as the first machinima production "to break out of the underground". Red vs. Blue videos have been shown in Xbox demo kiosks, and content that is included with the premium "Legendary" edition of Halo 3
. Members of the cast were also featured in an Easter egg in the campaign mode of Halo 3. Their relationship with Halo developer Bungie
has grown to the point that Rooster Teeth commonly produces videos on Bungie's behalf, such as promotional series for Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach
in August 2009 and August 2010, respectively, and a video honoring 'Bungie Day' in July 2010 and again for 2011.
Besides The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Rooster Teeth Productions' other Red vs. Blue productions consist of three mini-series—Out of Mind
, Recovery One
, and Relocated
—and three full-length series, Reconstruction
, Recreation
and Revelation
, which compose the Recollections trilogy.
On March 28, 2011, Rooster Teeth released the trailer for "Red vs. Blue" season 9, which was released in Summer 2011, continues the adventures of the Blood Gulch crew along with agents from Project Freelancer. New episodes are released every Monday (except every 4 weeks there's a PSA) at roosterteeth.com Red vs. Blue: Season 9
began on June 14th, 2011.
, Rooster Teeth was introduced to The Sims 2 and realized that the game would be suitable for a series that parodied reality television
; Electronic Arts agreed. The result was The Strangerhood, a comedy series that centers on eight strangers who awake one day unaware of where they are or how they arrived there. Its first season of 17 episodes completed on April 27, 2006. In 2005, the group collaborated with Paul Marino
on Strangerhood Studios, a spin-off
commissioned by the Independent Film Channel
. This spin-off was the first machinima series to be commissioned for broadcast and won an award for Best Editing at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.
Also in 2006, Rooster Teeth partnered with Maybeck Productions to create PANICS, a short series that chronicles the misadventures of Bravo Team a group of soldiers sent to investigate a paranormal disturbance . The four publicly released episodes were released between September 27, 2005 and October 18, 2005, and a prequel
was released with F.E.A.R. - Director's Edition. The mini-series won an award for Best Writing at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.
In mid-2006, Electronic Arts commissioned Rooster Teeth to direct commercials for their EA Sports
brand of games, including Madden NFL 2007 and NCAA Football 2007, for broadcast on television. Rooster Teeth released some of this work on their website. In late November 2006, controversy arose over a Madden NFL 07
commercial, when Indianapolis Colts
tight end
Dallas Clark
complained about his depiction in the commercial. Hit and tackled multiple times in the advertisement by Philadelphia Eagles
players, Clark stated, "I haven't seen the commercial, but I'm upset about it. It makes me look like a punk." In response, Rooster Teeth posted a director's cut
, in which Clark plays and dominates every position.
Rooster Teeth's other machinima productions are 1-800-Magic, a four-episode mini-series created in 2006 using the game Shadowrun
, and Supreme Surrender, a 2008 mini-series made using Supreme Commander.
", entitled Captain Dynamic. It was based around a team of writers who are hired to use the new content creation tools in the game to promote the worst superhero in the world, Captain Dynamic. Directed by Matt Hullum
and written by Burnie Burns
, the series starred Ed Robertson
of Barenaked Ladies
, Rooster Teeth employee actor Joel Heyman
, and actor Shannon McCormick. Rooster Teeth staff and guest actors were used in minor and extra roles. The series also led to the release of an iPhone
app called the Awesome Button.
which parodies life at their offices in a similar fashion to the webcomic. The series features the staff of Rooster Teeth, who all play caricatures of themselves, as well as occasional appearances from voice actors from some of their machinima series. The first season ran for twenty episodes, which along with the Captain Dynamic mini-series has been released on DVD.
The second season of RT Shorts debuted on April 23, 2010, with new episodes released weekly via the Rooster Teeth website until a hiatus during late July 2010, during which the team focused all their efforts towards Red vs. Blue episodes. With production on Red vs. Blue complete, weekly RT Shorts episodes began again on August 28, 2010 until the second season's conclusion with its twenty-fourth episode and DVD release in early December. Season 3's dvd can be purchased at a discount when bundled with Season 9.
Shortly before season two's conclusion, Rooster Teeth collaborated with the team behind Mega64
, a video game centered comedy series. Together they produced four Rooster Teeth Shorts episodes, which were released on the Rooster Teeth website as the beginning of season three.
During PAX East in late March 2010, Rooster Teeth teased
the series with a pilot
episode that tested how easy it would be to drive a car from a third-person perspective. Nothing was mentioned of Immersion until October 2010, when Burnie stated during the company's podcast, The Rooster Teeth Podcast, that production had begun on further episodes.
Soon after, on November 23, 2010, the company released pictures on Reddit
of a door in their office turned into a safe-room door from the video game Left 4 Dead
in an effort to build hype for the series' debut the following day. The post became the most popular post of the day on Reddit. Rooster Teeth re-released a tweaked pilot episode the following day to begin the weekly series, which concluded with its seventh episode on January 5, 2011. While further episodes are not currently planned, Rooster Teeth hasn't ruled them out. Burnie stated in his journal, "...you never know what the future might bring".
A new episode of Immersion premiered on June 17, 2011, after five months on hiatus. The episode's filming took place on May 29, 2011, during Rooster Teeth's convention, RTX, as well as 400 participants dressed as zombies. The episode shows Geoff and Gus defending themselves from a horde of zombies.
series, Rooster Teeth Comics. The strip satirized the staff members in their regular daily lives, although often pushing each member's personality to the extreme for comedic effect. The humorous situations often related to real life events in the lives of the staff, or other widely recognized current events. It was drawn by Luke McKay, a member of the Rooster Teeth community, and was written by Griffon Ramsey, the wife of Geoff Ramsey. The comics were released three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The first four years of the comic were released in separate collected edition books. On August 20, 2011, Rooster Teeth announced that the webcomics have ended. Books 1-4 are available on iBooks
for iPod Touch
, iPhone
and iPad
.
led to the realisation that there wasn't a community-based achievements website, and in turn Achievement Hunter was created, which shares the design, user profiles and forums of the main Rooster Teeth website. The site is run by two full-time Rooster Teeth staff Geoff Ramsey and Jack Pattillo, who regularly release achievement guides, easter egg
videos and other game-related videos, and select volunteers from the Rooster Teeth community help moderate the website. The most frequent videos come from employees and some of the said community members Jack, Geoff, Ray, Brandon (not to be confused with Brandon Farmahini), and Michael Jones. Unlike many other achievement-dedicated websites, Achievement Hunter is highly dependent on public contributions and so has guides across many different games and platforms, allowing the site to expand its focus from Xbox 360
games to those on PC
, PS3, Steam, iPhone
and Windows Phone 7
.
In early 2010, Ramsey and Pattillo started a weekly series called Achievement Hunter Weekly Update, commonly abbreviated to AHWU. In it, Ramsey talks about upcoming games while Pattillo talks about gaming news. In line with the community-focus of the Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter websites, and similarly to The Rooster Teeth Podcast, the each episode's title sequence
is created by a member of the community. Late 2010 saw the introduction of two more regular series, Fails of the Weak and Achievement HORSE. The former is a compilation of mistakes and glitches in Halo: Reach
with commentary from Geoff and Jack, and in the latter Geoff and Jack play H-O-R-S-E using obstacle courses built with the Forge mode of Halo: Reach. They further published their videos both on their website, and on other media-sharing sites such as YouTube. Another series is "Rage Quit" in which they take their "test subject, Michael, and have him play a very difficult or very annoying game until "he eventually has an aneurysm and we have to rush him to the emergency room.", in Ramsey's words. In August 2011, Michael became a full-time staff member at Achievement Hunter.
multiplayer game-type called Grifball, played on the map Foundry. The idea for the game came from a joke that was cut from an episode promoting the Heroic Map Pack, in which Grif creates the "laziest gametype in the world"; a round of capture the flag
where the flag spawns right next to the capture point. Burnie
realized that the frantic nature of only having seconds to stop the flag reaching its destination was fun and changed it to the "Assault" gametype so that each team had a point to defend, as well as spawning the players with weapons.
The name "Grifball" comes from a gag in season four
of Red vs. Blue
when Sarge exclaims, "This is the best game since Grifball", while trying to shoot Grif down from a ledge. In reference to the joke, Burnie changed the game settings so that players who pick up the ball turn orange, Grif's armor color. Players who pick up the ball will either explode when they plant the bomb or will be killed by an enemy, referencing Sarge's hatred of Grif.
The gametype became so popular that Bungie
began to regularly include the gametype in the Double EXP Weekends playlist of Halo 3 matchmaking, making it a ranked playlist for a limited time in December, 2009, and adding Grifball courts with identical specifications to the original into other maps. In February 2011, Bungie added Grifball to the matchmaking community playlist, as a permanently available gametype.
Rooster Teeth has organized their own official Grifball leagues, covering the United States
, the European Union
and Oceania
. McFarlane Toys
also released a Grifball action figure
. Rooster Teeth created a spinoff machinima miniseries of Red vs. Blue based on Grifball, titled Grifball: Expansion, which follows an untalented Grifball team. It was distributed via Halo Waypoint and ran for three episodes. The follow-up miniseries, titled Grifball: Zero Tolerance, Grifball: Franchise Player, and Grifball: Double Agent were released a short time later and also ran for three episodes.
, Zune Marketplace and their website. It has since become one of the more popular features of the site, at one point becoming the #1 most downloaded podcast on iTunes
, as well as a featured podcast in the iTunes Store. New episodes have been released regularly every Wednesday since April 10, 2009, with occasional special episodes or multiple releases in one week. On June 23, 2010, the podcast changed to a .m4a "enhanced" format which allows listeners to use an interactive "link dump" to be able to view more information on the topics of the week's podcast. In July 2010, Jordan Cwierz, aka JayOrDan, released the first Drunk Tank Animated Adventure (now called Rooster Teeth Animated Adventures). In October 2011 Cwierz was officially hired to produce the animated shorts full time as a feature of the podcast. On September 28th, 2011 Sorola announced The Drunk Tank was to be re-christened The Rooster Teeth Podcast to create a more unified public image for the company. On August 18, 2010, the podcast was officially implemented into the Rooster Teeth website. To celebrate their 100th episode on February 9, 2011 they released their first ever video podcast which featured Gus Sorola, Geoff Ramsey
, Burnie Burns
, and Griffon Ramsey.
Since its inception, the podcast has usually featured three or four of the Rooster Teeth staff members as well as the occasional guest such as their musical composer Nico Audy-Rowland or friends or family of the staff members. The main staff members of the podcast include Sorola, Ramsey and Burns with heavy recurring roles from Joel Heyman
, Jack Pattillo and Griffon Ramsey (until her departure from the company). The podcast is thus largely comedic commentary on the popular culture
of the week, including video games, recent news, website features, sports and upcoming projects as well as highlighting fan-made projects.The podcast also goes onto tangents on subjects not related to what the podcast says it is about in the description. On the Rooster Teeth website the subjects discussed in the podcast can be found under the podcast tab. The podcast regularly pokes fun at the the Rooster Teeth members, such as Jacks sudden aggression over small things, and Geoffs tattoos. On October 11th, 2011, Griffon Ramsey announced she had quit Rooster Teeth Productions to pursue other careers.
base to free Sarge and Tex from imprisonment.
At PAX East 2010, it was strongly implied by the staff that Red vs. Blue: Animated did not get picked up. Geoff Ramsey
commented, "We're just too lazy to work on it—we like our own schedule; we just can't work with someone else's timeframe." At the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, Rooster Teeth declared that a lot of the ideas and aspects of Red vs. Blue: Animated had been assimilated into the original Red vs. Blue
machinima series through the addition of pre-rendered
CGI
.
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
that specializes in the creation of live action
Live action
In filmmaking, video production, and other media, the term live action refers to cinematography, videography not produced using animation...
shorts, animated peices and machinima
Machinima
Machinima is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation...
, or films created using real-time, interactive engine
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
s from computer and video games. The name Rooster Teeth is a euphemism
Euphemism
A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
for Cockbite, an insult used in one of the group's trailer
Trailer (film)
A trailer or preview is an advertisement or a commercial for a feature film that will be exhibited in the future at a cinema. The term "trailer" comes from their having originally been shown at the end of a feature film screening. That practice did not last long, because patrons tended to leave the...
s. Originally, the group ran a website called drunkgamers.com, a reviewing site in which Burnie Burns
Burnie Burns
Michael Justin "Burnie" Burns is an independent filmmaker living in Texas. His best known contributions have been in machinima, although he has also worked with live-action. In April 2003, Burns, along with several of his friends, created the Internet machinima series Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch...
, Gustavo Sorola
Gustavo Sorola
Gustavo "Gus" Sorola is a computer technichan for Rooster Teeth Productions, and is also a voice actor in their machinima series, including Red vs. Blue as Private Dick Simmons and in The Strangerhood as the Computer, a role he shared with Geoff Ramsey...
, and Geoff Ramsey
Geoff Ramsey
Geoff Lazer Ramsey, born Geoff Fink before taking his stepfather's surname, is a machinima producer and voice actor for Rooster Teeth Productions. Ramsey often posts under the handle geoff and is known for having numerous tattoos all over his body; his Red vs. Blue character, Grif, even promotes...
reviewed video games while drunk in order to try to get games from video game developers. Burnie Burns also created voice-over
Voice-over
Voice-over is a production technique where a voice which is not part of the narrative is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations...
-enhanced gameplay videos of Bungie Studios' popular first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
video game Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved, frequently referred to as Halo: CE, or Halo 1, is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The first game of the Halo franchise, it was released on November 15, 2001 as a launch title for the Xbox gaming system, and is...
. Eventually, these videos led to the creation of Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles
Red vs. Blue
Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is a set of related comic science fiction video series created by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed through the Internet and on DVD...
, an award-winning comic science fiction
Comic science fiction
Comic science fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that exploits the genre's conventions for comic effect. Comic science fiction often mocks or satirizes standard SF conventions like alien invasion of Earth, interstellar travel, or futuristic technology....
series that was announced in May of 2002, premiered on April 1, 2003 and ended on June 28, 2007, with the release of episode 100. Red vs. Blue gained a huge fan base and while it continues to be the main focus of Rooster Teeth's work, they have also branched off into live action.
With the conclusion of Immersion on January 5, 2011, Rooster Teeth began production of Red vs. Blues ninth season. The first episode was released on June 14, 2011, and the series concluded on November 22, 2011.
Early company history
While attending the University of Texas at AustinUniversity of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
, Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum collaborated with actor Joel Heyman
Joel Heyman
Joel Pearce Heyman is an actor who is frequently used in Rooster Teeth Productions machinima series, including Red vs. Blue as Private Michael J. Caboose/O'Malley and The Strangerhood as Wade, as well as Bidderman in 1-800-MAGIC. He also wrote 1-800-MAGIC, and occasional Rooster Teeth Shorts for...
on a 1997 independent film
Independent film
An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...
called The Schedule. The film helped Hullum and Heyman to find work in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, but otherwise had limited success. Working for a local company named Telenetwork, Burns later met Geoff Ramsey (then named "Geoff Fink"), Gustavo Sorola, and Jason Saldańa, and the four formed drunkgamers.com, a website where the four reviewed various video games while drunk. According to Ramsey, the group tried to receive free games to review, but "incurred the wrath" of several game developers in doing so.
One of the non-gameplay videos that the drunkgamers crew created during this time was a live-action
Live action
In filmmaking, video production, and other media, the term live action refers to cinematography, videography not produced using animation...
parody of the Apple Switch ad campaign
Apple Switch ad campaign
Switch was an advertising campaign launched by Apple Computer on June 10, 2002. It featured what the company referred to as "real people" who had "switched" from the Microsoft Windows platform to the Mac. An international television and print ad campaign directed users to a website where various...
. This video featured Sorola as the main actor, used Peter Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St...
" as background music, and focused on the lack of games available for the Apple Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
computer.
Red vs. Blue
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
, Burns regularly posted gameplay videos of Halo: Combat Evolved and eventually began to add humor to them with voice-overs. The idea for a series came next, and a for Red vs. Blue was posted in 2002. Six months later, the drunkgamers website closed. However, the following week, the magazine Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World was a computer game magazine founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe as a bimonthly publication. Early issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings , Dan Bunten , and Chris Crawford...
asked permission to include the Switch parody in a CD to be included with an issue. To take advantage of the resultant publicity, Rooster Teeth re-encoded the video to point to redvsblue.com, and revived the Red vs. Blue project. Burns also contacted his old friends Matt Hullum and Joel Heyman and convinced them to work on the series.
In a parody of science fiction films and games and of military life, Red vs. Blue tells the story of two groups of soldiers fighting a civil war
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
in a desolate box canyon. Initially, Rooster Teeth expected the series to consist of only six to eight episodes. However, the series became popular quickly, receiving 20,000 downloads in a single day. Accordingly, Burns conceived an extension of the plot. The series' fifth and supposedly final season officially ended with episode 100, released on June 28, 2007. However, the group has continued to release new material, including four additional complete seasons (seasons 6-9) and numerous PSA announcements. These PSAs included a five-part mini-series to promote Halo 3
Halo 3
Halo 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise, the game concludes the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2...
.
In late 2009, animator Monty Oum was hired by RT after his popular Haloid video caught their attention, with his employment being announced at PAX East 2010. He provides pre-rendered
Pre-rendered
Pre-rendering is the process in which video footage is not rendered in real-time by the hardware that is outputing or playing back the video. Instead, the video is a recording of a footage that was previously rendered on a different equipment...
character animation
Character animation
Character animation is a specialized area of the animation process concerning the animation of one or more characters featured in an animated work. It is usually as one aspect of a larger production and often made to enhance voice acting. The primary role of a Character Animator is to be the...
s to achieve action scenes or character movements in Red vs. Blue that are unable to be done using just the Halo engine. Season eight
Red vs. Blue: Revelation
Red vs. Blue: Revelation is a Halo 3 action comedy machinima series created in 2010 by Rooster Teeth Productions, set after Red vs. Blue: Recreation. In the main story line, the series is considered the eighth season of Red vs. Blue. This series will mark the end of the Recollections trilogy,...
of Red vs. Blue is the first season of the series to make extensive use of animation, and Burnie revealed in an interview that he and Oum are in the process of creating a completely animated series with no machinima elements.
Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles won several awards, including four from the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
This is a list of film festivals dedicated to machinima, the use of real-time 3-D engines in filmmaking. The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences regularly holds such festivals, and recognizes exemplary machinima works through awards nicknamed the Mackies.-Machinima Expo:The is an annual...
. Writing for the New York Times, Clive Thompson credited the series as the first machinima production "to break out of the underground". Red vs. Blue videos have been shown in Xbox demo kiosks, and content that is included with the premium "Legendary" edition of Halo 3
Halo 3
Halo 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise, the game concludes the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2...
. Members of the cast were also featured in an Easter egg in the campaign mode of Halo 3. Their relationship with Halo developer Bungie
Bungie
Bungie, Inc is an American video game developer currently located in Bellevue, Washington, USA. The company was established in May 1991 by University of Chicago undergraduate student Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones after publishing Jones' game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of...
has grown to the point that Rooster Teeth commonly produces videos on Bungie's behalf, such as promotional series for Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach
Halo: Reach
Halo: Reach is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 console. Reach was released in North America, Australia, and Europe on September 14, 2010. The game takes place in the year 2552, where humanity is locked in a war with the...
in August 2009 and August 2010, respectively, and a video honoring 'Bungie Day' in July 2010 and again for 2011.
Besides The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Rooster Teeth Productions' other Red vs. Blue productions consist of three mini-series—Out of Mind
Red vs. Blue: Out of Mind
Red vs. Blue: Out of Mind is an action-based 2006 video miniseries produced by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed via the Xbox Live Marketplace and the Internet. Spun off from the main Red vs. Blue series, Out of Mind chronicles the adventures of the character between her disappearance in ...
, Recovery One
Red vs. Blue: Recovery One
Red vs. Blue: Recovery One is an action-based 2007 machinima miniseries produced by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed via the Xbox Live Marketplace and the Red vs. Blue website. A sequel to the Red vs. Blue series, Red vs Blue: Recovery One picks up where the Red vs. Blue: Out of Mind...
, and Relocated
Red vs. Blue: Relocated
Red vs. Blue: Relocated is a 2009 comedy machinima miniseries produced by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed via the Rooster Teeth website. Red vs Blue: Relocated is a four-part miniseries set just after the events of Reconstruction and just prior to Recreation in the Red vs. Blue continuity...
—and three full-length series, Reconstruction
Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction
Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction is a 2008 action-comedy machinima series produced by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed via the Rooster Teeth website. A sequel to Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Red vs Blue: Reconstruction picks up where the Red vs. Blue: Recovery One miniseries left...
, Recreation
Red vs. Blue: Recreation
Red vs. Blue: Recreation is a 2009 Halo 3 machinima series created by Rooster Teeth Productions, Set three days after Red vs. Blue: Relocated, the Red team are back plotting against the Blue team, which currently consists of only one person, Caboose. In the main story line, the series is considered...
and Revelation
Red vs. Blue: Revelation
Red vs. Blue: Revelation is a Halo 3 action comedy machinima series created in 2010 by Rooster Teeth Productions, set after Red vs. Blue: Recreation. In the main story line, the series is considered the eighth season of Red vs. Blue. This series will mark the end of the Recollections trilogy,...
, which compose the Recollections trilogy.
On March 28, 2011, Rooster Teeth released the trailer for "Red vs. Blue" season 9, which was released in Summer 2011, continues the adventures of the Blood Gulch crew along with agents from Project Freelancer. New episodes are released every Monday (except every 4 weeks there's a PSA) at roosterteeth.com Red vs. Blue: Season 9
Red vs. Blue: Season 9
Red vs. Blue: Season 9 is a 2011 action comedy animated/machinima series, produced by Rooster Teeth Productions and loosely based in the Halo universe. The series premiered on June 14, 2011 as a continuation of Red vs. Blue: Revelation....
began on June 14th, 2011.
Other machinima
In May 2004, at the E3 gaming conventionGaming convention
A gaming convention is a gathering that centered on role-playing games, collectible card games, miniatures wargames, board games, video games, or other types of games. These conventions are typically two or three days long, and often held at either a university or in a convention center hotel...
, Rooster Teeth was introduced to The Sims 2 and realized that the game would be suitable for a series that parodied reality television
Reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...
; Electronic Arts agreed. The result was The Strangerhood, a comedy series that centers on eight strangers who awake one day unaware of where they are or how they arrived there. Its first season of 17 episodes completed on April 27, 2006. In 2005, the group collaborated with Paul Marino
Paul Marino
Paul Marino is a film director, producer, animator, voice actor, and author currently focused on machinima, the art of using engines from video games to create films. He is a co-founder and the executive director of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences , a non-profit organization formed in...
on Strangerhood Studios, a spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
commissioned by the Independent Film Channel
Independent Film Channel
The Independent Film Channel is an American cable TV network that airs independent film and related programming. IFC programming includes commercially interrupted feature-length films, original documentaries, shorts, animated series, original series, acquired series, and content exclusively for...
. This spin-off was the first machinima series to be commissioned for broadcast and won an award for Best Editing at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.
Also in 2006, Rooster Teeth partnered with Maybeck Productions to create PANICS, a short series that chronicles the misadventures of Bravo Team a group of soldiers sent to investigate a paranormal disturbance . The four publicly released episodes were released between September 27, 2005 and October 18, 2005, and a prequel
Prequel
A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...
was released with F.E.A.R. - Director's Edition. The mini-series won an award for Best Writing at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival.
In mid-2006, Electronic Arts commissioned Rooster Teeth to direct commercials for their EA Sports
EA Sports
EA Sports is a brand of Electronic Arts that creates and develops sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to mimic real-life sports networks by calling themselves "EA Sports Network" with pictures or endorsements of real commentators such as John...
brand of games, including Madden NFL 2007 and NCAA Football 2007, for broadcast on television. Rooster Teeth released some of this work on their website. In late November 2006, controversy arose over a Madden NFL 07
Madden NFL 07
Madden NFL 07 is the 2007 edition of the popular Madden NFL series. It is the first in the video game series to be released for the PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles. Former Seattle Seahawks running back Shaun Alexander is on the cover.-Features:...
commercial, when Indianapolis Colts
Indianapolis Colts
The Indianapolis Colts are a professional American football team based in Indianapolis. They are currently members of the South Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League ....
tight end
Tight end
The tight end is a position in American football on the offense. The tight end is often seen as a hybrid position with the characteristics and roles of both an offensive lineman and a wide receiver. Like offensive linemen, they are usually lined up on the offensive line and are large enough to be...
Dallas Clark
Dallas Clark
Dallas Dean Clark is an American football tight end for the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League. He was drafted by the Colts 24th overall in the 2003 NFL Draft. He played college football at the University of Iowa...
complained about his depiction in the commercial. Hit and tackled multiple times in the advertisement by Philadelphia Eagles
Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are members of the East Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...
players, Clark stated, "I haven't seen the commercial, but I'm upset about it. It makes me look like a punk." In response, Rooster Teeth posted a director's cut
Director's cut
A director's cut is a specially edited version of a film, and less often TV series, music video, commercials, comic book or video games, that is supposed to represent the director's own approved edit...
, in which Clark plays and dominates every position.
Rooster Teeth's other machinima productions are 1-800-Magic, a four-episode mini-series created in 2006 using the game Shadowrun
Shadowrun (2007 video game)
Shadowrun is an online only first-person shooter video game, developed by FASA Interactive for Xbox 360 and Windows Vista. It was later cracked to work on Windows XP, confirming speculation that it was intentionally limited to Windows Vista. The game features a buying system which is greatly...
, and Supreme Surrender, a 2008 mini-series made using Supreme Commander.
Captain Dynamic
In early 2009, Rooster Teeth first ventured into live-action with a mini-series to promote the online game "City of HeroesCity of Heroes
City of Heroes is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the superhero comic book genre, developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCsoft. The game was launched in North America on April 27, 2004 and in Europe on February 4, 2005 with English, German and French language...
", entitled Captain Dynamic. It was based around a team of writers who are hired to use the new content creation tools in the game to promote the worst superhero in the world, Captain Dynamic. Directed by Matt Hullum
Matt Hullum
Matt Hullum is an independent filmmaker in Austin, Texas. Along with Burnie Burns, he is a co-founder of Rooster Teeth Productions, a company that specializes in machinima, the art using engines from computer and video games to create films...
and written by Burnie Burns
Burnie Burns
Michael Justin "Burnie" Burns is an independent filmmaker living in Texas. His best known contributions have been in machinima, although he has also worked with live-action. In April 2003, Burns, along with several of his friends, created the Internet machinima series Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch...
, the series starred Ed Robertson
Ed Robertson
Lloyd Edward Elwyn Robertson , better known as Ed Robertson, is the Canadian lead singer, as well as a guitarist and songwriter in the band, Barenaked Ladies...
of Barenaked Ladies
Barenaked Ladies
Barenaked Ladies is a Canadian alternative rock band. The band is currently composed of Jim Creeggan, Kevin Hearn, Ed Robertson, and Tyler Stewart. Barenaked Ladies formed in 1988 in Scarborough, Ontario, then a suburban municipality outside the City of Toronto...
, Rooster Teeth employee actor Joel Heyman
Joel Heyman
Joel Pearce Heyman is an actor who is frequently used in Rooster Teeth Productions machinima series, including Red vs. Blue as Private Michael J. Caboose/O'Malley and The Strangerhood as Wade, as well as Bidderman in 1-800-MAGIC. He also wrote 1-800-MAGIC, and occasional Rooster Teeth Shorts for...
, and actor Shannon McCormick. Rooster Teeth staff and guest actors were used in minor and extra roles. The series also led to the release of an iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
app called the Awesome Button.
Rooster Teeth Shorts
Following the positive reception of Captain Dynamic, Rooster Teeth began producing another live-action series, Rooster Teeth Shorts, a sketch comedySketch comedy
A sketch comedy consists of a series of short comedy scenes or vignettes, called "sketches," commonly between one and ten minutes long. Such sketches are performed by a group of comic actors or comedians, either on stage or through an audio and/or visual medium such as broadcasting...
which parodies life at their offices in a similar fashion to the webcomic. The series features the staff of Rooster Teeth, who all play caricatures of themselves, as well as occasional appearances from voice actors from some of their machinima series. The first season ran for twenty episodes, which along with the Captain Dynamic mini-series has been released on DVD.
The second season of RT Shorts debuted on April 23, 2010, with new episodes released weekly via the Rooster Teeth website until a hiatus during late July 2010, during which the team focused all their efforts towards Red vs. Blue episodes. With production on Red vs. Blue complete, weekly RT Shorts episodes began again on August 28, 2010 until the second season's conclusion with its twenty-fourth episode and DVD release in early December. Season 3's dvd can be purchased at a discount when bundled with Season 9.
Shortly before season two's conclusion, Rooster Teeth collaborated with the team behind Mega64
Mega64
Mega64 is a low-budget series of comedy skits centered on video games.-Premise:In the not too distant future, a sinister scientist named Dr. Poque creates the most powerful video game console ever assembled...
, a video game centered comedy series. Together they produced four Rooster Teeth Shorts episodes, which were released on the Rooster Teeth website as the beginning of season three.
Immersion
Immersion is a series in which Burnie and Griffon test the concepts of video games in real life, such as whether the heckling that sometimes occurs in multiplayer video games would negatively affect the performance of real soldiers. Burnie joked in the company's podcast that the series started as an "elaborate way for [them] to do fun stuff and get paid for it". Geoff and Gus were the test subjects in all but one episode.During PAX East in late March 2010, Rooster Teeth teased
Teaser
A teaser is a type of gambling bet that allows the bettor to combine his bets on two different games. The bettor can adjust the point spreads for the two games, but realizes a lower return on the bets in the event of a win....
the series with a pilot
Television pilot
A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...
episode that tested how easy it would be to drive a car from a third-person perspective. Nothing was mentioned of Immersion until October 2010, when Burnie stated during the company's podcast, The Rooster Teeth Podcast, that production had begun on further episodes.
Soon after, on November 23, 2010, the company released pictures on Reddit
Reddit
reddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text "self" post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.Reddit was originally...
of a door in their office turned into a safe-room door from the video game Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead is a cooperative first-person shooter video game. It was developed by Turtle Rock Studios, which was purchased by Valve Corporation during development. The game uses Valve's proprietary Source engine, and is available for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and Mac OS X...
in an effort to build hype for the series' debut the following day. The post became the most popular post of the day on Reddit. Rooster Teeth re-released a tweaked pilot episode the following day to begin the weekly series, which concluded with its seventh episode on January 5, 2011. While further episodes are not currently planned, Rooster Teeth hasn't ruled them out. Burnie stated in his journal, "...you never know what the future might bring".
A new episode of Immersion premiered on June 17, 2011, after five months on hiatus. The episode's filming took place on May 29, 2011, during Rooster Teeth's convention, RTX, as well as 400 participants dressed as zombies. The episode shows Geoff and Gus defending themselves from a horde of zombies.
PastCast
A parody of historical events done in the style of modern vlogging on you tube. This series marks the launch of a new channel from Rooster Teeth Productions called Rooster Teeth Shows.Future projects
Rooster Teeth moved into a larger office in early September 2010, which they have made into "half a warehouse" in order to allow plenty of room for live action sets. In the future, they hope to produce a live-action feature-length film.Webcomic
In 2006, Rooster Teeth Productions formed its own webcomicWebcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....
series, Rooster Teeth Comics. The strip satirized the staff members in their regular daily lives, although often pushing each member's personality to the extreme for comedic effect. The humorous situations often related to real life events in the lives of the staff, or other widely recognized current events. It was drawn by Luke McKay, a member of the Rooster Teeth community, and was written by Griffon Ramsey, the wife of Geoff Ramsey. The comics were released three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The first four years of the comic were released in separate collected edition books. On August 20, 2011, Rooster Teeth announced that the webcomics have ended. Books 1-4 are available on iBooks
IBooks
iBooks is an e-book application by Apple Inc. It was announced in conjunction with the iPad on January 27, 2010, and was released for the iPhone and iPod Touch in mid-2010, as part of the iOS 4 update. At that time, it was described by Apple as being available only in the United States...
for iPod Touch
IPod Touch
The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...
, iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
and iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
.
Achievement Hunter
During 2008, Geoff Ramsey's interest in gaming achievementsAchievement (video gaming)
In video gaming parlance, an achievement, also sometimes known as a trophy or challenge, is a meta-goal defined outside of a game's parameters...
led to the realisation that there wasn't a community-based achievements website, and in turn Achievement Hunter was created, which shares the design, user profiles and forums of the main Rooster Teeth website. The site is run by two full-time Rooster Teeth staff Geoff Ramsey and Jack Pattillo, who regularly release achievement guides, easter egg
Easter egg (media)
Image:Carl Oswald Rostosky - Zwei Kaninchen und ein Igel 1861.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Example of Easter egg hidden within imagerect 467 383 539 434 desc none...
videos and other game-related videos, and select volunteers from the Rooster Teeth community help moderate the website. The most frequent videos come from employees and some of the said community members Jack, Geoff, Ray, Brandon (not to be confused with Brandon Farmahini), and Michael Jones. Unlike many other achievement-dedicated websites, Achievement Hunter is highly dependent on public contributions and so has guides across many different games and platforms, allowing the site to expand its focus from Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
games to those on PC
Games for Windows
Games for Windows is a brand owned by Microsoft and introduced in 2006 to coincide with the release of Windows Vista. The brand represents a standardized technical certification program and online service for Windows games, bringing a measure of regulation to the PC game market in much the same way...
, PS3, Steam, iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
and Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft, and is the successor to its Windows Mobile platform, although incompatible with it. Unlike its predecessor, it is primarily aimed at the consumer market rather than the enterprise market...
.
In early 2010, Ramsey and Pattillo started a weekly series called Achievement Hunter Weekly Update, commonly abbreviated to AHWU. In it, Ramsey talks about upcoming games while Pattillo talks about gaming news. In line with the community-focus of the Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter websites, and similarly to The Rooster Teeth Podcast, the each episode's title sequence
Title sequence
A Title Sequence is the method by which cinematic films or television programs present their title, key production and cast members, or both, utilizing conceptual visuals and sound...
is created by a member of the community. Late 2010 saw the introduction of two more regular series, Fails of the Weak and Achievement HORSE. The former is a compilation of mistakes and glitches in Halo: Reach
Halo: Reach
Halo: Reach is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 console. Reach was released in North America, Australia, and Europe on September 14, 2010. The game takes place in the year 2552, where humanity is locked in a war with the...
with commentary from Geoff and Jack, and in the latter Geoff and Jack play H-O-R-S-E using obstacle courses built with the Forge mode of Halo: Reach. They further published their videos both on their website, and on other media-sharing sites such as YouTube. Another series is "Rage Quit" in which they take their "test subject, Michael, and have him play a very difficult or very annoying game until "he eventually has an aneurysm and we have to rush him to the emergency room.", in Ramsey's words. In August 2011, Michael became a full-time staff member at Achievement Hunter.
Grifball
In late 2007, Rooster Teeth created a Halo 3Halo 3
Halo 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise, the game concludes the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2...
multiplayer game-type called Grifball, played on the map Foundry. The idea for the game came from a joke that was cut from an episode promoting the Heroic Map Pack, in which Grif creates the "laziest gametype in the world"; a round of capture the flag
Capture the flag
Capture the Flag is a traditional outdoor sport generally played by children, where two teams each have a flag and the objective is to capture the other team's flag, located at the team's "base," and bring it safely back to their own base...
where the flag spawns right next to the capture point. Burnie
Burnie Burns
Michael Justin "Burnie" Burns is an independent filmmaker living in Texas. His best known contributions have been in machinima, although he has also worked with live-action. In April 2003, Burns, along with several of his friends, created the Internet machinima series Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch...
realized that the frantic nature of only having seconds to stop the flag reaching its destination was fun and changed it to the "Assault" gametype so that each team had a point to defend, as well as spawning the players with weapons.
The name "Grifball" comes from a gag in season four
Red vs. Blue (season 4)
This is a list of episodes for season 4 of the machinima comedy series Red vs. Blue. In a first for the series, this season features 20 episodes, as opposed to the standard 19 for the first three seasons. A DVD of the season was released on May 4, 2006 and arrived in GameStop stores on May 9,...
of Red vs. Blue
Red vs. Blue
Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is a set of related comic science fiction video series created by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed through the Internet and on DVD...
when Sarge exclaims, "This is the best game since Grifball", while trying to shoot Grif down from a ledge. In reference to the joke, Burnie changed the game settings so that players who pick up the ball turn orange, Grif's armor color. Players who pick up the ball will either explode when they plant the bomb or will be killed by an enemy, referencing Sarge's hatred of Grif.
The gametype became so popular that Bungie
Bungie
Bungie, Inc is an American video game developer currently located in Bellevue, Washington, USA. The company was established in May 1991 by University of Chicago undergraduate student Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones after publishing Jones' game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of...
began to regularly include the gametype in the Double EXP Weekends playlist of Halo 3 matchmaking, making it a ranked playlist for a limited time in December, 2009, and adding Grifball courts with identical specifications to the original into other maps. In February 2011, Bungie added Grifball to the matchmaking community playlist, as a permanently available gametype.
Rooster Teeth has organized their own official Grifball leagues, covering the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
and Oceania
Oceania
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...
. McFarlane Toys
McFarlane Toys
McFarlane Toys, a subsidiary of Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc., is a company started by Todd McFarlane that makes highly detailed models of characters from movies, comics, musicians, video games, and sport figures...
also released a Grifball action figure
Action figure
An action figure is a posable character figurine, made of plastic or other materials, and often based upon characters from a film, comic book, video game, or television program. These action figures are usually marketed towards boys and male collectors...
. Rooster Teeth created a spinoff machinima miniseries of Red vs. Blue based on Grifball, titled Grifball: Expansion, which follows an untalented Grifball team. It was distributed via Halo Waypoint and ran for three episodes. The follow-up miniseries, titled Grifball: Zero Tolerance, Grifball: Franchise Player, and Grifball: Double Agent were released a short time later and also ran for three episodes.
RTX
On May 27th-29th, 2011 Rooster Teeth held their first official community event in Austin, Texas. Initially planned as a small gathering for 200 people, demand was so high that over 500 tickets were accidentally sold within minutes of being made available online. Attendees were treated to a tour of the office, an exclusive t-shirt and the chance to take part in a special episode of Immersion.The Rooster Teeth Podcast
On December 9, 2008, after temporarily reviving a feature on their website from their previous website, drunkgamers.com, where the staff talked about different topics of the week while inebriated with accompanying responses in text with pictures, Rooster Teeth released their first audio podcast, The Drunk Tank, available for download through iTunesITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
, Zune Marketplace and their website. It has since become one of the more popular features of the site, at one point becoming the #1 most downloaded podcast on iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
, as well as a featured podcast in the iTunes Store. New episodes have been released regularly every Wednesday since April 10, 2009, with occasional special episodes or multiple releases in one week. On June 23, 2010, the podcast changed to a .m4a "enhanced" format which allows listeners to use an interactive "link dump" to be able to view more information on the topics of the week's podcast. In July 2010, Jordan Cwierz, aka JayOrDan, released the first Drunk Tank Animated Adventure (now called Rooster Teeth Animated Adventures). In October 2011 Cwierz was officially hired to produce the animated shorts full time as a feature of the podcast. On September 28th, 2011 Sorola announced The Drunk Tank was to be re-christened The Rooster Teeth Podcast to create a more unified public image for the company. On August 18, 2010, the podcast was officially implemented into the Rooster Teeth website. To celebrate their 100th episode on February 9, 2011 they released their first ever video podcast which featured Gus Sorola, Geoff Ramsey
Geoff Ramsey
Geoff Lazer Ramsey, born Geoff Fink before taking his stepfather's surname, is a machinima producer and voice actor for Rooster Teeth Productions. Ramsey often posts under the handle geoff and is known for having numerous tattoos all over his body; his Red vs. Blue character, Grif, even promotes...
, Burnie Burns
Burnie Burns
Michael Justin "Burnie" Burns is an independent filmmaker living in Texas. His best known contributions have been in machinima, although he has also worked with live-action. In April 2003, Burns, along with several of his friends, created the Internet machinima series Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch...
, and Griffon Ramsey.
Since its inception, the podcast has usually featured three or four of the Rooster Teeth staff members as well as the occasional guest such as their musical composer Nico Audy-Rowland or friends or family of the staff members. The main staff members of the podcast include Sorola, Ramsey and Burns with heavy recurring roles from Joel Heyman
Joel Heyman
Joel Pearce Heyman is an actor who is frequently used in Rooster Teeth Productions machinima series, including Red vs. Blue as Private Michael J. Caboose/O'Malley and The Strangerhood as Wade, as well as Bidderman in 1-800-MAGIC. He also wrote 1-800-MAGIC, and occasional Rooster Teeth Shorts for...
, Jack Pattillo and Griffon Ramsey (until her departure from the company). The podcast is thus largely comedic commentary on the popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
of the week, including video games, recent news, website features, sports and upcoming projects as well as highlighting fan-made projects.The podcast also goes onto tangents on subjects not related to what the podcast says it is about in the description. On the Rooster Teeth website the subjects discussed in the podcast can be found under the podcast tab. The podcast regularly pokes fun at the the Rooster Teeth members, such as Jacks sudden aggression over small things, and Geoffs tattoos. On October 11th, 2011, Griffon Ramsey announced she had quit Rooster Teeth Productions to pursue other careers.
Red vs. Blue: Animated
Red vs. Blue: Animated was a joint production between Rooster Teeth and animation studio Humoring the Fates. The test piece was screened at PAX 2008. The piece sees Church, Simmons and Grif attempting to battle through a CovenantCovenant (Halo)
The Covenant are a fictional theocratic military alliance of alien races who serve as the main antagonists in the Halo video game series. They are composed of a variety of diverse species, united under the religious worship of the enigmatic Forerunners and their belief that Forerunner ringworlds...
base to free Sarge and Tex from imprisonment.
At PAX East 2010, it was strongly implied by the staff that Red vs. Blue: Animated did not get picked up. Geoff Ramsey
Geoff Ramsey
Geoff Lazer Ramsey, born Geoff Fink before taking his stepfather's surname, is a machinima producer and voice actor for Rooster Teeth Productions. Ramsey often posts under the handle geoff and is known for having numerous tattoos all over his body; his Red vs. Blue character, Grif, even promotes...
commented, "We're just too lazy to work on it—we like our own schedule; we just can't work with someone else's timeframe." At the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, Rooster Teeth declared that a lot of the ideas and aspects of Red vs. Blue: Animated had been assimilated into the original Red vs. Blue
Red vs. Blue
Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is a set of related comic science fiction video series created by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed through the Internet and on DVD...
machinima series through the addition of pre-rendered
Pre-rendered
Pre-rendering is the process in which video footage is not rendered in real-time by the hardware that is outputing or playing back the video. Instead, the video is a recording of a footage that was previously rendered on a different equipment...
CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
.
Filmography
| Year | Series | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2003–2007 | Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles | Machinima; 5 seasons |
| 2004–2006 | The Strangerhood The Strangerhood The Strangerhood is a comedy series created by Rooster Teeth Productions. The series is produced primarily by using the machinima technique of synchronizing video footage from computer and video games to pre-recorded dialogue and other audio. The animation is created using the computer game The... |
Machinima; 1 season + special episodes |
| 2005 | Strangerhood Studios | Machinima mini-series |
| 2005 | PANICS PANICS PANICS or P.A.N.I.C.S., an acronym for People Acting Normal In Crazy-Ass Situations, is a comic science fiction mini-series created by Rooster Teeth Productions and released in 2005... |
Machinima mini-series |
| 2006 | Red vs. Blue: Out of Mind Red vs. Blue: Out of Mind Red vs. Blue: Out of Mind is an action-based 2006 video miniseries produced by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed via the Xbox Live Marketplace and the Internet. Spun off from the main Red vs. Blue series, Out of Mind chronicles the adventures of the character between her disappearance in ... |
Machinima mini-series |
| 2007 | 1-800-MAGIC | Machinima mini-series |
| 2007 | Red vs. Blue: Recovery One Red vs. Blue: Recovery One Red vs. Blue: Recovery One is an action-based 2007 machinima miniseries produced by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed via the Xbox Live Marketplace and the Red vs. Blue website. A sequel to the Red vs. Blue series, Red vs Blue: Recovery One picks up where the Red vs. Blue: Out of Mind... |
Machinima mini-series |
| 2008–2010 | Red vs. Blue: The Recollection | Machinima; 3 seasons |
| 2008–Present | Achievement Hunter | Video game guides; sporadic; 7 seasons currently |
| 2008 | Supreme Surrender | Machinima mini-series |
| 2009 | Red vs. Blue: Relocated Red vs. Blue: Relocated Red vs. Blue: Relocated is a 2009 comedy machinima miniseries produced by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed via the Rooster Teeth website. Red vs Blue: Relocated is a four-part miniseries set just after the events of Reconstruction and just prior to Recreation in the Red vs. Blue continuity... |
Machinima mini-series |
| 2009 | Captain Dynamic | Live action mini-series |
| 2009–Present | Rooster Teeth Shorts | Live action; 3 seasons |
| 2010 | Grifball: Expansion | Machinima mini-series |
| 2010–Present | Immersion | Live action |
| 2010 | Grifball: Zero Tolerance | Machinima mini-series |
| 2010–Present | Achievement Hunter Weekly Update | Subshow of Achievement Hunter - Live action; Weekly; non-seasonal |
| 2010–Present | Fails of the Weak | Subshow of Achievement Hunter - Machinima; Weekly |
| 2010–Present | Achievement Horse | Subshow of Achievement Hunter - Machinima; Weekly |
| 2011–Present | Rage Quit | Subshow of Achievement Hunter - Mini-series; Weekly |
| 2011 | Grifball: Double Agent | Machinima mini-series |
| 2011 | Red vs. Blue: Season 9 Red vs. Blue: Season 9 Red vs. Blue: Season 9 is a 2011 action comedy animated/machinima series, produced by Rooster Teeth Productions and loosely based in the Halo universe. The series premiered on June 14, 2011 as a continuation of Red vs. Blue: Revelation.... |
Machinima |
| 2011 | Red vs. Blue: MIA | Machinima maxi-series |
| 2012 | Red vs. Blue: Season 10 | Machinima |