Australian Gamer Feature :: Red vs Blue Interview

australiangamer.com | gamersevents.com | vurp.com

Red vs Blue Interview

AJ interviews Gus and Jason from Roosterteeth (Red vs Blue, Strangerhood) at the Machinima Festival at the ACMI Cinemas in Melbourne

INTRODUCTION : PAGE 1 : PAGE 2 : PAGE 3

view profile

AJ: You've also just finished season one of the Stranger Hood. I noticed that kinda wrapped up fairly tidily at the end ... are there no plans for a second season?

Jason: I think it's sorta still up in the air at this point. It took us a really long time to do it, so we realised that with all the other stuff that we're doing too, that if we do it again, it's probably gonna take us long..er. Even if it takes half as long, it's still gonna take nine months to make it. We just have to decide if we have, if we can handle the workload. But we'll probably make a second season of it.

AJ: That would be good. You did FEAR, which I haven't watched much of, but that was a short lived thing. Was that a paid advertisement, basically?

Gus: Viviendi contacted us and they wanted us to make a short series using FEAR. So we took a look at the game, and, you know, there's always jokes that we have but we can't necessarily tell using Red Vs Blue, so we thought it would be a good outlet for some of the stuff that we wanted to do but we couldn't necessarily do up until then. So, you know, they just asked if we could make something short and we said sure, we could do like five episodes. They went ahead and put one of the episodes on the collector's edition DVD for the game, which was really cool. It was great, they sent us a few copies of the game that says 'Rooster Teeth machinma inside'.

AJ: That's cool.

Jason: They paid us a hundred billion dollars, correct?

Gus: A hundred trillion...

AJ: But that's in Indonesian rupiah, isn't it?

Gus: Heh heh, lira...

AJ: You guys have been credited as a really big driving force behind the machinima art, I guess you'd call it. How does it feel to know that you've had such a big impact, and we have festivals and stuff like that now which are around this thing that you guys were a really big part of.

Jason: I don't think about it that often, I only think about it when someone asks us in an interview. But, I mean, normally we're not sitting around the office thinking 'yeah'!

Gus: We're geniuses!

AJ: Cos when you guys started, you didn't really even know there was such a thing, did ya?

Jason: No...I mean, it's cool but...on a daily basis, we're just there working.

AJ: Do you think machinima is a stupid word?

Jason: Yeah, it's horrible.

Gus: We prefer the term 'render vision'. You can help us change it. We'll topple the machinima...

Jason: (To Gus) Do you hate it?

Gus: It's hard to say. The problem with it is that when someone sees it for the first time, they don't want to read it. Like your mind just like, blanks out.

Jason: People always add like, three syllables to it. They don't know how to say it. I think it sounds stupid.

AJ: You guys are like a powerhouse ... you should just change it!

Gus: Heh heh heh!

Jason: (laughs)

AJ: Render vision from now on, that's it!

AJ: Another series done with Halo, which actually is kinda a weird spin off from you guys, is Sponsors Vs Freeloaders ... how did you feel about that kinda cropping up from nowhere?

Gus: It was strange. Right now we have a pretty robust community website that's kind of like MySpace but good. But before we had that site, we had a normal PHP BB forums, and we would always try to dissuade people from posting their videos in our forum cos they would get negative feedback and blame it on us and it was a whole mess. When this one came up, it was kind of about us in a weird way... We've been watching it with interest more than some other shows, but I don't know where I'm going with this...it's bizarre. There's a series - a fan series, based on a fan movie, based on a video game. Now if someone made video game based on Sponsors Vs Freeloaders...

AJ: My head would explode.

Gus: Yeah, the universe would explode.

Jason: I haven't ever watched it. I don't watch most of this stuff, just because... Since we have a community based website and we talk to a lot of the people on there...I just don't really want to get into a position with a lot of them where I watch something and then I have to tell them if it's good or bad, and I don't want to lie to them and say something's bad, so I just try not to get two wrapped up in that stuff.

Gus: Plus we try not to watch too many of them anyways because everybody accuse us of stealing story ideas.

Jason: People do that all the time...

Gus: Like we ripped them off so we just try to avoid watching as many as possible.

Jason: This one guy said we ripped him about some line that Sarge has...he said we ripped off...what was it? Some script or something, and so we were like "what? You're full of shit." So we went and found it and he had written something, I forget what it was called, but his characters were named Sarge...I was like, we ripped YOU off?!?

Gus: But there also one series, back when we made the first intro that's not on the website anymore, it's like set to that Limp Bizkit song, it had like, names of the characters and they fast zoomed between people. That was like, one of the first videos we put up in April 2003. I think it was the Summer of 2004, we used that again in another episode, like episode 33 I think, like that fast zoom. And another series had just used it like their episode 3 that had just come out a few weeks before, and they were saying we were ripping them off, we were ripping off their fast camera movement.

AJ: Cos that's never been done before!

Gus: They didn't realise that we did it last year!

AJ: With the Sponsors Vs Freeloaders, would it be really ironic if they started making money from the series?

Gus: Ironic...or lawsuitable?

AJ: I know it's kinda hard to claim IP on something which is basically a rip off of a game itself, but do you feel that you own sort of that IP to do with making a movie out of Halo?

Gus: I think it would be really super hypocritical of us to feel like that, and so, I don't think any of us...

Jason: Not at all. If somebody else made money off something like that, I wouldn't care at all. We used somebody else's creation to find a way to make money with it.

Gus: We'd be jerks if we got mad about that!

AJ: You guys are here as part of the 'Render Vision' film festival...

Jason: (laughs)

Gus: (laughs)

AJ: How important is it to you guys to support festivals like this around the globe? I know you go to quite a few of them. Is it a big part of what you do? is it an important thing?

Gus: I think it's important for, if for no other reason, like on a selfish level, just to show more people Red Vs Blue and sell more DVDs.

Jason: (laughs)

Gus: But it's also good cos we get to see other works, like Paul Merino is here, he'll be showing a reel of other stuff that other people are doing...I think we could use a few new ideas to rip off.

AJ: Do you get a kick out of watching other people's work and going "wow, that's cool"?

Gus: Well, lots of time, we're real careful about it. We try not to watch too much stuff that's done, like for example, in Halo, because then we get accused of ripping people off. But at the same time, we like to see what games other people are using, what kind of ideas they're trying to express in the game. I've seen some stuff that's really, really crazy, I can't believe its machinima.

AJ: In any series like this one, the characters either get rescued and somehow leave the planet which obviously isn't gonna happen cos it doesn't exist in Halo, or they all get killed off...Do you spend much time taking the piss out of each other trying to threaten to kill off each other's characters?

Gus: (laughs)

Jason: We do it all the time, we're like, if we're mad at one of us who doesn't show up at work one day or something, we're like "oh fuck him! We'll write the character out!"

AJ: Cos it'd be really easy to do, wouldn't it!

Jason: Yeah!

Gus: Well it wouldn't be that easy, everyone comes back as a ghost!

Jason: Yeah, that's true.

Gus: No one ever stays dead very long.

AJ: The Simmons episode that was done when everyone was away that day is probably one of my personal favourites. I know it's labeled as 'the greatest episode ever'.

Gus: Burnie hates it. Cos I took the title 'the greatest episode ever'. He won't let me do another one.

Jason: I want you to do another one.

Gus: I called my friend over who lived across the street. We just went do to a convenience store and bought a bunch of glue and construction paper.

AJ: So there's not another one of those coming up any time soon?

Gus: I want to, I think I will.

Jason: All of season five is gonna be like that.

AJ: I think somehow your downloads might decrease a little.

AJ: One really big question I've left till to last...Is Donut dead?

Gus: Hmm...Cliffhanger...We don't know. I don't think we're ready to say yet.

AJ: You can't give me an exclusive?

Jason: That's one of the big questions we left at the end of season four. I mean, I think it might even be a question among us. When I watched the end of season four, I had my own opinion what happened. To me, I don't think the ship's on Donut, personally. I don't care what Burnie thinks, Burnie wrote the episode, he can say whatever he wants. But I think Donut's on the other side of the ship.

AJ: So I guess we'll wait and see.

Jason: Yeah!