By Deren Kudeki

Gargoyle staff reporter


Posted Monday, Jan. 29, The OG, arts

Burnie Burns, creator of “Red vs. Blue”

MICHAEL “BURNIE” BURNS is the writer and creator of the comedy show “Red vs. Blue,” which releases a new episode every Friday on its Web site.

The show, now in its fifth season, is created by filming multiplayer sessions of the videogame “Halo.”

Burns and his production team, known as Rooster Teeth Productions, act out and record the movements of the characters in multiplayer (an animation style known as machinima), and later overlay their voices to create dialogue and to give the characters unique personalities.

The episodes, which tend to be five or six minutes in length, are released on Rooster Teeth's Web site in QuickTime and Windows Media Player formats.

The show takes place during a futuristic civil war between two opposing armies, the Red army and the Blue army. The show itself focuses on the adventures of two teams — one Red, one Blue — that are stationed in opposing bases in a tiny box canyon called Blood Gulch (which is in reality a popular multiplayer map from “Halo”).

They are in theory fighting for control of the canyon, but few shots are fired in the series, and even fewer characters actually care about the war. Instead, the show focuses on the interaction of the characters, all of whom have extreme personalities, which leads to much hilarity. Click here for the Gargoyle's review of the series.

Burns models one of Rooster Teeth's

products for its online store

“Red vs. Blue” is the brainchild of Burns, who writes the seasons as well as individual episodes. Burns himself does the voice-acting for three characters: Private Leonard Church, a robot stuck in the Spanish-language setting named Lopez, and Vic.

Church is the cynical de facto leader of the Blue team, after the death of the team's commander due to an accidental aspirin overdose. Lopez is a robot built by the Red team's sergeant, but due to an error installing his voice package he can only speak Spanish and has taken on the persona of an oppressed immigrant worker. Vic, who works for the command of both the Red and Blue teams, is often called up when one of the teams needs assistance and has a characterization similar to that of an annoying tech support operator.

In October, Burns visited the University of Illinois to speak at a conference organized by the Association for Computing Machinery and agreed to do an e-mail interview with the Gargoyle. The interview, which was recently completed, is presented below.

How did you come up with the idea of using “Halo” to make movies?

BURNS: Extreme boredom. I was writing an Xbox column for another Web site called Drunkgamers.com, and all anyone wanted to hear about was “Halo, Halo, Halo.” I was always trying to come up with new “Halo” content and “RvB” spawned from that.

How did the series go from being an eight episode miniseries to a show now in its fifth season?

BURNS: After we spent some time with characters and became more efficient at the animation process, it just seemed like a natural progression. There was never a time when we sat down and decided to expand.

How far in advance do you begin planning for future seasons?

BURNS: We write the framework for each season, and then each week we just get a little closer to the end.

How does writing the outline of a season compare to writing individual episodes?

BURNS: The outline is just milestones and a final objective. Each week, we create a situation and then just pick from the cast of characters that would be most funny in that situation. We have changed a Blue story into a Red story simply because the Red cast was a better fit.

Do you come up with the jokes as you write an episode, or do you come up with them at some other time and see where you can work them into the show?

BURNS: A combination of both. Some lines percolate in the brain for a few months and work their way in. Mostly, everything just comes out on the fly. The characters are so familiar to me now, they almost write themselves. For instance, in any given scenario, it's clear to me what Simmons would say and how Sarge or Grif would react.

You have said that the focus of the series shifted to the rookies early on due to their popularity. Before this, who were you planning on being the main focus of the show?

BURNS: Simmons and Grif. In fact, the Blues were just written as characters on the cliff who would yell down and heckle them. They were never originally intended to have their own story lines.

Many of the characters in “Red vs. Blue” are a play off of some sort of stock character, the most extreme case probably being O'Malley. (An evil artificial intelligence program that is a common enemy to the two teams and can possess the characters, O'Malley satirizes the stereotypical supervillain.) However, there are a few characters that don't seem to fit into any sort of pre-existing mold, such as Lopez, Sheila (a self-aware tank owned by the Blue team), Gary (a talking computer built by an alien race), and Andy (a talking bomb with an attitude). How were these characters that are so “outside the box” conceived?

BURNS: You just named all the “technology” characters. When you write in such a closed world, you basically have to use what you are given. We had a bomb, a tank, and a computer. It was fun to try to give these inanimate objects as much life as possible. Lopez is just a long running joke that basically was inspired by a TV I have that is stuck on the SAP setting.

How do you decide to add a new character to the series?

BURNS: We try to add a couple fresh faces every season. Casting can be difficult, but it's worth the effort to get the part right.

Several times during a season, you release a “public service announcement” instead of a normal episode. When do you decide when to make a PSA, and how do you decide what it will be about?

BURNS: PSAs are the commercial breaks of “RvB.” We don't like having a week with no videos, so we make PSAs to space things out. It's also our chance to riff on real world events.

This summer you released a spinoff miniseries focusing on the character Tex called “Out of Mind.” This miniseries had a much more serious tone than “Red vs. Blue.” Was this a conscious decision on the part of Rooster Teeth, or was it a result of Tex's more serious nature?

BURNS: People kept asking for more action, which I don't think is appropriate for “RvB.” It is by definition a series about a bunch of guys “who just stand around and talk.” “Out of Mind” let us satisfy that action craving.

Aside from “Red vs. Blue,” Rooster Teeth has had several other machinima projects. Is there anything else that you guys have in the works that you can talk about?

BURNS: Yes, but nope. Sorry, we hate doing announcements. Everyone is so ready to tell you that their next thing is going to be totally awesome. We're happy to just concentrate on our current thing, which is totally awesome already.

When did “Red vs. Blue” begin to gain mainstream media attention?

BURNS: When Episode 2 got linked on Fark and Slashdot in one day and our server melted. If you ever want to know what a video server looks like as a puddle on the floor, I would be happy to tell you.