SFIFF: Cockbyte: Masters of Machinima
"Your city sucks," said the two guys presenting Cock Byte: Masters of Machinima. The Austin natives were unprepared for the gruelling uphill walk to the Kabuki -- apparantly our topography is a well-kept secret outside of the bay area. Fair enough, though; the hills do suck sometimes. But not as bad as the title of their movie, which, um, why was it called that anyway? It was really just an hour-long edit of the first season of "Red vs Blue," an online video series that debuted way back in 2003. One of the first things that the guys from "RvB" said, before their Q&A even started, was that they weren't responsible for the title. So who is? Where'd the title come from? What does it even mean? And was it intended as a subtle warning that the show would, in fact, bite cock?
Sorry to be crude. "Red vs Blue," if you're not familiar, is sort of sketch-comedy series made by dubbing dialogue on top of pre-scripted game footage. We'd estimate that Sunday night's screening was only about 30% funny, 70% waiting-for-funny. Ouch. RottenTomatoes informs us that this ratio of good-to-bad is shared by such smash hits as Failure to Launch and The Shaggy Dog. Ouch ouch. Nevertheless, the audience was tolerant and engaged, with periodic chuckles; sort of like how people behave when they get together to watch old home videos that they've seen many times before.
After the jump: a slightly hostile Q&A, and two guys from the "RvB" team (we didn't catch their names, and can't think of any reason why we'd care to look them up) admit that they have no plans to exhibit their work theatrically. SO WHAT ARE WE DOING IN A GODDAMN THEATER?
Aside from "your city sucks," the "RvB" guys were oddly evasive in the Q&A. When asked how they can support themselves (RvB is a full-time job for some of them) they replied that leprechauns provided capital. When someone else asked if they ran into any legal problems with intellectual property, one of them replied, "we can't talk about it," while the other responded that Microsoft had very helpfully told them what they were and weren't allowed to put in their shows. Another guy asked if there was anything that they wanted to do but weren't able, and after a moment of huddled wispering, the "RvB" guys agreed that they couldn't talk about that, either. Hey, thanks for flying in so you could not answer our questions.
Okay, criticisms aside, "RvB" actually has the germ of a good idea. In describing Halo, the game in which "RvB" is based, one of the guys said, "you kill each other, you die, you respawn, and you do it all over again." It's sort of ingenious to take that universe and make it into a sort of Woody Allen movie where the soldiers are suddenly obsessing over minutia instead of, y'know, doing solider stuff. But you can only wring so much "what a fascinating juxtaposition" out of what "RvB" serves up.
In response to an armchair philosopher in the audience raising his hand so he could muse out loud about film, the guys made some vague noises about how they intend to stick to online and DVD exhibition. Probably a smart move.