Michael "Burnie" Burns

Co-Founder

Rooster Teeth Productions

 

Michael "Burnie" Burns is an independent filmmaker, and co-founder of Rooster Teeth Productions, LLC, based in Austin, TX. He has worked with animation and live action, but is best known for his work in Machinima, a genre of filmmaking that uses a real-time 3D CG rendering engines, typically from video games.

Burns is the co-creator of the Internet machinima series Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, filmed using the video games Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo: Reach. The series won four awards at the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences film festivals, and the award for "Best Animated Web Series" from the International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV). In 2003, Burns co-founded the production company Rooster Teeth Productions, to produce live action shorts, animated segments, and machinima projects.

Following the success of Red vs. Blue, Electronic Arts (EA) approached Burns with a request to develop a series to promote The Sims 2. The result was Rooster Teeth Productions' second comedy series, Strangerhood, which premiered in 2004.

As a result of his continued success, Burns is recognized as one of the innovators in the field of machinima. He has made guest appearances at the Penny Arcade Expo, San Diego Comic-Con International, Sundance, and The Sydney Film Festival. For his work on Immersion (2010), a live action series that tests video game tropes in the real world, he was nominated for an IAWTV award.