Burnie Burns: Great Lecture

Before entering the doors of Alkek 250, I did not know what to expect. Honestly, I have never heard of Burnie Burns. However, through the course of this particular Mass Comm lecture, I gained new insight and knowledge of such topics as Rooster Teeth Productions and Burn’s contributions that encouraged the creation of Youtube.

While Burns was speaking, he had such a passion in his voice for his career choice. He candidly spoke of the highs and lows within his career field. Despite the obstacles he faced from time to time, he never relinquished his drive to achieve his goals.

From the lecture and my own research, I have learned that Rooster Teeth is basically a production company that hires people who write scripts and then uses videogame animation, also known as machinima, to act out the parts.

As a child, I hardly played video games. In fact, I have never owned a video game system. However, I found this type of animation fascinating. I could tell that many laborious efforts go into creating animation such as this.

Burns mainly spoke on one his series that he is particularly proud of called Red vs. Blue. He showed two different clips in the lecture. In the first clip, the characters were mainly standing around and speaking to one another. However, when Burns showed the second clip of one of the newer series in season 6, there was a noticeable increase of action. Burns said the reason the tone of the episodes changed is because it is important to always present the public with new concepts to keep them interested.

Some comical movie commercials that Burns had created were shown that made the entire audience laugh. My favorite was “Angry Birds”. I enjoyed how they took characters from an animated video game and transformed them into real actors.

For those who would like a career with Burns, I learned his company hires artists and animators.

Burns gave several pieces of valuable advice. My two favorite pieces are the following:

#1 In reference to episodes, Burns said “We don’t put the first episode of anything out until we have 6 in the bag.” He said this is important because you have to be able to tell people on the internet when to expect the next episode—you can’t leave them waiting.

#2 He said that if there is something you really like, a lot of people might really like it too. Basically he meant to explore certain topics i.e. Youtube videos you find fascinating and share them with the public. You just might make money off of it.

In essence, I enjoyed the lecture and left Alkek 250 with more knowledge than I had entered with.