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
DVD. The story
centers on two opposing teams of soldiers fighting a
civil war in the middle of a desolate box canyon
(Blood Gulch), in a
parody of
first-person shooter (FPS) games,
military life, and science fiction films. Initially intended to be
a short series of six to eight episodes, the project quickly and
unexpectedly achieved significant popularity following its Internet
premiere on April 1, 2003. Rooster Teeth therefore decided to
continue the story. The fifth and final season of the original
Red: vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles
series ended with episode 100, released on June 28, 2007. Three
mini-series—
Out of Mind,
Recovery One, and
Relocated—and the full-length
Reconstruction and
Recreation series have extended the plot.
Red vs. Blue emerged from
Burnie
Burns'
voice-over-enhanced gameplay
videos of
Bungie Studios'
FPS video
game Halo: Combat
Evolved. The series is primarily produced using the
machinima technique of synchronizing video
footage from a game to pre-recorded dialogue and other audio.
Footage is mostly from the
multiplayer mode of
Halo: Combat
Evolved and its
sequels,
Halo 2 and
Halo
3, on the
Microsoft Xbox and
Xbox 360 video game consoles. Minute sections of
the series were also achieved using the
Microsoft PC version of the same game.
Both within the machinima community and among film critics,
Red
vs. Blue has been generally well-received. Praised for its
originality, the series has won four awards at film festivals held
by the
Academy
of Machinima Arts & Sciences. It has been credited with
bringing new popularity to machinima, helping it to gain more
mainstream exposure, and attracting more people to the art form.
Graham
Leggat, former director of communications for Lincoln
Center
's film society, described Red vs. Blue as
"truly as sophisticated as Samuel
Beckett". While special videos continue to be released
online, the completed series is also available on DVD, making the
series one of the first commercially released and successful
machinima products. Rooster Teeth has created videos, some under
commission from
Microsoft, for special
events, and
Red vs. Blue content is included with the
Legendary Edition of
Halo 3.
Synopsis
Setting and overview
Red vs. Blue centers on the Red and Blue Teams, two groups
of soldiers engaged in a supposed civil war. Originally, each team
occupies a small base in a box canyon known as Blood Gulch.
According to (
Gustavo Sorola), one of
the Red Team soldiers, each team's base exists only in response to
the other team's base. To the soldiers' ignorance, there is no
actual civil war; both the Red and Blue armies are under the same
command, Project Freelancer, and only exist as training grounds for
Freelance Agents. Although both teams generally dislike each other
and have standing orders to defeat their opponents and
capture their flag, neither team is usually
motivated to fight the other. Teammates have an array of eccentric
personalities and often create more problems for each other than
for their enemies.
The
Red vs. Blue storyline so far spans seven full-length
seasons and three mini-series. Rooster Teeth periodically releases
self-referential
public
service announcements (PSAs) and holiday-themed videos, which
are generally unrelated to the main storyline. In these videos,
however, the members of both teams claim to be from
Red vs.
Blue.
Although the visual background of
Red vs. Blue is
primarily taken from the
Halo
series, Rooster Teeth consciously limits connections to the
Halo fictional universe. A
special video made for
E3 2003 portrays
Master Chief, the protagonist of the
Halo series, as a
larger-than-life member of the army, and the
Red vs. Blue
trailer and first episode establish that the series is set between
the events of the two games. Beyond these references, the storyline
is independent, a decision that, according to Burns, is intended to
increase accessibility to those unfamiliar with the games. For
example, even though the season 4 and casts include characters from
the alien
Covenant Elite race,
Rooster Teeth never portrays those characters in their original
Halo context.
Plot
Initially, the Red Team consists of (
Geoff
Ramsey); (
Gustavo Sorola); their
leader, (
Matt Hullum); and a robot,
(
Burnie Burns). The Blue Team consists
of (
Jason Saldaña) and the
self-appointed leader, (Burnie Burns). (
Dan
Godwin) soon joins the Red Team, and (
Joel Heyman) and an
artificially intelligent (AI) tank
named (
Yomary Cruz) join the Blue Team.
After Donut manages to capture the Blue Team's flag, Caboose and
Sheila accidentally kill Church. A mercenary named (
Kathleen Zuelch) recovers the flag, but is
captured shortly after. Although an apparition of Church returns
and rescues Tex, Donut mortally wounds her. Just before she dies,
she informs Church that her AI, (various), is gone; meanwhile,
Caboose ominously insists that his real name is O'Malley. (Matt
Hullum), a
medic soon nicknamed "Doc", arrives
three months later, intending to help both armies because of a lack
of resources. However, both teams become annoyed and reject him.
Tex returns as a ghost to confirm that her former AI, O'Malley, now
possesses Caboose. When she and Church enter Caboose's mind to
evict O'Malley, the AI flees to control Doc. Later, the Blues
capture Donut and force Sarge to build robot bodies for Church and
Tex in exchange for his return. During a standoff, Tucker concludes
that one Command secretly controls both teams through a common
contact named (Burnie Burns). O'Malley appears, kidnaps Lopez, and
escapes through a teleporter. The Red and Blue Teams join forces to
pursue O'Malley. However, the teleporter malfunctions, and the
teams become scattered outside Blood Gulch.
The teams regroup and confront O'Malley, but a bomb in Church's
robot body detonates. Suddenly, everyone except for Church wakes up
in a wasteland. The soldiers jump to the conclusion that they have
been sent into the future, and Church into the past. It is revealed
later in the series that although Church was indeed sent back in
time due to an apparent malfunction in Wyoming's time-altering
ability, the rest of the group stayed in the present, although it
remains a mystery how they were rescued from the explosion. In the
"future", the Reds and Blues battle O'Malley at his new fortress
and meet (Nathan Zellner), a sentient time bomb. In the past,
Church waits one thousand years until , a computer that he meets,
can teleport him back to Blood Gulch. There, he attempts to prevent
the problems previously faced, but realizes that his own actions
cause these issues, and allows himself to be blown into the future
with everyone else. Unknown to the Blues, the Reds leave during a
battle with O'Malley and his robot army and arrive back at Blood
Gulch. An unknown being destroys O'Malley's army and confronts
O'Malley. As the Red Team re-explores Blood Gulch, the creature,
named the (Nathan Zellner), forces Tucker, Andy, and Caboose to
join his sacred quest. During the quest, kills the Alien and flees.
With help from (Sean Duggan) and his AI, (Mark Bellman), Tex
pursues Wyoming to discover O'Malley's current host, but Wyoming
escapes through a teleporter built by his AI, revealed to be Gary.
Meanwhile, Church returns to Blood Gulch and accidentally contacts
(Burnie Burns), a supposed descendant of Vic who informs Church
about past events. After the quest, Blue team returns to Blood
Gulch, and Tucker becomes ill; Church calls Doc, whom O'Malley
still controls, for help. Doc diagnoses Tucker with
male pregnancy; Andy explains that the Alien
had impregnated Tucker, who gives birth to an alien child, (Jason
Saldaña), off-screen. O'Malley leaves Doc after Sarge contacts
Command for reinforcements, and a ship crashes into the gulch, on
top of Donut, who falls into an underground cave.
Grif's sibling, (Rebecca Frasier), emerges from the ship and
reveals that she is assigned to the Blue Team, which Grif
eventually allows her to join. In the cavern, the Reds find Donut
alive, and find an underground computer spying on Blood Gulch.
Meanwhile, the Blues move Sheila's AI to the crashed ship and deal
with Junior. Tex returns, and Vic urges the Blues to attack Red
Base via the caves; instead, they split: Doc, Junior, and Sister
find Lopez, who had returned to the gulch with O'Malley, in the
caves; Church, Tucker and Tex attack the Red Base, but Wyoming and
Gary, now controlling the Blues' tank, ambush them. Tucker thwarts
Wyoming's attack and kills him. The villains intend to exploit the
alien race through Junior, the supposed ruler of the aliens.
Realizing an opportunity to win the war by enslaving the aliens,
Tex coaxes O'Malley into infecting her, and tries to flee on the
ship with Wyoming's helmet and Junior. However, the Reds place Andy
on board, and an explosion is seen. The survivors return to their
bases and repeat dialogue from the first episodes, thus concluding
The Blood Gulch Chronicles.
After Agent Washington (Shannon McCormick), also known as "Recovery
One", retrieves Delta, he encounters twin freelancers, South Dakota
and North Dakota. Although ordered to kill South Dakota, he spares
her to enlist her help in defeating an unknown enemy targeting the
remaining freelancers. South betrays Washington and convinces her
attacker to steal his enhancements, giving her time to flee.
Washington's commander instructs South to return to the base, but
she refuses and leaves. After Tex's ship crashes in an outpost
named Valhalla, apparently killing Tex, O'Malley infects the local
soldiers, leading them to kill each other. The unknown enemy, who
identifies himself as the Meta, shows up and captures O'Malley and
takes Tex's cloaking ability from her armor. Washington, who has
survived, tracks down Caboose and Church, who have experience with
O'Malley, while the Meta manipulates communications to order the
Reds to attack them. Attacking Agent South, The Meta escapes when
Washington, Caboose, and Church intervene, and Washington kills
South. The Reds interrupt a second confrontation with the Meta,
allowing the Meta to recover, attack, and escape. To help Caboose,
rendered unconscious off-screen, Church enters his mind and finds a
message left by Delta. Based on the message, Washington directs
them to visit Command; the Meta sneaks inside with them. Inside,
Washington and Church find Washington's former AI partner, Epsilon,
and Washington deems Church to be the remnants of the Alpha AI. The
base alarm triggers, and Recovery agents attack the team.
Washington orders the Reds and Caboose to escape with Epsilon and
turn the AI in while he and Church remain to detonate an
electromagnetic pulse (EMP), rendering
the Meta's stolen abilities and AI useless, in turn weakening him
considerably. Initially defiant, Church ultimately stays as his
ghost-like apparition, while the others take his body. The Meta
pursues and shoots Washington, demanding to see Alpha as promised.
Church occupies the Meta long enough for Washington to activate the
EMP. Caboose successfully escapes with Epsilon, but Church's and
Washington's fate is left unstated. Narrating the epilogue of
Reconstruction, the Director of Project Freelancer reveals
himself as the real Leonard Church, stating that the Alpha (Private
Church) is based on his mind and memories.
After the Reds settle into a new base, Sarge attempts to improve
his new Warthog and eventually calls Lopez for help after getting
the base's power online, while Caboose works on a secret project at
his own base. Donut arrives at Red base, collapsing from thirst
before telling Grif that "he needs help... it's under the sand...
find him!" Grif decides that it sounds too bothersome and dismisses
it. Not long after, in
Recreation, Donut awakes, but
passes out again at Blue Base, telling Caboose that Tucker is in
trouble. After calling Washington, who is still alive but
imprisoned and unable to help, Caboose reveals he is trying to
build a new friend, and Donut offers to lend Sarge's secret
facility to Caboose. After sneaking in, Epsilon activates and
explains to Caboose that he must go to the place Donut was at. The
Reds, upon discovering Caboose, decide to aid him for their own
reasons. Sarge and Grif go with him to aid his mission, while
Simmons, Lopez and Donut remain behind. Upon arriving at a dig site
they run afoul of the local soldiers and encounter Tucker. In
Tucker's bunker, Caboose finds a mysterious, highly powerful
robotic drone which he uploads Epsilon into. The memories act as a
back-up of Alpha, who acts and sounds like Church, although with no
recollection of any of the events that have happened throughout the
series. While fleeing from an unknown group of human soldiers,
Sarge, Grif, Caboose, Tucker and Epsilon-Church are ambushed by an
alien taskforce. Meanwhile, the new Chairman of Project Freelancer
tells Washington that he can be released if he can find Epsilon,
the only loose-end in Washington's attack on Command. Concurrent to
these events, Simmons, Donut and Lopez come under attack from the
Meta, who is once again running rampant for unknown reasons.
Washington arrives as the Reds in Valhalla attempt to escape,
dispatching Lopez and Donut while demanding Epsilon.
Characters
Red vs. Blue features characters whose personalities are
skewed in different ways and to varying degrees. Character
interaction and dialogue, rather than action, drive the story. The
series has centered on eight main characters, four per team. Other
characters, both team-affiliated and unaffiliated, human and
non-human, have played significant roles throughout the
story.
Main characters
- Dexter Grif (Geoff Ramsey) - An unlucky draftee who
displays disinterest in fighting and is habitually lazy and
irresponsible. These characteristics earn him the disrespect and
ridicule of both and .
- Franklin Delano
Donut (Dan Godwin) - An
eager rookie who joins the Red Team in . He tends to annoy his
teammates with his naïveté, garrulousness, and cheerfulness and
becomes more effeminate as the series
progresses.
- Leonard L.
Church (Burnie Burns) - Cynical de facto
leader of the Blue Team, and is found to be what is left of the
Alpha AI. Often shouldering the responsibility of actually solving
the various crises that the Blood Gulch teams encounter, he often
ends up taking their brunt, leaving him increasingly disillusioned
and antisocial. His serious, reasoned approach conflicts with the
personality of Lavernius .
- Lavernius Tucker (Jason
Saldaña) - The longest serving blue soldier. Snide, averse
to work and battle, and obsessed with women. Later becomes pregnant from an encounter with an alien and
following this, becomes more responsible and knowledgeable, though
he retains his womanising traits.
- Michael
J. Caboose (Joel Heyman) - The
Blue Team's new rookie. Although physically strong, he exhibits
ever-increasing degrees of stupidity and childishness throughout
the series, to a point of a virtual divorce from reality.
- Allison "Tex"
(Kathleen Zuelch) - An elite soldier in Project Freelancer
and Church's former girlfriend. She is hired by Blue Command to
join the team as a mercenary in episode
10. She is able to eliminate entire teams of soldiers by herself,
and is described as "the most lethal soldier in Blood Gulch".
Significant supporting characters
- : A robot built by Sarge that, due to a damaged speech unit,
can only speak poor Spanish. After
the explosion that propels the cast into the future, only its head
remains, until given a new body in Reconstruction.
- : The Artificial Intelligence inside the Blue Team's tank for
most of the series, until it is transferred into a ship, which
crash lands prior to Reconstruction.
- : A medic who exhibits extreme pacifism.
- : Also known as Omega, it is an evil, megalomaniacal AI
fragment originally implanted in Tex during a military experiment
as part of Project Freelancer.
- : A foul-mouthed bomb originally built by Tex to destroy
O'Malley, capable of translating the Alien's language and
Spanish.
- : A creature who leads Tucker and Caboose on a "sacred quest".
Killed by Wyoming.
- : A computer terminal who explains The Great Prophecy and tells
Church about the Great Destroyer; later revealed to be Wyoming's
partner AI, Gamma.
- : A Freelancer hired by O'Malley to kill Tucker. Wyoming was
part of Project Freelancer alongside Tex and was given his own AI
fragment. This AI fragment is designated Gamma, but is known as
Gary throughout much of the series.
- : A sardonic, unhelpful communications officer for both Red and
Blue armies in Blood Gulch.
- : Tucker's alien baby, conceived parasitically by the Alien and
Tucker.
- : The Blue team's former leader, later resurrected from the
dead, and killed again shortly after.
- : Grif's color-blind sister, who was sent to aid the Blues
during the events of the Blood Gulch Chronicles, and remains in
Blood Gulch during Reconstruction, later allegedly killed by Lopez
in Relocated.
- : A former Freelancer who worked as a Recovery Agent for
Project Freelancer. He was tasked with tracking down AIs and later
the Meta as well. He was at a UNSC Maximum Security Detention
Facility for a while, but he just cut a deal with the chairman of
the oversight committee concerning the AI epsilon in return for his
freedom.
- : A Freelancer who teamed-up with and later betrayed Washington
in Recovery One. She is later killed by him in
Reconstruction.
- : The former Freelancer Agent Maine, who hunts down other
Freelancers and their AI fragments. He is nearly mute except for
growls and the voices of the AI fragments he has captured.
- : The director (Dr. Leonard Church) of Project Freelancer, the
organization responsible for the Red vs. Blue combat simulations
and the implantation of AI fragments into Freelancer agents.
Revealed to be the origination of the Alpha AI.
- C.T.: A character in the Recreation series who
is looking for a mysterious alien weapon at a desert base.
Development history
Red vs. Blue emerged from
Burnie
Burns's voiceover-enhanced gameplay videos that he created for
a website called drunkgamers.com, which was run by
Geoff Fink (later Geoff Ramsey) and
Gustavo Sorola. Having played
Halo:
Combat Evolved extensively, the
drunkgamers crew
discussed one day whether the Warthog, an automobile in the game,
looks like a
puma. This discussion,
re-created in , was "the spark for the whole series". Seeing
potential for a full story, Burns created a , but it was largely
ignored, and, for unrelated reasons,
drunkgamers soon
closed. Four months later,
Computer Gaming World contacted
Ramsey for permission to include a different
drunkgamers
video in a CD to be distributed with the magazine. Ramsey granted
permission, but he and Burns felt that they needed a website to
take advantage of the exposure from
Computer Gaming World.
They therefore resurrected
Red vs. Blue and re-released
the trailer to coincide with the
Computer Gaming World
issue. The was released on April 1, 2003.
Rooster Teeth was initially unaware of the broader
machinima movement. In 2004, Co-producer
Matt Hullum stated in an interview with
GameSpy, "When we first started
Red vs. Blue we thought we were completely original. We
never imagined that there were other people out there using video
games to make movies, much less that it was a new art form with a
hard to pronounce name and an official organization."
The nature of
Red vs. Blue was different from Burns's
initial expectation. A partial character introduction released
between the original trailer and the first episode featured
extensive action and violence, set to
Limp
Bizkit's song "
Break Stuff".
However, as work continued, the focus shifted to
situation comedy rather than the heavy
action initially implied. Although the series parodies video games,
Ramsey noted, "We try not to make it too much of an
inside joke. And I think we use more bureaucracy and
military humor than anything else, which everybody working in an
office can identify with." Rooster Teeth has stated that
Red
vs. Blue was influenced by
Homestar Runner,
Penny Arcade, and possibly
Mystery Science Theater
3000.
Rooster Teeth initially envisioned
Red vs. Blue to be
short, but the series grew beyond their expectations. Burns and
Ramsey had preconceived a list of jokes for which they allocated
six to eight episodes. By , however, they realized that the series
had fleshed out more than expected; they had covered only about one
third of their original list. Later in , Burns estimated a series
of 22 episodes; however, driven by the series' popularity, he
realized that there was more potential story than could be covered
in that length, and was able to conceive an extension of the season
1 plot. The whole production team eventually quit their jobs and
began to work full-time on the series; to generate revenue they
created an online store to sell
T-shirts.
On June 16, 2006, Burns announced a five-part mini-series,
Red vs. Blue: Out of
Mind, which chronicles the adventures of the
mercenary Tex after her disappearance in . The
mini-series premiered exclusively on the
Xbox Live Marketplace, but Rooster
Teeth later made it available on their official site.
The original series,
The Blood Gulch Chronicles, ended on
June 28, 2007, with the release of episode 100. On April 4, 2008,
Burns announced a new series,
Red vs. Blue:
Reconstruction, the group's first
Halo 3 series.
Several voice actors returned in
Reconstruction, which ran
from April 5 to October 30, 2008. Rooster Teeth announced plans for
new
Red vs. Blue series, each separated by a few weeks'
break. The first mini-series,
Relocated, ran from February
9 to March 9, 2009. A second series,
Recreation, began on June 15,
2009 and ended on October 26, 2009.
During a the podcast Late Nite Jenga Jam, Burnie Burns unofficially
confirmed that the title of the eighth Red vs. Blue series was "Red
vs. Blue: Resolution".
Production
A
Red vs. Blue scene filmed
using
Halo 2
The writing process for the series has changed over time. Early in
season 1, Burns wrote the episode scripts from week to week, with
minimal planning in advance; major plot events were conceived
shortly before they were filmed. For the second season, Matt Hullum
became a main writer. A rough plot outline is now written before a
season begins, although the actual content of an individual episode
is still decided on a more short-term basis. Because
Red vs.
Blue is loosely based on the
Halo universe, Rooster
Teeth encountered some difficulties when trying to synchronize
events in the series with the release of
Halo 2.
Except for a few scenes created with the
Marathon Trilogy
and the PC version of
Halo,
Red vs. Blue is
mostly filmed with interconnected Xbox consoles. As the series
title suggests, the videos are largely set in the
Halo map
Blood Gulch and its
Halo 2 counterpart, Coagulation.
However, some episodes have been filmed on other maps, including
Sidewinder and Hang 'Em High from
Halo and Zanzibar and
Waterworks from
Halo 2. One special video used the public
Beta of
Halo 3 as a
special introduction video. Within a multiplayer game session of
any of the games used for filming, the people controlling the
avatars "puppet" their
characters, moving them around, firing weapons, and performing
other actions as dictated by the script, and in synchronization
with the episode's dialogue, which is recorded ahead of time.
The "
cameraman" is simply another player,
whose first-person perspective is recorded raw to a computer. To
work around in-game limitations,
bugs
and
post-production techniques are
exploited to achieve desired visual effects. In particular,
Adobe Premiere Pro is used to
edit the audio and video together, impose
letterboxing to hide the camera player's
head-up display, add the titles and
fade-to-black screens, and create some visual effects that cannot
be accomplished in-game.
Trocadero provides the music for
Red vs. Blue, which did not feature any originally.
According to a journal entry on Rooster Teeth's official site, Nico
Audy-Rowland, Trocadero's bandleader, was introduced to the series
and enjoyed it enough to submit a song about it. Burns liked the
piece and requested more; he stated in the season 1 DVD audio
commentary tracks that the music added a "whole new element to the
series". To create other sound effects, Burns used
Foley artistry, in some cases to replace
cinematically awkward counterparts from the game engine.
Reception
Red vs. Blue attracted interest immediately; the first
episode had 20,000 downloads within a day. Shortly after episode 2,
Bungie Studios contacted Rooster Teeth. Although the crew had
feared that any contact would be to force an end to the project,
Bungie enjoyed the videos and was supportive; one staff member
called the production "kind of brilliant". A deal was arranged to
ensure that the series could continue to use Bungie's game
properties without license fees.
Red vs. Blue continued to
attract more attention, and, by April 2004, Kevin J. Delaney of
The Wall Street
Journal estimated that weekly viewership was between
650,000 and 1,000,000. In a 2006 interview,
Strange Company founder Hugh Hancock called
the series probably "the most successful machinima productions "
and estimated that it was generating almost
US$200,000 annually.
Red vs.
Blue content was also included with a premium "Legendary"
edition of
Halo 3.
Red vs. Blue was widely acclaimed within the machinima
industry. The first season won awards for Best Picture, Best
Independent Machinima Film, and Best Writing at the Academy of
Machinima Arts & Sciences'
2003 Machinima Film Festival.
Two years later, at the
2005 festival, the won an award
for Best Independent Machinima and was nominated for five others.
At the 2006 Machinima Festival, the series was nominated for awards
in voice acting and writing, but won neither.
Among film critics, the response was generally positive. Darren
Waters of
BBC News Online called
Red vs. Blue
"riotously funny" and "reminiscent of the anarchic energy of
South Park". Reviewing the three
season DVDs for
Cinema Strikes Back, Charlie Prince wrote,
"
Red vs. Blue is hysterical in large part because all the
characters are morons, and so the seemingly intense conflict with
the opposing base doesn't exactly work the way you'd think it
would." Leggat described the series as "[p]art locker-room humor,
part Beckett-like
absurdist tragicomedy, part wicked vivisection of game
culture and sci-fi action films and games". Ed Halter of
The Village Voice
dismissed the humor as shallow and described the first season as
"
Clerks-meets-
Star Wars". Leggat defended the humor,
arguing, "The literary analog is absurdist drama."
Another common criticism of
Red vs. Blue was that its
season 3 plot was too far-fetched and out-of-character. Charlie
Prince wrote, "By the third season, however, the
Red vs.
Blue idea seems to be running out of steam.... It's not funny
so much as just odd." Writing for the
Honolulu
Star-Bulletin, Wilma Jandoc agreed that the first part of
"season 3... throws the teams into a ridiculous situation and has
limited member interactions, leading to a lack of witty dialogue".
In an
about.com review of the
season 4 DVD, writer Eric Qualls thought that season 3 was "a
little too long, and too complicated, and the jokes were a bit too
far apart". Nevertheless, both Prince and Jandoc were optimistic
that the series would improve, and Qualls stated that the fourth
season had "returned to the series' roots" as "some of the funniest
stuff you’ll ever see".
Rooster Teeth Productions has created special
Red vs. Blue
videos for various events. For example, Microsoft has commissioned
Red vs. Blue videos for Xbox demo kiosks found in game
stores and for a developer conference.
Barenaked Ladies has also commissioned
videos for their concerts. Other videos have been specifically
created for gaming magazines, including
Electronic Gaming Monthly and
Computer Gaming
World;
gaming
conventions, including
E3 and the
Penny Arcade Expo; and the
Sundance Film Festival.
Red vs. Blue has also received praise from soldiers
stationed in the
Middle East. An August
2005 blog entry by Kimi Matsuzaki of
1UP.com
displays photographs of soldiers holding various weapons, as well
as copies of the first and second season
Red vs. Blue
DVDs.
Geoff Ramsey later stated in an interview,
"We get a lot of merchandise and DVDs out to Iraq
and get a
lot of great e-mails back."
The notability and impact of
Red vs. Blue extends to video
games outside the
Halo series. The developers of the
Xbox 360 video game
Gears of War, Epic Games, made a reference
to a
Red vs. Blue gag through an in-game achievement
called, "Is it a spider?"; the award is earned for tagging
opponents with grenades. Another reference to the series appears on
Bungie's website. On a player’s
Halo
3 profile screen the description of a kill or death with a
flag is “Right next to the headlight fluid”. In
Halo 3
itself, the second campaign scenario features a
Red vs.
Blue skit, wherein two cast members voice over a soldier
attempting to bypass a locked door.
Impact on machinima
Red vs. Blue is widely credited with attracting public
attention to machinima. Although examples had existed since the
1990s, Clive Thompson credited
Red vs. Blue as "the first
to break out of the underground". Tavares, Gil, and Roque called it
machinima's "first big success", and
Paul
Marino noted that "the series proved so popular that it not
only transcended the typical gamer, it also claimed fans outside
the gaming world". In 2005, Thompson wrote that "Microsoft has been
so strangely solicitous that when it was developing the sequel to
Halo last year, the designers actually inserted a special command—a
joystick button that makes a soldier lower his weapon—designed
solely to make it easier for Rooster Teeth to do dialogue". The
series has inspired other machinima productions, including
The Codex.
In machinima,
Red vs. Blue has been mentioned as the most
successful example of the trend toward serial distribution.
According to
Hugh Hancock, this format
allows for gradual improvement as a result of viewer feedback, and
gives viewers a reason to return for future videos. Hancock argues
that this model was necessary for
Red vs. Blue s success:
"Sunday night is Red vs. Blue night, just as (in the UK) Thursday
used to be Buffy. Had RvB released their films as single downloads
of an hour and a half, they'd have had nowhere near the success
they currently enjoy."
Distribution
Red vs. Blue video resolutions
| Public |
Sponsor |
DVD |
| Seasons 1–4 |
320×240
or
360×240 |
640×480
or
720×480 |
640×480 |
| Out of Mind and after |
| 320×180 |
640×360 |
720×480 |
Videos are typically available in
QuickTime (QT) and
Windows Media Video (WMV) formats. All
released episodes of the latest season are freely available from
the official site. A few episodes from the previous seasons are
available from a rolling archive; each week, the videos are rotated
to the next set. This setup is intended to help to control
bandwidth costs; as of September 2005, the official Rooster Teeth
website was serving 400
terabytes of
data monthly.
However, nearly all freely released episodes
of Red vs. Blue are also available from websites such as
Machinima.com, Archive.org
, FilePlanet, and Google Video. From the
Xbox Live Marketplace,
Out of
Mind is available as a free download, and some
Red vs.
Blue episodes can be purchased for 80
Microsoft Points each.
Members of the official website can gain sponsor status for a fee
of US$10 every six months. Sponsors can access videos a few days
before the general public release, download higher-resolution
versions of the episodes, and access special content released only
to sponsors. For example, during
season 5, Rooster Teeth began to
release directors' commentary to sponsors for download.
Additionally, while the public archive is limited to rotating sets
of videos, sponsors can access content from previous seasons at any
time.
Episodes are released in different
resolutions; higher resolutions are
reserved for sponsors. Beginning with the
Red vs. Blue: Out of
Mind mini-series, Rooster Teeth began to film and edit video
in
720p high-definition, and to release
episodes in
widescreen format, instead of
hiding the game HUD through the letterboxing seen in
full-screen releases. On the January 8, 2007,
release of episode 87,
Matt Hullum
announced that videos would be viewable in
Macromedia Flash format. He stated that the
change allowed Rooster Teeth to release public videos in a higher
resolution "while keeping the file size low", and that the entire
video archive would be updated. Code to embed the Flash video on
other websites was also distributed. In a site journal entry, Burns
clarified that downloadable versions would continue to be released,
but after their Flash counterparts.
Although it is distributed serially over the Internet,
Red vs.
Blue is also one of the first commercially released products
made using machinima, as opposed to a product merely containing
machinima. DVDs of the seven completed seasons are sold through
Rooster Teeth's official website, as well as at most
EB Games,
GameStop and
Hot Topic stores in the United States. For
the DVDs, the episodes of the main storyline are edited together to
play continuously as a full-length film. Because the episodes as
individually released often contain dialogue that continues into or
past the fade to black at the end of the video, Rooster Teeth
either removes that dialogue entirely or films extra footage to
replace the original fade to black. On April 1, 2008, Rooster Teeth
released a box set of all five seasons, including a DVD of new
bonus content.
A third version of the season is further edited for time for
showing at the Lincoln Center and at other film festivals. In a
2005 interview, Burns noted that the first season, normally
75 minutes in length, was cut to 55 minutes for these
venues, with an entire episode omitted. Burns stated in a website
news post that the 135-minute season 3 DVD version had to be
shortened to "a watchable-in-a-theater runtime of
100 minutes".
Notes
- O'Malley is voiced by the actor responsible for whichever
character he is possessing at the time.
- Six
alternate endings were released on the season 5 DVD; two were
available on the website since the release of
- Red vs. Blue: Recovery One Part One commentary.
- Burns, et al. 2005, Character profiles, .
- ;
- http://rvb.roosterteeth.com/info/?id=2
- http://www.jengajam.net/2009/10/burnie-vs-lfto.html
- Burns, et al. 2003, Audio Commentary; Delaney.
- ;
- ;
- ;
- Matsuzaki.
- ;
- Totilo.
- .
References
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