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Red vs Blue

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Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, often abbreviated as RvB, is a machinima comic science fiction video series created by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed primarily through the Internet and DVD. The series chronicles the story of two opposing teams of soldiers fighting a civil war in the middle of a desolate box canyon (Blood Gulch), in a parody of first-person shooter (FPS) games, military life, and science fiction films. Initially intended to be a short series of six to eight episodes, the project quickly and unexpectedly achieved significant popularity following its Internet premiere on April 1, 2003. Rooster Teeth therefore decided to extend the series; the fifth and final season of the original series ended with episode 100, released on June 28, 2007. Two mini-series have been spun off resulting in a new full length series.

Red vs. Blue emerged from Burnie Burns' voice-over-enhanced gameplay videos of Bungie Studios' First-person shooter|FPS video game Halo: Combat Evolved. 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 game|multiplayer modes of Halo: Combat Evolved and its sequels, Halo 2 and, on a few off-series 'community videos' and new series Reconstruction, Halo 3, on the Microsoft Xbox and Xbox 360 video game consoles.

Both within the machinima community and among film critics, Red vs. Blue has been generally well-received. Praised for its originality, the series has won four awards from the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences. It has been credited with bringing new popularity to machinima, helping it to gain more mainstream exposure, and attracting more people to the art form. Graham Leggat, former director of communications for Lincoln Center's film society, described Red vs. Blue as "truly as sophisticated as Samuel Beckett."[1] While special videos continue to be released online, the completed series is also available on DVD, making the series one of the first commercially released and successful machinima products. Rooster Teeth has created videos, some under commission from Microsoft, for special events, and Red vs. Blue content is included with the Legendary Edition of Halo 3.

On August 29, 2008 Burnie Burns unveiled another project pilot of Red vs. Blue at PAX '08, but instead of being filmed as a machinima it was made as a traditional hand-drawn cartoon. However, Burnie said that they had no current plans to continue the pilot, due to a lot of mitigating factors. The new series Burnie has mentioned in his journals on their website are not to be of the hand drawn cartoon variety, but yet more machinima.

[edit] Plot

Red vs. Blue centers on the Red and Blue Teams, two groups of soldiers engaged in a civil war. Each team occupies a small base in a box canyon known as Blood Gulch. According to Simmons (Gustavo Sorola), one of the Red Team soldiers, each team's base exists only in response to the other team's base. Although both teams generally dislike each other and have standing orders to defeat their opponents and capture their flag, neither team's soldiers are usually motivated to fight each other- if they are otherwise, neither are efficient. Teammates have an array of eccentric personalities and often create more problems for each other than for their enemies.

The main Red vs. Blue storyline spans five seasons, the most recent beginning publicly on October 2, 2006.[2] Rooster Teeth periodically releases self-referential public service announcements (PSAs) and holiday-themed videos, which are generally unrelated to the main storyline. In these videos, the members of both teams claim to be actors on the Red vs. Blue series itself, but maintain their Blood Gulch Chronicles personalities. On June 16, 2006, Burns announced a five-part mini-series, Red vs. Blue: Out of Mind, which chronicles the adventures of the mercenary Tex (Kathleen Zuelch) after her disappearance in season 4. The mini-series premiered exclusively on the Xbox Live Marketplace,[3] but Rooster Teeth later made it available on their official site.[4]

Although the background of Red vs. Blue is primarily taken from Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, its creators consciously limit connections to Bungie's Halo fictional universe. A special video made for E3 2003 portrays Master Chief, the protagonist of the Halo series, as a larger-than-life member of the army, and the Red vs. Blue trailer and first episode establish that the series is set between the events of the two games. Beyond these references, however, the series follows an independent storyline, which, according to Burns, is intended to make it accessible to those unfamiliar with the games. For example, even though the season 4 and season 5 casts include characters from the alien Covenant Elite race, Rooster Teeth never portrays those characters in their original Halo context.

[edit] Characters

Red Team

  • Sarge
  • Pvt. Dick Simmons/Simmons 2.0
  • Pvt. Dexter Grif
  • Pvt. Franklin Delano Donut
  • Lopez la Pesado (Lopez the Heavy)
  • M12 LRV(Warthog)

Blue Team

  • Pvt. Leonard L. Church
  • Pvt. Lavenius Tucker
  • Pvt. Michael J. Caboose
  • Freelancer Texas(Allison)
  • Kakaina Grif(Sister)
  • Sheila (M808B Main Battle tank)
  • Junior
  • Captain Butch Flowers

Others

  • Doc (Medical Officer Duffraine)
  • O'malley
  • Andy
  • Gary
  • Crunchbite
  • Zealots
  • Tex
  • The Red Zealot
  • Freelancer Washington
  • Freelancer Wyoming
  • Freelancer South Dakota
  • Freelancer North Dakota
  • Freelancer York
  • Vic
  • Vic Jr.
  • The Director
  • The Chairman

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