Red vs. Blue
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Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum |
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- "In the distant future, ten soldiers battle for control of the least desirable piece of real estate in the known universe- a box canyon in the middle of nowhere. Red vs. Blue chronicles the misadventures of two hapless armies as they wage a war that few understand and no one wants to fight."
- — Official synopsis
Red vs Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is a machinima series created by Rooster Teeth Productions. The story centers around the adventures of two teams composed of simulation soldiers. 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 modes of Halo: Combat Evolved and its sequels, Halo 2 and Halo 3.
The series is published by Rooster Teeth Productions, originally available for download per episode at their site and later released on DVD. Praised for its originality, the series has won a total of four awards from the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences. Although mainly a satirical and absurdist comedy, the show often touches on deeper philosophy about the meaning of war when it comes down to individual soldiers; as well as other more serious themes such as human morals in the face of extinction and the humanity of artificial intelligence. The characters occasionally question the validity of their mission and whether or not it accomplishes anything, a common theme in commentary about the ethics of war.
Characters
Template:WikiMain The show's cast divides into four segments: the Red Army, the Blue Army, the Freelancer program, and unaffiliated parties that interact with the core cast. Despite the enmity the Red and Blue Team members are supposed to harbor for one another, this usually does not apply personally to the enemy soldiers, who often engage in one-on-one conversation.
Plot Summary
The Blood Gulch Chronicles
Season 1
Template:WikiMain The Blood Gulch Chronicles begins with the introduction of two rookies on the Red and Blue teams, also getting a jeep and a tank respectively. The Red recruit, Donut, is sent on a fool's errand by his fellow soldiers, only to accidentally steal the enemy flag when he believed it to be the store (and the Blue rookie Caboose believing Donut to be the General foretold in the fool's errand of his own). The weeks of reconnaissance and intelligence gathering breaks down into chaos and poorly constructed offenses.
Season 2
Template:WikiMain Several months after the first season, a medical officer arrives to check on the wounded soldier Blue team reported. He had come months afterward, so by the time he got there, the wounded soldier (Tex) had already died. Almost immediately after his arrival the Red team attacks. Red team salvages their failed attack by getting Doc as an exchange for Blue team's surrender (although he was ordered to go to Red team anyway). Doc's added involvement in the canyon, combined with a rampant AI infecting Caboose will force the two opposing teams to do the unthinkable.
Season 3
Template:WikiMain The Red and Blue armies believe to have found themselves in the future. They have stumbled upon a prophecy which says a blue being will destroy a large 'temple'. They are trying to defend from an attack from O'Malley when this 'Great Destroyer' arrives.
Season 4
Template:WikiMain Following a distress signal back to Blood Gulch, the Red team experiences a falling out with one of their soldiers. Tucker, Tex, Caboose, and the alien go on quest to save the alien's race. Tex does not return to Blood Gulch with the rest of Blue team, and Tucker becomes seriously ill.
Out of Mind
Template:WikiMain Out of Mind is a mini-series that took place in-between Season 4 and Season 5. It is a narrative from Tex's point of view, told in a much more serious tone. Its events precede both Season 5 and Recovery One.
Season 5
Template:WikiMain A ship from Earth has crash-landed in the middle of the canyon, bringing a new soldier. Red team experiences a major crisis in their chain of command and Blue team welcomes a new addition to the family. Church tries to stop O'Malley once and for all.
The series finale was distributed with three alternate endings; the ending which was shown to a viewer depended on which link in Burnie Burn's post they followed to watch the episode. An additional three endings were included in the special features of the Season 5 DVD.
Recollections
Recovery One
Template:WikiMain Recovery One was a Red vs Blue miniseries distributed via Xbox LIVE and the internet that takes place after Out of Mind as well as before and during Season 5. Its plot revolves around Agent Washington, also known as Recovery One, who is a Freelancer like Tex, Wyoming, and York. Washington's job is to recover all Freelancer AI constructs of freelancers killed in action.
Reconstruction
Template:WikiMain Reconstruction is the direct sequel to the Blood Gulch Chronicles, exploring the causality of events from both The Blood Gulch Chronicles and Recovery One. It continues to follow Recovery Agent Washington's journey tracking down a mysterious enemy called the Meta, who is killing Freelancers and taking their armor enhancements and AIs. First, Wash has to find the people with the knowledge and experience to help him; the former occupants of Blood Gulch. With Project Freelancer under government investigation, Washington soon begins to realize what Church really is, and the nature of his role in the project.
Relocated
Template:WikiMain Relocated is a direct sequel to Reconstruction, following the Red Team, now on Valhalla, struggling to do the usual nothing, and Caboose's strange action's at Blue Base drawing further attention to himself.
Recreation
Template:WikiMain Recreation is a direct sequel to Relocated and Reconstruction. As the Reds continue to try and figure out what Caboose is up to and wake up a comatose Donut, Caboose continues trying to make a new best friend. Caboose decided to head to a nearby desert in search of Tucker, and Sarge and Grif agreed to go with him, unbeknownst to the chaos they are about to get drawn into. Meanwhile, an old enemy pays an unexpected visit to Valhalla.
Revelation
Revelation is a direct sequel to Red vs. Blue Recreation. Washington and the Meta have teamed up to find the missing Epsilon AI, killing most of the Reds there, leaving Simmons and Doc prisoner. Sarge and Grif managed to rescue Simmons, and the entire cast follow Caboose and Epsilon to a Freelancer storage facility. There, they meet an old friend, who will spark up a dangerous confrontation between the good, the bad, and the indifferent.
Season 9
The trailer for season 9 premiered at PAX 2011 East and premiered online on YouTube on April 4, 2011. The Season 9 Premiere was released by RoosterTeeth on June 13th, 2011.
Season 9 began with Epsilon, in the storage unit, experiencing similar events in the The Blood Gulch Chronicles. Along with this, a new Freelancer back story was also shown, detailing the history of Project Freelancer. The two plots were told simultaneously. While an entire different plot took place in memory unit, many events mirrored the past events, such as the Reds modifying their Warthog, Lopez losing his robot body, Tex constructing Andy the Bomb, and so on. The Freelancer story revealed the events of the Freelancers when they battled the Insurrection, namely Tex's impact when she joined the Freelancers as well as the Freelancers gathering data about an object code-named "The Sarcophagus" and eventually capturing it.
Miscellaneous
Public Service Announcements
Rooster Teeth made numerous PSAs, including for Xbox LIVE's partnership with Rock the Vote in late-summer 2008 and even for the United States Presidential election. These PSAs are usually told from the real-world's point of view.
Game Previews
Rooster Teeth has done miniseries with the characters previewing Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4.
Maxi Series
There are currently two known Maxi series, both available only in Halo Waypoint. RvB MIA Template:WikiMain
MIA is a 6-episodes miniseries released to celebrate and promote the launch of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. It was first mentioned in August 2011, during Halo Fest, where the cast had a table read of the series first three episodes' scripts, as well as some improvised comedic lines.[1] The first episode was released on Halo Waypoint in November 2011.
The series follow the Reds and Blues as they look for Grif, who was missing, while exploring the multiplayers maps included in the Anniversary Map Pack.
Where There's a Will, There's a Wall Template:WikiMain
Where There's a Will, There's a Wall, shortened "Red vs Blue: Wall", is a 3-episodes miniseries relating to the Reds attempting to find out what is behind the wall in Hemorrhage, while the Blues received a Falcon transport as a shipment.
Development History
Production
The writing process for the series has changed over time. Early in season 1, Burns wrote the episode scripts from week to week, with what appeared to be minimal planning in advance; major plot events seemed to have been conceived shortly before they were filmed.[2] For the second season, Matt Hullum became a main writer.[3] 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.[4] Shortly after episode 2 was released, Rooster Teeth was contacted by Bungie Studios. To their surprise, Bungie loved the series. A deal was made to allow Rooster Teeth to make the series without licensening fees. However, contradictory to this, Burnie claims that the major plot ideas were decided by episode 6, the episodes just didn't contain much information - they originally went for comedy rather than depth. 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.
Aside from a few scenes created using Marathon Infinity, Marathon 2, 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 from Halo and Zanzibar from Halo 2. Within a multiplayer game session, 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 "camera" is simply another player, whose first-person perspective is recorded raw to a computer. As the recording occurs within the game, a few different bugs and post-production techniques have been exploited in order 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.[5]
Impact on Machinima
Red vs. Blue is widely credited with attracting public attention to machinima. Although examples had existed since the 1990s, Clive Thompson, a journalist from New York Times, credits Red vs. Blue as "the first to break out of the underground".[6] In Halo 2, Bungie inserted a special command — a joystick button that makes a soldier lower their weapon — designed solely to make it easier for Rooster Teeth to do dialogue. The series has inspired other machinima productions, including The Codex, Fire Team Charlie, and This Spartan Life.
Trivia
Miscellaneous
- Red vs. Blue, was originally intended to last only six installments, but its popularity led to the production of 100 episodes of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, and another five seasons.
- The popular Double EXP Weekend game type "Grifball" is based off of Red vs Blue, specifically episode 59.
Homage from the Halo series
- On Bungie.net, the Flag Kill Medal's description, which is triggered by scrolling over the flag symbol, is "It's right next to the headlight fluid". This is a reference to episodes 3 and 4 of Blood Gulch Chronicles where the new recruit, Donut, is sent on a fool's errand to fetch "headlight fluid" and "elbow grease". Instead, he mistakenly goes to Blue Base and takes their flag.
- In Halo: Reach, Halsey's secret room contains a document about the soldiers who were sent out. This is a nod to the Red vs Blue franchise.
- In the Halo: Reach radio conversation on Holdout, two characters can be heard discussing their "zombie plans," referencing the Red vs. Blue PSA Planning to Fail.
- In Halo: Glasslands, there are several references to the series:
- One of the ODSTs notes that their Sangheili prisoner Jul ‘Mdama sounds like he is saying "Blarg". This is a reference to the Sangheili, referred as "aliens", in Red vs. Blue only saying "Blarg" and "Honk".
- The AI Black Box calls to Evan Phillips as "Phyllis". This was the Sheila's original name, the Blue Team's tank.
References to the Halo series
- In episode 100 of The Blood Gulch Chronicles, when Tex takes off in the Pelican, the word "Marathon" is partially obscured on the underside. This is an obvious reference to Bungie's previous game series, Marathon, in appreciation from Rooster Teeth.
- As with other media produced by Rooster Teeth, Red vs. Blue paid homage to Bungie's love with seven. For example, Sister had 7 abortions.
- In the Red vs Blue: ODST episodes Church says that he heard a rumor that Avery Junior Johnson can't be killed. This is an obvious reference to how in the games he is a plot critical character and is invincible.
- In Revelation Chapter 20, an UNSC interrogator stated that "the budget only allows for one crashed Pelican per mission." This is a reference to the fact that every level (mission) in Halo 3 has at least one crashed Pelican (with the exception of Crow's Nest).
Running Gags
- As a running gag in The Blood Gulch Chronicles, whenever a character dies, the last words they say are "Hurk! Blah...". A couple of exceptions are the Grunts from episodes 39 and 40, and an alternate ending to episode 100, in which the phrase "Son of a bitch!" is substituted. Other variations include "I am dead," and "Blarg I am dead."
- When either Grif or Simmons yells "Shotgun!", the other will yell "Shotgun!" right after, only to say "fuck!" when they realize they're too late. If the player has the IWHBYD Skull activated and is playing Tsavo Highway, two Marines will mimic this, substituting "fuck!" with "damn".
- Caboose team-killed Church, though Caboose would sometimes randomly blame Tucker.
- When red team tricks someone and steals something by surprise, they would say "Yoink!" This was even made into a medal in Halo: Reach. When ever someone is performing an assassination and their target dies, whoever killed him gets the medal "Yoink!"
- Most of the character names can be found in Halo: Combat Evolved's Temporary Profile feature. Out of the randomly generated names, Caboose, Church, Donut, Simmons, and Doc are commonly found. It is possible Rooster Teeth named their characters using this feature. This feature is continued in Halo 3, with names like Caboose and Donut showing up as temporary profiles.
- Church always carries around a Sniper Rifle, and yet he is utterly incapable of hitting anything with it, even when the target is standing still. This is also shown in Reconstruction when he fails to hit an enemy at point blank range with an entire magazine of pistol ammo. However, he is shown in one episode to be a crack shot when shooting allies, hitting Caboose in the foot from several yards away with the pistol. For some reason, he can't kill at close range. The Rocket Launcher is an exception to this, as shown in Reconstruction.
- Ironically, Tucker never gets the sniper rifle. In the first show when Tucker responds saying he has no sniper rifle.
- Whenever a character is blown up or launched by an explosion, any characters nearby often exclaim "Son of a bitch!" in response. Lopez has even participated in this gag, his variant being "Madre de dios!" or "Mother of God!", which was still subtitled as meaning "son of a bitch."
- Characters will sometimes state that something "doesn't seem physically possible". Examples include when Private Jimmy is bashed to death with his own skull, when Grif discovers the makeshift surgery that has been performed on him, and when Tex manages to flip Sheila.
- A big running gag and catch-phrase in Red vs Blue is "Why are we here?" this saying is used in the first episode of season one and the last episode of that season, as well as the last episode of Season Five and Episode 18 of Revelation. Usually when someone says it, the person they say it to will say something big and meaningful and the other will say that they just meant something much less important. At the end of season one Simmons says it to Grif and he cuts him off saying he doesn't, and in Revelation 18, Sarge asks if they ever wonder why they're here, meaning why they're still in the army unit.
- Characters will often say, "Son of a...." before they are shot by an explosive weapon.
- Starting in season 3, Tucker started to say "bow-chica-bowow," after saying something sexual.
- When ever Sister says something wierd, the cast often responds "Yeah... wait, what?"
Gallery
The DVD cover of Season One.
The DVD cover of Season Two.
The DVD cover of Season Three.
The DVD cover of Season Four.
The DVD cover of Season Five.
- RvB Reconstruction.jpg
Red vs Blue: Reconstruction DVD Case.
- RvB Recreation Poster.jpg
Red vs Blue: Recreation Poster.
- 250px-RvB Revelation 590px.png
Red vs Blue: Revelation.
- 250px-RvB Relocated 300px.jpg
Red vs Blue: Relocated.
- 251px-Animated title card.jpg
Red vs Blue: Animated.
- Product 1277135033.jpg
The Blood Gulch Chronicles Remastered DVD boxset
- Product 1280332811.jpg
Recollections DVD boxset
- Product 1280334897.jpg
Revelation's DVD cover
The DVD Cover of Season Nine.
Sources
- ^ Halo Waypoint: Red vs. Blue Table Read
- ^ Red vs. Blue Season One: Audio Commentary episode 8
- ^ Red vs. Blue Season Two: Audio Commentary
- ^ Konow, 3.
- ^ Red vs. Blue Season One: Audio Commentary
- ^ The New York Times: The Xbox Auteurs