RvB:TO
From Roosterpedia
RvB:TO is short for Red vs Blue: Toronto, contrary to many other interpretations.
Contents |
History
The Origin of RVBTO
Reportedly, Ontarians had tried rallying Toronto Sponsors for an event as far back as the days of the old, old RvB forum. This obviously didn't work out but the ball got rolling again when a monumentally simple, site-changing question was posted by RvB member Wingnut in early October 2004: [1]
"If a bunch of us Canadian fans organized a RvB screening, would the Rooster Teeth guys show up?"
The post was followed almost immediately by a response from Microbe, " I want to set something up here in Toronto... We all should unite," and shortly after that DiMono. Future CanWest co-founder Laird even chipped in to the discussion. Locations, dates, costs and activities were tossed around and on October 12th, 2004 a name was finally chosen: Red Vs. Blue T.O SHOW. Four months later, RVBTO 0.5 came about and proved to be a major turning point for the future. The event history below for 2005 and 2006 is copied unedited from the archived rvbto.com website with permission
RvBTO 0.5 · February 26, 2005
The first RvBTO took place on February 26, 2005 in The Hive lounge at Seneca College @ York University. That's a lot of nouns and connecting words to say it was a small event that lasted almost an entire day. All tolled, we showed 165 minutes of Red vs Blue and an independent film called Shades of Gray, made by filmmaker Jesse Cowell.
The event filled up a single Saturday afternoon quite nicely, but it literally took months of planning to bring it all together. Most of this planning took place on the forums of RoosterTeeth.com, and it involved a lot of investigation of various venues. We originally looked to Ryerson University, but a solid deal could not be struck in time.
With little time to spare before the anticipated date, we turned to the Seneca@York building, and discovered there was a good deal to be had if we rented out The Hive. We could get it for an entire day at a nominal fee, with no hidden costs. The deal was made, and the event took place with only two weeks to advertise. By some stroke of luck we landed a front page news article on RoosterTeeth.com to help promote our event, and we ended up with about 50 people in attendance.
We included a special Question and Answer period with the Shades of Grey creator Jesse at the end of the day.
RvBTO 1 · July 9, 2005
The first real RvBTO took place on July 9, 2005 in a lecture hall at Ryerson University. Planning began almost immediately following the conclusion of the previous event, and the crew size increased from 3 to 16. We showed seasons 1 and 2 of Red vs Blue, as well as the world premiere of season 3.
The event once again filled up an entire Saturday, beginning at 1pm and concluding at roughly 9pm. Since there was much more time available for planning this event, we not only got more front page news coverage on RoosterTeeth.com, but we were able to secure Burnie Burns and Gustavo Sorola as special guests from Rooster Teeth.
During the season 1 screening Burnie and Gus were spirited away for a lengthy interview about Rooster Teeth, their shows and their website, and then they received a guided tour of Toronto. They returned to the venue just in time to give a personal introduction to season 3, which was followed by a 1-hour Q&A session. When that concluded, they retired to the hall outside the screening room to sell and autograph season 3 DVDs.
RvBTO 2 · August 11-13, 2006
Continuing the trend of growing bigger and better with each incarnation, the 2006 event took up an entire weekend and included special guests from Rooster Teeth from three different cities: Dan Godwin from Austin, Texas, Kathleen Zuelch from Los Angeles, California, and Nico Audy-Rowland from Cambridge, Massecheusets. As an extra bonus, Luke McKay, who became a Rooster Teeth Staff member shortly after RvBTO 2, came in from Vancouver, British Columbia.
Friday was split between a pub night, a LAN party, and paintball. On Saturday we returned to the same lecture hall at Ryerson University for a machinima festival, followed by a special performance by Nico of Trocadero, followed by Red vs Blue Season 4. After that we went across the street to finish the night in a bar we rented just for us, where Nico played a whole lot more music for us, joined by RvBTO's own HatHead on keyboard.
Sunday we held a Toronto-wide scavenger hunt, which ended in Queen's Park with prizes and an afternoon-long barbecue. We also played a brutally intense game of Ultimate Frisbee in Queen's Park.
RvBTO 3 · July 13-15, 2007
After two years of RvBTO we decided to poll the members of the Rooster Teeth community to see what they liked the most about the previous events, and what they could do without. The resounding response was that they valued the chance to interact with other fans and forum members more than anything. As such, we adapted the format of the event to focus more on the community and less on showing the videos. The guests for 2007 were Burnie Burns, Becca Frasier, Luke McKay and Nico Audy-Rowland with the rest of his band Trocadero.
The only official planned event for Friday was paintball. Some people went to Shoeless Joe's for dinner and general mingling, but that was not an official part of the event. Despite it not being official, Burnie, Becca and Luke all attended the dinner, and were the last ones to leave it. After dinner, people assembled from both dinner and paintball at a bar called Fiddler's Green to celebrate a site member's birthday.
Saturday began with a meet & greet, followed by some icebreaking games to allow the members to become more familiar with each other. Then, instead of showing Season 5 in a theatre environment as the screening had been in years past, it was shown in the same room as the games, giving attendees the option of watching it or continuing to mingle. Despite the lower importance placed on the screening by people who answered the survey, almost everybody pulled up a piece of carpet to watch the abbreviated Season 5, which ended after episode 97.
As a small part of the event DiMono ran a contest to see who could make a video to summarize the first four seasons of Red vs Blue. The winning video would be shown before Season 5 at RvBTO, for all in attendance to see. There were four entries, and michygeary's was the winning entry. It was received with resounding applause.
Michael "Burnie" Burns, Nico Audy-Rowland and Rebecca Frasier were interviewed for the RvBTO Documentary conducted by Microbe. This occurred in the cafeteria of the Living and Learning Building at Ryerson during the screening of the completed and reduced for time version of Season Five.
After the video Jengaship ran a Q&A session with the special guests from Rooster Teeth, which was followed by Burnie giving a live demonstration of the next version of the Rooster Teeth website. Prior to Jengaship's Q&A Commissar Litvinov made a special appearance to offer a role as being the "Master Moderator" for the Q&A. In the absence of merchandise to sell, Rooster Teeth gave away advanced Season 5 DVD covers and signed them.
When we were done at the venue, we went across the road to the Ram and the Rye for an evening of music-accompanied dinner. The evening began with several open mic performances, and was headlined by all of Trocadero performing a full set. After they were done playing, Trocadero was available to sign copies of a special Toronto Mixes CD they had brought to sell at the event. There were 50 (verification needed) copies available in different colour cases.
Sunday we held an early afternoon scavenger hunt, followed by a barbecue at Queen's Park.
RvBTO 4 · June 27-29, 2008
Matt and Jason were originally announced by Gus as the year's special RT guests. Unfortunately Matt discovered about 24 hours before he was supposed to leave that his passport had expired. Thus, Joel was his replacement. Luke McKay returned for his third visit, along with Knuckles Dawson. Podcast master Jengaship adopted Host position from BigNiceJohn. This was also the year of the successful Get Duste to TO campaign.
Guests
RvBTO 0.5: Jesse Cowell
RvBTO 1: Burnie Burns, Jesse Cowell and Gus Sorola
RvBTO 2: Nico Audy-Rowland, Jesse Cowell, Dan Godwin, Luke McKay and Kathleen Zuelch
RvBTO 3: Nico Audy-Rowland, Burnie Burns, Becca Frasier, Luke McKay and Trocadero
RvBTO 4: Nico Audy-Rowland, Knuckles Dawson, Joel Heyman, Luke McKay, Jason Saldana and Trocadero
Quotes
"I consider it the #1 fan event" --Burnie Burns
"Did you say meow?" - Innumberable RT members during a Super Troopers quote-a-thon.
"That's what she said!" - An unofficial motto
"Boo this man!"
"I ate a whole fucking pig!"
The Originators
The event was purportedly started by some sort of ancient sub-human class of people. Current anthropological data suggests that they went by "Canadians," but it's hard to tell. Many say that their culture was wiped out after the descent of the glaciers, but it's often thought that they migrated south to the United States and through genetic experimentation became practically impossible to distinguish from Americans. Of course, science has caught up and determined a few easy ways to tell a Canadian from an American.
A Canadian:
1. Has a penchant for all things socialized.
2. Will brag about health care ad nauseum.
3. Always wears a Canadian flag patch on his/her clothing/luggage.
4. Frequently drops the "Eh-bomb."
5. Can't get past the 32nd latitude without bursting into flames.
6. Spends approximately 42% of their time thinking about hockey.
7. Contrary to popular belief, Canadians actually do have souls - they just sold them for the right to live next to America.
The Convention
People say as far as cons go, this one is the best. It's probably just because everyone involved is a huge nerd and there's nothing better to a nerd than feeling like he fits in. Apparently the RT Staff even love the event, though roofies may have been involved.
Notable No-Shows:
Only one man has raised and dashed the hopes of many, as he is prone to do. Known in a few circles as the "Con-Tease," Alsace promised to go to RvB:TO2 and suddenly developed an overgrown eye. For RvB:TO3, he came up with an even lamer excuse, claiming destitution and having to work. Showing ultimate dedication to being the definitive no-show, 'Sace committed a scheduling blunder that resulted in the jeopardization of his future medical career while simultaneously (and erroneously) preventing an appearance at RvB:TO4. Clearly, this man is no longer welcome at any RvB:TO events hitherto.
