Red vs Blue Season 5 Interview

This interview was done by Frank O'Connor from Bungie.net. He interviews Burnie Burns, creator of Red vs. Blue and voice of Church. Never seen an episode of RvB? You are dead to me. (Seriously, just go to Google Video and search for the episode you want, i.e "Red vs. Blue episode 01. That's the easy, download-free way that I use.)


Red vs. Blue is the king of cliffhangers, any plans to sew one or two of those up in the season debut?

I’d like to say yes, but in reality, the opening few episodes of S5 will just add a few more questions to the mix. We plan on tying up most of the high level questions about the RvB storyline during the course of the entire season. We also have a cool new avenue that will let us add more material into the overall series. We should have more info about that very soon.

Have you guys made any changes to the studio or the equipment that you use to make the series during the off time?


You bet. During production, we can’t really touch the gear because we tend to upgrade our stuff by breaking it first. As I write this, my editing computer is currently running at a robust 640x480 and 16 colors. It’s awesome for playing Marathon, but that’s about it. The capture card we used for Season 4 is getting mothballed because we didn’t like some interlacing issues it had with the online version of the files. The videos look great on television sets, which was the main thing we tested it for when we installed it, but we’re hoping to find an even better solution for the new season.
The biggest upgrade is to our Xboxes. We finally decided to max out the credit card and move to all 360’s. The biggest obvious benefit is the higher resolution of Halo 2, but we’re really, really excited about the wireless controllers. Dealing with the cords got to be kind of a hassle. At the end of every recording session, we had this huge knot that took forever to unbraid. Also, the black controllers made it hard to customize for each character. We had to use these dumb office labels to help us show which character was which. Then we had to use a different sticker to show which monitor and quadrant of the screen they were on. The new white ones look much cooler, show the color customizations much more clearly and the quadrant indicator is built in. The real bonus is no cords, though.

Are there any plans to use a different environment – either Halo 1 or Halo 2 – as major settings?


This will probably be the biggest change in the coming episodes. We plan on using as many maps as possible during Season 5 -- maps from Halo, Halo PC and Halo2. We’re also going to continue using multiple maps to illustrate one location in the story. We have one set that we’re trying to “build” by using as many as five different levels in the game. Some of the maps, like Midship, are a little harder fit for us, but coming up with a use for them is half the fun.


At the end of the last season, it looked like we might be getting a new cast member. Can you tell us if you have plans to introduce any other new cast members?


We’ll probably have two new cast members right away. After the first few episodes, it’s wide open. I really want to kill Simmons, though. I can’t stand that guy.


One of the coolest parts of Red vs. Blue is the strong community that you guys foster with the site, is there anything in the works for that on the horizon?


The whole internet community scene went from 0 to 60 pretty quickly. I think it might have something to do with Fox buying MySpace for half a billion dollars. Go figure. The end result is that it seems like a new community website is popping up every five minutes. We want to stay ahead of the pack with our site by expanding cool features like the scoring and “mod economy” system while adding new features that appeal to gamers. We are looking at adding milestones for users that unlock features of the site and that allow them to do more things on their profiles that tie into gaming. Like hosting tournaments and grouping with other members of the site. We want to give the users more control of that part of the site. We’ve always wanted to put that software in the hands of the members, our first version was intended to be a self-moderating entity. The users took that in a different direction than we intended, so we’re just going to roll with them.


Are there any events that you guys will be attending in the future that you’d like to tell us about?


The summer is always the busiest con season. We will be attending the big ones like Comic Con in San Diego (July) and PAX, Penny Arcade’s convention (August). The RvB community has a get together every year now in Toronto. It’s called RvBTO and it’s more about the community site than about the actual show. I know they’ll have screenings of RvB, but they will also be showing more machinima work and some live action pieces made by members from our website. We’ll also be at Akon in Dallas (early June) and the Edinburgh (Scotland) Film Festival later in the summer. We’ll also be in Baltimore and Anaheim as well. You can always check the events page on our site to see if we’re coming close to you. If we are, be sure to come out and kick our ass at Halo. It’s not that hard to do.