Red vs. Blue

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Red vs. Blue
Bungie Studios
  • 343 Industries
    • Written byVarious[a]
    Directed byVarious[b]
    Voices of
    Theme music composer
    Opening theme"Blood Gulch Blues"
    ComposerVarious[c]
    No. of seasons18 + 6 miniseries + 1 film
    No. of episodes338 + 26 from miniseries (list of episodes)
    Production
    Executive producers
    • Burnie Burns
    • Matt Hullum
    • Luis Medina
    • Geoff Ramsey
    ProducerVarious[d]
    Running time2–23 minutes
    Production companyRooster Teeth Productions
    Original release
    NetworkRooster Teeth
    ReleaseApril 1, 2003 (2003-04-01) –
    October 28, 2020 (2020-10-28)
    ReleaseMay 7, 2024 (2024-05-07) (film)

    Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is an American web series created by Burnie Burns with his production company Rooster Teeth. The show is based on the setting of the military science fiction first-person shooter series and media franchise Halo. It is distributed through Rooster Teeth's website, as well as on DVD, Blu-ray, and formerly on the El Rey Network and Netflix. The series initially centers on two opposite teams fighting in an ostensible civil war—shown to actually be a live fire exercise for elite soldiers—in the middle of Blood Gulch, a desolate box canyon, in a parody of first-person shooter video games, military life, and science fiction films. Initially intended to be a short series of six to eight episodes,[1] the project quickly and unexpectedly achieved significant popularity following its premiere on April 1, 2003. The series consists of eighteen seasons and five mini-series. Red vs. Blue was the second longest-running animated webseries of all time, behind Homestar Runner, until its conclusion in 2020. The series will conclude with the feature-length movie Red vs. Blue: Restoration, originally intended to be a nineteenth season prior to the shutdown of Rooster Teeth, which is set to be released on May 7, 2024.[2]

    Red vs. Blue emerged from

    followups on the Xbox
    consoles.

    The series has been generally well-received. Praised for its originality, the series has won four awards at film festivals held by the

    Graham Leggat, former director of communications for Lincoln Center's film society, described Red vs. Blue as "truly as sophisticated as Samuel Beckett".[3] Rooster Teeth has created episodes, some under commission from Microsoft, for special events. The voice actors from Red vs. Blue appear in cameos for Halo 3 and Halo 4. The series is also referenced in Halo: Reach and Halo Infinite
    .

    Overview

    The Red vs. Blue storyline so far spans eighteen full-length seasons and five mini-series. Rooster Teeth periodically releases self-referential public service announcements and holiday-themed videos, which are generally unrelated to the main storyline and not considered canon. In these videos, the members of both teams are actors who claim to be from Red vs. Blue.[citation needed]

    Although the visual background of Red vs. Blue was primarily taken from the

    United Nations Space Command.[citation needed
    ]

    During its first seventeen seasons, Red vs. Blue centered 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

    Simmons, one of the Red Team soldiers, each team's base exists only in response to the other team's base. It is later revealed that there is no actual civil war; both the Red and Blue armies are under the same command, Project Freelancer, and only exist as training simulations for Freelancer 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, with the exception of Sarge, the leader of Red Team.[citation needed
    ]

    The eighteenth season, referred to as Zero, centers on an elite team of special operations soldiers, known as Shatter Squad, as they try to stop another group of soldiers, known as Viper, from getting the keys to a powerful suit of armor known as the Ultimate Power. Unlike the original series, Zero instead parodies action movies. While certain character, vehicle, and weapon models are carried over from

    Unreal Engine 4 and uses assets from the Unreal Engine Marketplace that are unrelated to the Halo franchise, although there are moments that scenes are animated to mimic machinima limitations. While originally planned to be the focus of the series going forward, negative reception to the season led to the decision to end the series with the film Restoration.[citation needed
    ]

    Cast and characters

    During its original run, Red vs. Blue featured characters whose personalities are skewed in different ways and to varying degrees. Character interaction and dialogue, instead of action, would drive the story.[5] The original series centered on eleven main characters. Other characters, both team-affiliated and unaffiliated, human and non-human, have played significant roles throughout the story. Notable later additions to the cast include The Director and The Chairman, as well as the Freelancers, which are named after U.S. states. AIs are also important characters, and are named after Greek letters. As is a common habit in most forms of military, the soldiers usually refer to each other by their last names.

    Throughout the original series, the Red Team primarily consists of their hotheaded leader Super Colonel Sarge (Matt Hullum), his attentive second-in-command Captain Richard "Dick" Simmons (Gus Sorola), the lazy Captain Dexter Grif (Geoff Ramsey), the oblivious/effeminate Private Franklin Delano Donut (Dan Godwin), and their apathetic Spanish-speaking robot mechanic Lopez the Heavy (Burnie Burns).

    For the majority of the series, the Blue Team consisted of their sardonic defacto leader Private Leonard L. Church (Burns), the self-described ladies man Captain Lavernius Tucker (Jason Saldaña), the dimwitted Captain Michael J. Caboose (

    Kathleen Zuelch
    ). They were later joined by Private Kaikaina "Sister" Grif (Becca Frasier), Grif's promiscuous sister, in Season 5.

    However, Blue Team's roster (with the exception of Tucker and Caboose) became mixed with every passing season after the deaths of the original Church and Tex at the end of Reconstruction, being joined by Epsilon (Burns), who would go onto take Church's identity and Tex II (Zuelch) during Recreation and Revelation respectively until their deaths in Season 13 and Season 9. The team was later joined by the emotionally scarred Freelancer Agent Washington/"Wash" (Shannon McCormick) at the end of Revelation after first meeting the Reds and Blues during Reconstruction. Blue Team currently consists of Tucker, Caboose, Wash, and Sister, the latter of whom rejoined the team during The Shisno Paradox.

    Also part of the Reds and Blues are the somewhat incompetent Medical Officer Frank "Doc" DuFresne (Hullum), who first appeared in Season 2, and the impatient and competitive Freelancer Agent Carolina (Jen Brown), who first appeared in Season 9, both of whom are unaffiliated with a specific team and instead just act as members of both groups.[citation needed]

    Over the years, Red vs. Blue has attracted numerous notable guest stars, namely Ed Robertson, Elijah Wood, Christopher Sabat, The Zellner Brothers, Amber Benson, Dan Avidan, Arin Hanson, SungWon Cho, Ricco Fajardo, Anthony Padilla, and Ian Hecox.[citation needed]

    Episodes

    Main article: List of Red vs. Blue episodes
    SeasonStory arcEpisodesOriginally airedGame
    First airedLast aired
    Halo 2 Anniversary / Halo 3 / Halo 4
    14Anthology24May 8, 2016 (2016-05-08)October 16, 2016 (2016-10-16)Various[h]
    15The Shisno Trilogy21April 2, 2017 (2017-04-02)August 20, 2017 (2017-08-20)Halo / Halo 2 / Halo 3 / Halo 5
    16[i]15[6]April 15, 2018 (2018-04-15)July 22, 2018 (2018-07-22)Halo 2 / Halo 2 Anniversary / Halo 3 / Halo 5
    17[j]12March 9, 2019 (2019-03-09)May 25, 2019 (2019-05-25)Halo / Halo 2 / Halo 3 / Halo 4 / Halo 5
    18Zero8[7]November 9, 2020 (2020-11-09)December 28, 2020 (2020-12-28)N/A[k]
    FilmRestorationN/AMay 7, 2024Halo Infinite

    Production

    Development

    Burnie Burns had voiced over gameplay videos on drunkgamers.com before creating Red vs. Blue with Hullum, Ramsey, Sorola, and Saldaña.

    Red vs. Blue emerged from

    first episode proper was released on April 1, 2003.[9]

    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."[10]

    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

    Penny Arcade,[4] and possibly Mystery Science Theater 3000.[12]

    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

    season 1, 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,[15] 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;[16] to generate revenue they created an online store to sell T-shirts
    .

    On June 16, 2006, Burns announced a five-part mini-series,

    Xbox Live Marketplace,[17] but Rooster Teeth later made it available on their official site.[18]

    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,

    season 8.[24] On April 1, 2010, the premiere of Revelation attracted such a large audience that both roosterteeth.com and Blip.tv (who formerly hosted Rooster Teeth's videos) crashed.[25]

    On March 28, 2011, Rooster Teeth presented the first trailer for Season 9 of Red vs Blue which aired on June 14, 2011, during which time Miles Luna officially joined the company.[24] Season 9 acted as a semi-prequel, fleshing out the event surrounding Project Freelancer, one of the key elements of the plot in previous seasons, while continuing the events left off in Revelation.[26] Season 10, which continued Season 9's pattern of showing both stories simultaneously, began on May 28, 2012, and ended on November 5, 2012. The season concluded the Freelancer backstory while setting up the events of Season 11. The first RWBY trailer was shown following the conclusion of the season's credits.

    On September 7, 2012, Burnie Burns appeared on What's Trending and confirmed that there would be a Season 11, which premiered on June 14, 2013, and started the Chorus Trilogy.[27] The trilogy picked up where Season 10 left off and returned to a format similar to that of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, having no pre-rendered CGI. The season ended on November 11, 2013. On February 3, 2014, Miles Luna announced Season 12 on Rooster Teeth's website. The season premiered on April 28, 2014, and concluded on September 29, 2014. The final season of the Chorus Trilogy, Season 13, was announced on March 4, 2015, with a release date of April 1, 2015. The season brought back a handful of characters from the series, including Sharkface, the Counselor, Junior, and Sister, and ended with a cliffhanger on September 7, 2015.

    On April 1, 2016, a trailer for Season 14 was released, with its first episode airing on May 8, 2016. Breaking from the format of the previous seasons, Season 14 was instead an anthology season, featuring various backstories, such as the trilogy of episodes starring Locus and Felix, and/or non-canon "PSA-type" episodes, such as the third Sarge movie trailer. The season ended on October 16, 2016.

    On February 24, 2017, it was announced that Joe Nicolosi, writer and director of the Season 14 episode "The Brick Gulch Chronicles" would be writing and directing Season 15.[28] Its trailer was released on March 30, 2017, and the season itself premiered on April 2, 2017.

    Nicolosi returned for Season 16,

    Red vs. Blue: Singularity, which premiered on March 9, 2019.[30][31]

    On January 15, 2020, Season 18, Red vs. Blue: Zero, was confirmed to be in development with a brief 3-second clip being shown in a promo trailer for upcoming Rooster Teeth releases.[32] It was initially scheduled to premiere on October 19, 2020, but was delayed to November 9, 2020.[33] Director Torrian Crawford referred to the season as a “restart” for the series, as it follows a mostly new cast, has cleaner humor, and is more action-focused than previous iterations.[34]

    On July 7, 2023, at Rooster Teeth's annual convention RTX, it was announced that the series would return for a nineteenth and final season subtitled Restoration. Hullum was announced to return to direct while Burns, who had since left the company, was confirmed to return as the lead writer. The reveal trailer retcons the events of the Shisno Trilogy and Zero (seasons 15–18) as simulations created by Epsilon-Church.[35] On March 28, 2024, it was announced that the initial plan of an episodic release for the nineteenth season had changed due to the shutdown of Rooster Teeth and the season would instead be combined into a feature-length movie that is set to be released on May 7, 2024.[2]

    Writing

    The process by which the show is written has changed as the show progressed. In the first season, Burnie Burns would typically write an episode script on a Sunday afternoon before the episode was to be released on Friday. Scripts were written with minimal planning as the storyline grew beyond the 6 to 8 episodes originally expected. Church's death, as well as the revelation of Tex as a female character, both of which drove most of the season 1 plot, were conceived shortly before their respective episodes began production.

    In January 2005, Burnie Burns and Kathleen Zuelch were interviewed in an episode of

    G4. In response to a question regarding any drawbacks to using machinima techniques, Burns responded "There are drawbacks, like it's a very limited world".[36] PC games often allow for the addition and integration of new game assets, such as new levels and textures; console games are much more limited in this respect.[36] "But really what you end up doing is you end up writing around what's in that world, that limited world ... sometimes we sit around and we think 'what can we possibly do with stuff that's in the game?'".[36] As an example, the skull from the Oddball multiplayer mode of Halo was used for the flashback scene in episode 10, in which Tex beats Private Jimmy to death with his own skull.[36]

    After the first season, the writing process changed. Matt Hullum was added as a main writer in the next season, and plot events were planned much more in advance. Approximately 40 to 80 pages of rough plot and dialogue are now written out before production on a season begins. In describing the writing process, Burns has said that main plot points are assigned to occur at certain points in a season, and that they would begin writing each episode by asking how much they wanted to advance towards the next plot point.

    Audio

    Dialogue for an entire episode is typically recorded over one or two days and cut together for filming the day after. Until midway through season 3, audio for the voice actors living in

    New York State and Puerto Rico
    respectively.

    Music

    Nico Audy-Rowland and Jeff Williams

    Initially, the first several episodes of the series did not include any music. In May 2003, Nico Audy-Rowland, the bandleader of Trocadero, was introduced to Red vs. Blue and enjoyed the series enough to submit a song about it to Burns, who liked the piece and promptly requested more music for Red vs. Blue. Episode 8, "Don't Ph34r The Reaper",[37] was the first to include music. However, for the release of the season 1 DVD, music was retrofitted into earlier episodes, often during transitions. Trocadero's "Blood Gulch Blues", whose last few measures are now heard during each episode's title sequence, is used as background music for the character introductions on the Red vs. Blue season DVDs. According to Trocadero's website, the song's lyrics are intended to highlight episode 2's joke about the Warthog and the notion that there is as much bickering and fighting within each team as there is conflict between the two sides. In fact, "Blood Gulch Blues" never mentions Red vs. Blue. The song is from the band's debut full-length album Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue which was released in 2004. The band's style is alternative rock, taking influence from elements of blues, alternative rock, and western types of music. Trocadero continued to provide music for the show from their second and third albums, Ghosts That Linger and Flying by Wire.[27]

    Beginning with

    season eleven, Williams moved away from providing music for Red vs. Blue to work on Rooster Teeth's new series, RWBY. Trocadero returned as the sole-provider of Red vs. Blue's score for the first time since season seven, also providing a new theme song "Contact" effectively replacing "Blood Gulch Blues".[27] David Levy joined the music team alongside Trocadero in season 13[38]
    and has continued to write music for the show since.

    Recording

    Red vs. Blue is mostly recorded using a number of networked

    Marathon and Marathon 2: Durandal were also used in Season 3 for scenes that occur in the distant past; this has the effect of making the graphical quality of the series an indication of time's progression throughout the story. The first five seasons of Red vs. Blue were later reshot in high definition using the PC ports of Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2,[41]
    which have also been featured in later seasons whenever those games were required.

    In the interview on The Screen Savers, Burns described the use of machinima techniques to record the show thus: "It's like normal animation but instead of, y'know, sitting down, drawing everything by hand, we just use controllers."[36] During the earlier seasons, Ramsey developed a technique to handle the gamepad with his foot in case more than four characters were in the scene.[16]

    In scenes using the original Halo, a bug was exploited that made it so that by holding a pistol and looking down, the character would appear to be holding the pistol down but looking up, as if more relaxed. At the same time, changing the perspective the head would bob, giving the impression that the character was talking. The glitch also either made vertical movement limited or returned the character's appearance to normal, so characters would have to estimate movements, since they were always looking down.[40]

    Bungie eliminated the bug in Halo 2, so that the on-screen characters appear to look up or down correctly. To facilitate the production of machinima, Bungie implemented a new feature that made it possible to achieve the same effect as the original bug. In Halo 2, pressing down on the D-Pad of the Xbox controller makes the player character appear to hold a weapon in a neutral position, without aiming it at anyone, while looking straight ahead. This also allowed them to move the heads up and down to achieve a more dynamic appearance for some scenes.[42]

    In footage made using Halo, a weapon aiming reticle appears in the center of the screen. This reticle appears because, as with most machinima, the camera's view is from the perspective of a weapon-wielding player. The exception to this is footage recorded by killing the camera player's avatar. Footage made using Halo: Custom Edition allowed for a player to act as a free roaming camera, and thus contained no reticle. In Halo 2, a bug in the Oddball multiplayer mode allows the player to drop all weapons, causing the weapon reticle to disappear. This bug has been used in all Halo 2 footage from episode 46 onwards.[citation needed]

    To gain unique angles in the series, Rooster Teeth first used a tank in the game to emulate crane shots by standing the cameraman on the turret while it was raised. Later, they found it more practical to stand the cameraman on other characters in the game. This trick has also been used for other purposes, such as standing

    Donut on two characters to create the illusion that he could jump higher than is possible in the game.[43]

    For scenes which include the flag (CTF), only two colors could be used (Sarge's and early Donut's red, and Caboose's blue) as CTF is a team game and only red and blue colors could be used. When the flag used among different colored characters, it is only shown with a standard red or blue character, mixed with scenes with other characters behaving as if it is present.

    During recording, there was an issue with the Blue Team's deceased leader, Church. Church appears as a ghost for some parts of the show, and he needed to appear transparent to the viewer. To achieve this, all scenes with ghost-Church had to be recorded twice, once with Church in them and once without him. After the switch to Halo 2, Church's ghost form was portrayed using the "Poor Camo" Armor enhancement.

    Another difficulty when recording in Halo 2 was the enormous shadow over Red Base in the map Coagulation. This shadow had a detrimental effect on the appearance of the characters. To avoid this, late in Season 4 a glitch was discovered that allowed a character to appear lit even in a dark area. Burnie Burns stated in the Season 4 audio commentary that the glitch was something they kept noticing a lot while recording the episodes, and when they discovered how to replicate it they utilized it extensively. During the first five seasons, the videos were mostly recorded on the Halo map Blood Gulch and its Halo 2 counterpart, Coagulation, although later episodes have increasingly been recorded on other maps.

    Episodes that have been made with the games starting with

    green screen and the creation of entire areas for certain scenes.[44]

    Starting in season 8, action sequences have been made with dedicated animation that involve stunts not possible with the previous game engine. For this, they teamed up with animator Monty Oum, a fan of the series. Making the show more ambitious and reliant on computer animation led to extensive planning – fight choreography, storyboards, animatics – for episodes that take months to be completed, in contrast to machinima ones that are done in just a week.[39][40]

    Post-production

    episode 20
    and ornaments, presents, and lights in the Christmas 2004 video.

    As the camera player's view has a

    letterbox effect. Most machinima is made with computer games, which often have HUDs that can be easily disabled in one way or another. Console games
    such as Halo and Halo 2 are often more limited in this respect. In 2010, Rooster Teeth Productions released a remastered edition of The Blood Gulch Chronicles that removed the black bars and aiming reticle existent in previous versions of the series, which was done by re-shooting the first four seasons in the PC versions of Halo and Halo 2.

    Other media

    A book based on the series, titled Red vs. Blue: The Ultimate Fan Guide, was published November 17, 2015. Written by Eddy Rivas and Burnie Burns, it collects information about the series over its first twelve seasons and most of its thirteenth season.[45][46]

    Due to the popularity and success of Red vs. Blue, Rooster Teeth has created dozens of Red vs. Blue-themed merchandise available for sale on the website's store.

    t-shirts based on quotes from the show have also been created.[49]

    Reception

    Critical response

    Red vs. Blue attracted interest immediately; the first episode was featured on Slashdot, Penny Arcade, and Fark on the same day, and had 20,000 downloads within a day.[50] The following episodes wound up downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, forcing a change on the distribution to peer-to-peer file sharing to cut the increasing server costs.[51] Ramsey noted Red vs. Blue also "had a broader appeal than we anticipated", gathering a female following along with the expected demographic of young adult males.[12] Shortly after episode 2, Bungie 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;[9] one staff member called the production "kind of brilliant".[52] A deal was arranged to ensure that the series could continue to use Bungie's game properties[3] without license fees.[52] The relationship has continued with Bungie's successor in the Halo series, 343 Industries.[51] 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.[3] In a 2006 interview, Strange Company founder Hugh Hancock called the series probably "the most successful machinima productions [sic]" and estimated that it was generating almost US$200,000 annually.[53] Red vs. Blue content was also included with a premium "Legendary" edition of Halo 3.[54]

    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'

    third season won an award for Best Independent Machinima and was nominated for five others.[56] At the 2006 Machinima Festival, the series was nominated for awards in voice acting and writing, but won neither.[57]

    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

    Clerks-meets-Star Wars".[60] Leggat defended the humor, arguing, "The literary analog is absurdist drama."[3] It has also been critiqued by academic D. Bruno Starrs as an anti-war film.[61]

    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."

    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".[62] 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".[62] The Globe and Mail reviewer Chad Sapieha complained that season 3 "seemed as though they were trying to come up with more physical gags rather than focusing on the dialogue" before the writing picked up in the following seasons.[63]

    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.

    Penny Arcade Expo; and the Sundance Film Festival
    .

    Red vs. Blue has also received praise from soldiers stationed in the

    1UP.com displays photographs of soldiers holding various weapons, as well as copies of the first and second season Red vs. Blue DVDs.[66] 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."[12]

    Red vs. Blue has been acknowledged by Xbox Live through

    Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare
    , there is an achievement called "Chupathingy," when killing a Chupacabra.

    Impact on machinima

    Red vs. Blue is widely credited with attracting public attention to machinima and web-series.[69] The first instance of machinima dates back to the 1990s in the first-person shooter game Quake. A group that called themselves "The Rangers" created a software mod of them typing in the chat box and putting lines of dialogue on the screen. This group named these "videos" Diary of a Camper.[51] Even though Rooster Teeth is not the first to produce machinima, Clive Thompson credited Red vs. Blue as "the first to break out of the underground".[69] Tavares, Gil, and Roque called it machinima's "first big success",[70] 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".[71] In 2005, Thompson wrote that "Microsoft has been so strangely solicitous that when it was developing the sequel to Halo last year [2004], 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".[52]

    Red vs. Blue has motivated the fan base to create the machinima "Sponsors vs. Freeloaders". This series lived on the forums of roosterteeth.com.[72] The series has inspired other machinima productions, including The Codex.[73] Other Halo machinimas that are not necessarily related to, or influenced by, Red vs. Blue are: Arby 'n' the Chief, The Forgotten Spartans, Matchmaking, Spriggs, Rise of the Spartans, Playtime, C n' P, and Sandguardians.

    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."[74] Karen Moltenbrey explains that, machinima films were quite lengthy and were typically not episodic. Rooster Teeth was able to combine these aspects by compiling the episodic adventures into a feature-length film and selling DVDs.[72]

    Distribution

    Red vs. Blue episodes were originally available in

    Halo Waypoint
    .

    Members of the official website can become FIRST members, originally referred to as sponsors, for a fee of US$5 every month or US$20 every six months. FIRST members formerly could access videos a day before members can view them and a week before a general public release, but now get to view them a full week before both free members and non-members can view them, as well as the ability to access special content released only to FIRST members. For example, before the premiere of

    season 12, Rooster Teeth released exclusive audio logs featuring some of the main characters exclusively for FIRST members.[75]

    Episodes were originally released in different

    fullscreen releases. On January 8, 2007, the release of episode 87, Matt Hullum announced that videos would be viewable using Adobe Flash. 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.[79]
    In a site journal entry, Burns clarified that downloadable versions would continue to be released, but after their Flash counterparts. Eventually, during Season 10, downloadable episodes ceased to be posted. This was likely to prevent re-uploading episodes onto YouTube ahead of public release.

    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 (and later Blu-rays) of every completed seasons are sold through Rooster Teeth's official website, as well as at several retailers in the United States, such as

    letterboxed look of the original episodes, and a much higher resolution.[41]
    On November 6, 2012, to celebrate ten years, Rooster Teeth released a DVD and Blu-ray box set, titled RVBX, comprising the first ten seasons and five discs worth of bonus content, two of which are almost entirely newly released material.

    Theatrical presentations of Red vs. Blue seasons at the Lincoln Center and at other film festivals are cut (sometimes extensively) for time. 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.[81] Burns stated in a journal entry that the 134-minute season 3 DVD version had to be shortened to "a watchable-in-a-theater runtime of 100 minutes".[82]

    The first 5 seasons were made available on Netflix in July 2014,[83] with Seasons 6–12 debuting on the streaming service in April 2015. On March 4, 2015, Rooster Teeth debuted a new YouTube channel dedicated entirely to Red vs. Blue, where the first twelve seasons were uploaded to between March 6–29 in anticipation for the release of the thirteenth season's premiere on April 1, 2015.[84] The channel has over 886 thousand subscribers, and over 268 million video views, as of July 2019.[85][86] The channel has since been renamed to Rooster Teeth Animation and features other original animated Rooster Teeth productions such as RWBY and Camp Camp.[87]

    El Rey Network syndicated the series in its entirety in November 2015, with the series premiering on December 5, 2015.[88] Founder Robert Rodriguez called the series a "truly groundbreaking machinima series, with a strong focus on quality writing and pioneering motion capture techniques".[89]

    In May 2022 it was announced that FilmRise had acquired streaming rights for Nomad of Nowhere, Camp Camp, and Red vs. Blue, grouping episodes from each series into "traditional half-hour formats and seasons for streaming."[90]

    Notes

    1. ^ The show has had several lead writers:
      • Burnie Burns (1–10; 12; 14; film)
      • Matt Hullum (2–4; 10; 14)
      • Monty Oum (10)
      • Eddy Rivas (10)
      • Miles Luna
        (10–14; 17)
      • Ben Singer (14; 18)
      • Joe Nicolosi (14–16)
      • Jason Weight (16–17)
      • Torrian Crawford (18)
      • Noël Wiggins (18)
      • Joshua Kazemi (18)
    2. ^ The show has had several lead directors:
      • Burnie Burns (1–6; 8-10; 14)
      • Matt Hullum (2–4; 6; 8–10; 14; film)
      • Gavin Free (7)
      • Monty Oum (10)
      • Miles Luna (10–14)
      • Joe Nicolosi (14–16)
      • Josh Ornelas (14; 17)
      • Austin Clark (17)
      • Torrian Crawford (18)
      • Noël Wiggins (18)
      • Joshua Kazemi (18)
    3. ^ The show has had several composers
      • Trocadero (1–17)
      • Jeff Williams (8–10)
      • David Levy (13–17)
      • Aaron Caruthers (18)
      • Omega Sparx (18)
    4. ^ The show has had several producers:
      • Burnie Burns (1–10)
      • Geoff Ramsey (1–8)
      • Gus Sorola (1–8)
      • Matt Hullum (2–10)
      • Jason Saldaña (3–5)
      • Nathan Zellner (6–10)
      • Brandon Farmahini (8–9)
      • Kerry Shawcross
        (9–10; 12)
      • Miles Luna (10; 12)
      • Kathleen Zuelch (10–11)
      • Doreen Copeland (12)
      • Gray Haddock (12–17)
      • Koen Wooten (13–15)
      • Greg Slagel (16–17)
      • Noël Wiggins (18)
      • Jenn K. Tidwell (19)
    5. ^ Also known by its subtitle, Reconstruction
    6. ^ Also known by its subtitle, Recreation
    7. ^ Also known by its subtitle, Revelation
    8. ^ Machinimation mostly in Halo 3, aside from four episodes primarily made with using Halo: Combat Evolved, three with Halo 2, and one with Halo: Reach. Halo 4 is only used for scenes in two episodes. Five episodes have only regular animation. Four are done in live action, half of which also have scenes with machinima.
    9. ^ Also known by its subtitle, The Shisno Paradox
    10. ^ Also known by its subtitle, Singularity
    11. ^ Animated using Unreal Engine

    References

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    Bibliography

    Further reading

    External links

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