EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: MATT HULLUM(@MattHullum @RoosterTeeth) CREATOR OF ‘RED VS BLUE’

Yeah, there’s nothing to worry about. I mean, Halo 4 is going to be a Halo player’s, Halo aficionado’s game. Because they are 100% legit

How did the character Sarge come about?

Well, Sarge in terms of just how did I get cast for it and all that was pretty simple. It was just Burnie was putting together characters for the show and was like, “Man I need a Sergeant character, like a rough Sergeant character. Do you think you could do a voice like that?” I was like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll give it a try.” And I had kind of a goof ball kind of it was really a coach voice that I would do in high school with my friends, like our high school football coaches. And so I just kind of modified that a little bit, and that became the voice of Sarge.

That’s awesome, because that’s like one question that everybody should ask but probably never has.

No, it’s true. It’s true, yeah.

Was there any characters planned for the show that never made it?

Yes. There’s one, I think we’ve mentioned it maybe once in a Q&A. The character Doc actually replaced the original idea for that character was going to be an embedded journalist that came down and followed the Reds and Blues around and kind of just did a photo essay on what they were doing. Kind of like in wartime the other embedded journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan. We liked that idea, but then once we got the idea to do Doc as a medic, and how he had to be on both sides at the same time, and was purple. We just thought it was too funny, so we ended up going that route.

How’s has the production value, in your eyes, progressed from Halo 1 to I guess now Halo 4?

We worked really hard to increase our production value every year. And we’ve done a lot of things in terms of just our editing, and our sound work, and all the basics. And then, of course, as we got into season seven and eight we started doing a lot more visual effects that were not the kind of goofball PSA-style visual effects we did in the old days, just cardboard cutout stuff. But we actually wanted to do big-time animation, and those fight scenes that Monty choreographed for us and everything.

So we’ve tried really hard to push the envelope every year. And season 10 was obviously an enormous year for us. We did a whole range of crazy things that we never would’ve dreamed we’d be able to do when we did season one. And we had a big team of guys in the office, like 15 guys working on it. And we had modelers and people from literally around the globe. We had a guy in Romania, and a guy in the UK, and just all over the place doing different animation stuff for us. So that was really fun, and really challenging. And I think that led to season 10 being our biggest and most exciting season we’ve ever done.

Speaking of which, you had Elijah Wood on the show. How’s it been working with him?

He was really great. And one of the things I really loved about it was he was so pro. We went into the recording booth, and usually with any of us, we’re not actors, all of us guys who have worked on the show since the beginning. So we stumble all over our lines, and mess things up, and trip on words, and we have to go back and do it again. He came and he was like bam, bam, bam, bam, every line, first take, perfect. And then so we had a little more time to work with him then we thought we were going to. We were able to tailor a few lines more toward his vision of the character. He brought a lot of personality into it. I think a lot of intelligence into it, which is really great, and made it more than just a stereotypical kind of villain. There’s a lot of thought process going on there, and I think he was able to convey that really well. It just goes to show how strong he is an actor, that he can do it just in a voice role.

Now, with that, how wide open is the door now for other celebrity guest spots?

Well, we had such a great time working with Elijah, maybe we’ll stop there. But no I’m just kidding. Yeah, I mean we’ve had a lot of celebrity guests that we’ve really enjoyed working with. Ed Robertson from the Barenaked Ladies plays Captain Butch Flowers on the show, and we always love working with him. He’s such a great guy. And we’ve had the guys from Smosh, Ian and Anthony have done voices for us in the last two seasons, and they’re always hilarious. They always throw in a bunch of crazy ad-libs that end up being the catch phrases of those characters, like dick biscuit which is great. And yeah, we’re just looking forward to doing more stuff, had Hannah Hart on the show this year. It’s been great.

Do you have, I guess what you could say is a guest star wish list?

I would love to get Bruce Campbell on the show. Dude, I remember when Evil Dead 2, when I was at the friend’s house and said, “You’ve got to see this.” He puts in this tape, and I didn’t know what it was, and I see this crazy guy with a chainsaw hand bobbing up and down with a possessed lamp, and a deer head, and all that crazy stuff. I was like, “What is going on?” And then it’s like I’m a big of a Sam Raimi/Bruce Campbell fan ever since, and would love to have him on the show at some point.

This November you’re releasing a, what is it, ten disk?

14 disk.

Sorry, I apologize. You’re releasing a 14-disk all-encompassing mega, super-duper, awesome DVD set.

Yeah

Now, the question is, what extras are there that would make a Red vs. Blue fan go out and pick up even more copies of the DVDs?

If you’ve ever seen any of our DVDs, we just jam pack them full of as much content as we possibly can. All of our DVDs have at least 30 minutes of unreleased bonus material on there, sometimes upwards of an hour of stuff that we never put online or anywhere else. So, on this DVD set, you’re going to get all of that great stuff. All of the audio has been re-mastered into 5.1 surround sound, which we’ve never done before. Went back to the very beginning, had to get all those old files which was not easy, trust me. Some of the Kodak’s don’t even exist anymore. It was kind of an archaeological dig through technology.

And then in addition to that, we’ve got a bunch of Grifball stuff on there. We’ve got a miniseries for everybody that are new. We’ve got some great live-action moments that we put together. We’ve got behind-the-scenes stuff. We’ve got, actually, an entire disk of bonus supplemental material that’s over two hours that just has great deleted scenes, outtakes, how we put together the animation, the visual effects, interviews with all the cast, and the creators, and just a whole host of stuff.

I mean it’s overloaded with Red vs. Blue goodness. And we have Blu-ray for the first time. Of course, we call it Red vs. Blue-ray, but poison. It’s 14 disk DVD version or 14 disk Blu-ray version. The DVD version retails for $139.95, and the Blu-ray version retails for $179.95.

Now, you’ve guys done show for, I think it was Shadowrun, The Sims, what’s the game that you guys would love to do and make into a series?

Oh man that’s such a great, can I say Halo 4? I can’t use that guy? I’m just kidding. For the longest time, I always really wanted to do sports titles. I love the EA sports titles, and we were fortunate to be able to work on a lot of the EA sports commercials. We used to do all the Madden commercials and things like that. And I always wanted to make a show out of that. We satisfied that urge a little bit in doing the Grifball series that we did, which is basically a sport’s show. But I’m kind of a sucker for sports comedies, and I would love to do something really goofy in a machinima environment on a sport’s title.

When Microsoft and Bungie put in the Grifball playlist for Halo 3, was that your moment when you went, “I think it’s time we made it.”

Man, yeah. I mean, the fact that we can go from being super fans of the game to actually having a piece of what we’ve created go back into the game. And in Halo 3 we also did voices in it as well. It’s just really a huge honor, and it’s hard to believe. It’s one of those things that doesn’t seem possible. That you’re a fan of something so much and then you end up being a part of it in the end, it’s just great.

The interest from Red vs. Blue parlayed into other more mainstream shows. You guys did some voices on an episode of Code Monkeys.

Yes, that’s right, yeah. They were actually fans of Red vs. Blue and contacted us, and asked us to do some voices for them. And yeah, it’s been amazing. You never know who you’re going to meet that turns out is a fan of Red vs. Blue. I mean, that’s the way that we originally met Ed Robinson from the Barenaked Ladies too. He was like, “I think Red vs. Blue is hilarious. Come out on my tour and make some videos for us on tour.” And stuff like that. Elijah Wood, we hear about celebrities from time to time who are big into Red vs. Blue and it always just kind of blows our minds.

Where does Red vs. Blue go from here?

Into the future.(laughs)

I set myself up for that one, didn’t I? (laughs)

Well, we’re definitely working on season 11. We’ve wrapped production on season 10. We have four episodes left to be released this year, depending on when this interview comes out. But the last four episodes of season 10 are just over the top, crazy, phenomenal. I am super excited for everybody to see them. And then season 11, we’re looking really forward to getting back to kind of core-character dynamics, and bringing in a lot of the humor, that camaraderie with the core group that really made Red vs. Blue the great series that it is.

Awesome man, thank you very much.

Thank you, appreciate it!