Interview With Creators Of The Strangerhood

IGN.com interviews the creators of The Strangerhood. Find out some of the tricks to how they make their movies and more.

Read The Interview

The Strangerhood

Stranger than fiction? Rooster Teeth's Matt Hullum talks about turning The Sims 2 into an comedy series.

If someone had told me that Halo and it's multicolored crew could be used as a backdrop for fun and frolicking animation series with the occasional taste of death and mayhem, I would have laughed in their stupid face and called them Silly Billy. But I suppose that's why I'm writing about video games with no hope of salvation. The series, Red vs. Blue, is basically about two sides of a civil war fighting over a dry creek bed (the Halo multiplayer map Blood Gulch) for a reason that no one can seem to figure out, including pretty much anyone that has played the game. If you're a fan of Halo at all, you really owe it to yourself to check it out.

In any case, the same guys at Rooster Teeth have begun creating a series based off of the recently released The Sims 2, which lends itself wonderfully to that same kind of humor. It also allows for more emotion than was ever possible for a bunch of characters that never wash or take off their helmets. Having and failed miserably in an attempt to create a movie out of The Sims 2 myself, I have to hand it to these guys for being able to make everything work the way they wish. Their first episode introduces the characters and the very Simsish situation they find themselves in.

When EA approached us with the opportunity to talk to these guys about their process and what we can look forward to seeing with their series entitled The Strangerhood, we figured "why the hell not?" So we got on the phone and talked to Matt Hullum, one of the two ugliest members of the original trio that began the long and emotionally draining story of stupidity, love, Internet sites, and Warthogs that rocketed them from obscurity to Internet-quasi-semistardom. It seems that they enjoy making movies using The Sims 2. Hopefully this means I will soon have more things to distract me from all of my "work."

IGNPC: So I guess the first question should probably be where did you get the name Rooster Teeth?

Matt Hullum: I guess you aren't a fan of Red vs. Blue?

IGNPC: No, I actually have watched almost all of them, I guess I'm just a big idiot.

Matt Hullum: Okay, well... Rooster Teeth is basiclly a euphamism for the bad language that we have in the show that caught on. In one of the early episodes, Church called somebody a *#$% biter. For some reason that just really caught on so we named the company Rooster Teeth since we didn't think parents would wanna write checks to Cock Bite productions.

IGNPC: So how's it different doing movies for Sims 2 as opposed to Halo?

Matt Hullum: It's radically different and very enjoyable but it required us to completely change our mindset on the animations. Using Halo is kind of like puppeteering where the characters we're manipulating don't really have any thoughts or AI that drives them, they just kinda do whatever they want but at the same time, they're expresionless. With the Sims it's fascinating and different in that it's almost like working with real actors. The way it works in the game is that everyone has basic needs so you have to learn to manipulate and adjust those needs in order to get those characters to do what you want in the shot you're trying to create.

IGNPC: Okay, so it's almost like you have to trick them into doing what you want?

Matt Hullum: Yeah! Bernie [Burns] and I both come from a more traditional film making background and we were talking about it one day and how it's a lot like working with inexperienced young actors. You try and get them to embrace method acting techniques saying stuff like, "You have to be mad in this scene so I want you to think about something that really made you upset," and if that doesn't work, then you start trying to make them upset. You start calling them names or tell them they're doing a terrible job.

IGNPC: Yeah, like torturing kids!

Matt Hullum: You have to do the same thing in The Sims 2. When a character wont get mad enough or whatever emotion it is you're trying to acheive, well then you gotta go in there and manipulate their needs. Push them around and make them do stuff that you wouldn't normally do if you were just playing the game. It's really demented, but it's also a lot of fun.

IGNPC: Yeah, I like sticking my Sims in cages, so I know what you mean. So do you think it's more rewarding in that aspect then?

Matt Hullum: It's really rewarding when you try for a long time to get a shot and are finally able to achieve it. It's almost like you work with these characters for so long that when you finally get them to do what it is you want them to do - and I'm talking about something very specific like a facial expression combined with a specific body posture combined with a movement - it's like ah ha! I've brought you around to my way of thinking! It's almost like you're in the game and are working with a personality. But then you have to step back for a minute and realize that this is just a game and think the only person I've managed to fool here is myself. It's really rewarding and fun when you get to that point.

IGNPC: Are the emotions and other types of things something that you can figure out a formula to make happen again and again?

Matt Hullum: You can to a certain extent. Every situation changes depending on who the scene is taking place between. When you're playing the game you get their relationships up to different levels. When they're at different levels like 100% friends or in love with each other, they'll act differently between each other much differently than those that don't like each other very much. You really have to keep that in mind when you're setting up or writing a scene. We realized that after we wrote the first couple episodes that we needed to start taking it from the perspecitve that it's more like a reality series.

You can manipulate them to a certain extent but you're really going to take advantage of what they're doing and take into account where their relationships are.

IGNPC: So does that mean that you guys are just letting the relationships run and see where they go?

Matt Hullum: We do try to build up, modify and alter their relationships but again, that is the game and the point of the game is to do that. It takes a lot of time to do that and we work on a tight schedule so we don't have the luxury or playing the game endless hours to get them into that perfect place, but we're able to get some people into some positions and some into others fairly quickly and then we look at what we have and talk about what we can do from where we are now. We get a lot of ideas that the game generates for us in a way. The same can be said for the relationships and the skill levels and what they're good at doing. Some characters can't go cooking without setting the kitchen on fire. Those kinds of things can be interesting to watch so we pick up on those details and incorporate them into the storyline.

IGNPC: So you're taking the same approach as Red vs. Blue by making fun of the situation that these guys are in?

Matt Hullum: I think that everybody has that experience when they play The Sims for the first time. You make these characters and drop them into a scenario and when they get in there they're all bumbling around there. They don't know how to cook or play chess and don't know who all the other people are. We did want to play off of that kind of situation. As the series progresses we're planning to do more of those types of jokes as well like we did with Halo and Red vs. Blue. We draw on elements that are in the game but may not be specific to the storyline of the game so we can use it to create a fresh approach to looking at it. A lot of people responded to Red vs. Blue because they would watch it and say "I thought the same thing! Why did they call it the Warthog?" and then we just play of those kinds of details. We'll definitely be doing the same types of things.

IGNPC: There's inevitably going to be some expansions so do you have plans to incorporate these things?

Matt Hullum: Oh yeah absolutely! That's the fun of doing this series in particular. We don't ahve any insider information about what the expansion packs are going to be, but we know from the history of the game that they do really cool stuff so there's going to be a bunch of fun stuff to throw in there. And we're trying to think ahead and plan so that if EA comes up with a really cool off the wall idea for an expansion pack we can decide what direction we want to take the show to incorporate these things. We've set up an interesting framework, and I don't want to give up too much about the plot, but I think the way the characters discover the situation they're in will allow for a lot of fun with a lot of differnet types of scenarios that could come up with expansion packs and the other weird stuff that people find fun and wacky in the game.

IGNPC: Awesome, thanks Matt. It'll be fun to see where you take these guys over the season.