User blog:Electric Spark/Volume 2 DVD Commentaries

Hey guys. Spark here. There's a lot of information to be had that can only be delved into via the RWBY DVD commentaries, but as those are impossible for everyone to access, I'm making this blog to upload transcriptions of them (until such time as they may or may not be moved to an official page).

As someone has already started with the Volume 1 commentaries, I'll go ahead and do Volume 2, starting with Directors, then moving to the rest. I will also go ahead and save time by making edits for major revelations from the commentary (such as Tukson's original character design featuring blond hair).

Please enjoy.

=Director's Commentary=

Chapter 1: Best Day Ever
[0:00]

Kerry: Ayyy!

Grey: Ayyy.

Miles: Must be the money!

[Laughter]

Miles: [Laughing] I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Kerry: And that’s the beginning.

Gray: Two seconds in.

Kerry: Welcome everybody, to the RWBY 2-I-don’t-know-what-we’re-calling-this-commentary.

Gray: The, uh… [stutters]

[assorted stuttering]

Kerry: Top, top men.

Monty: Big dog.

Miles: The top men commentary.

Kerry: Yeah. Uh…

Miles: If it’s not labelled as that on the DVD, I’m gonna be really disappointed.

Kerry: It’s probably not gonna be.

Miles: It probably won’t.

Kerry: I am Kerry Shawcross.

Monty: Monty.

Miles: Miles Luna.

Gray: Gray.

Kerry: Alright. That’s us.

[Laughter]

Gray: Who are you?

Miles: Thanks for coming, everybody!

Kerry: Some of you got our last names, who knows, we’ll see. It’s on the back of the box, I guess.

Miles: Oh my gosh. So…

Kerry: Look at Mercury, there.

Gray: [Unintelligible]

Miles: It is…

Monty: Emerald and Mercury.

Miles: Here we are again, guys. Another year, another, another RWBles.

Monty. RWBles…

Miles: Kinda hard to believe, man.

Monty: And bewbles.

Miles. RWBles and bewbles.

Monty: Yeah.

Miles: Dude! Look at how far we come! Look how pretty this is!

Kerry: Look at this.

Miles: Look at them facial expressions, them color, them w-

Monty: Shadows…

Miles: Yeaaaaah.

Monty: Fingers…

Miles: I think that…there’s a car right there… This is, um…

Kerry: I think that car’s, that-

[1:00]

Miles: Oh, whoa! Whoa, whoa! Guys, we screwed up! Where’re the shadow people?

[Laughter]

Kerry: Oh no!

Gray: I thought you were gonna put them in.

Kerry: I forgot to make ‘em all dark.

Miles: Oh no!

Kerry: That’s what I was doing last year.

Miles: Yeah, that’s it, you were compositing black over all the extras.

Kerry: Yeah.

Miles: You know.

Kerry: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Kerry: So now that THAT is history, and very true, we can go on with the fact that they’re colored now. I’m really tired.

[Tired laughter]

Miles: We’re all really tired.

Monty: You guys have been sleeping right over there.

Kerry: Yeah.

Miles: Yeah, not five feet from where we’re recording this audio commentary right now, Kerry and I were passed out.

Kerry: Miles, I think you need to reevaluate [what] five feet is.

Miles: I…yeah, that’s right.

Monty: Just to make sure. J.J., Mercury.

Gray: Yes.

Monty: Katie, Emerald.

Gray: Yes.

Miles: Book, Book…

Monty: Tukson…

Miles: Adam Ellis!

Monty: Adam Ellis. We like Tukson so much. Too bad he dies.

Miles: Uhh, what?

Kerry: What? Spoiler alert.

Miles: Spoiiiler alert.

Kerry: Just to be very clear right now, we are going to say things that are spoiler-ey

Monty: That bell is huge.

Kerry: So don’t watch the commentary first. Also, we’re probably gonna swear.

Miles: I’m gonna try not to.

Kerry: [unintelligible] show [unintelligible] kids.

Miles: I always try to make a point not to swear with RWBY stuff. But it’s very difficult seeing as I spend most of my time in Red vs. Blue land these days.

[2:00]

Gray: Eh, some of the other commentaries have already blown it.

Miles: Yeah.

Kerry: Yeah, that’s fine.

Miles: Oh, it is a principle of mine!

Monty: Remember when Tukson had blond hair?

Kerry: Yeah, I remember that.

Miles: I do, yeah! I remember when we misspelled his name Tucson.

Kerry: Yeah, I just kept pronouncing it “Tukson” because we were awesome.

[Laughter]

Kerry: Gray was trying to be really nice about it, he was like: “Are you sure you don’t wanna make it like, ‘k’ or something?” I was like, “Well, I mean, the color’s with a ‘c’”, and he was like “okaaay”, and then I was like “alright”. I’m stupid.

Miles: We’re dumb.

Kerry: He was like, “you know it’s ‘Two-san’ [Tucson], right?” I was like “…shit”.

Miles: [laughter] So this was the first scene that we wrote, obviously, and it was one I was really excited about, because I LOVE me some good bad guys.

Kerry: Yeah.

Miles: And Emerald and Mercury are a lot of fun. This was a fun scene showing off that they’re kids, they’re immature, that guy’s kind of a punk…

Monty: Also, I remember, you guys always wanted to start an established show with “Here’s some new characters. Let’s go really left-side and just be like ‘Let’s start with someone completely different, and then shoot someone right off the bat.’”

[3:00]

Miles: Yeah, I really think that was the kernel of the idea.

Monty: And you did it twice.

Miles: Let’s just start the season, and let’s not even say who these people are, let’s not relate ‘em or anything, let’s just show “Hey, here are these characters doing this other thing.”

Monty: You did it with them, and then you did it with Sun and Neptune.

Miles: Yeah.

Kerry: Kinda. Like, you start with these guys.

Miles: Yeah.

Gray: I’m trying to think, is this really the first body hittin’ the floor in RWBY?

Miles: Yeah, no. This is like the first person to die, I think!

Gray: You’re gonna open up Volume 2 with this, and here we go!

[All talking at once, nearly unintelligible]

Monty: J.J.’s was very excited about that. He always mentions that he’s the first person to ever kill anyone in RWBY.

Miles: Man, that’s not disturbing.

[Laughter]

Gray: Well, you know, maybe he’s not dead. We don’t actually show it, so maybe they’re just here to spar, and then help him pack.

Kerry: You say that, but the idea of putting blood on the door came up several times.

Miles: Oh my god, really?

Gray: Yeah, we wanted to show blood spatter behind, on the wall back there.

Miles: Jesus.

Kerry: Yeah, we decided against that, but it DEFINITELY came up.

[4:00]

Monty: They also say they killed him later.

Kerry: There’s that, too.

Miles: Hey, who’s that handsome guy?

Kerry: Uh, that’s Blake?

Miles: Oh, too late!

[Laughter]

Kerry: Learn the characters?

Miles: Oh, hello ladies. It’s been a while, good to see ya.

Kerry: Oh my gosh. This was fun.

Miles: So Monty, you pitched this opening scene to us with “Guys, I wanna do a fight scene, dot dot dot, by Monty Oum.”

[Laughter]

Miles: And we were like: “That sounds great!”

Monty: Wait, wait, this was my idea?

Gray: Not so much of a food fight as it is a…

Miles: The food fight, I’m pretty sure was your idea.

Kerry: I think so.

Monty: Oh, okay man. It feels like forever ago.

Gray: We never put in the cherry stone.

Miles: Oh, do you wanna talk about that, Gray?

Gray: Yeah, we were right on the fence of how tongue-in-cheek we wanted to get with the humor in RWBY.

Miles: Hah. Hah. Tongue-in-cheek.

Kerry: What tongue touches what cheek?

Gray: Where, in one shot later, she catches the cherry right “here”, and she’d actually be holding a cherry stem with a knot in it.

Miles: We posed her hand exactly that way so we could add it in-comp if we wanted to.

Gray: Yeah, we just didn’t have the [unintelligible] to do it.

[5:00]

Miles: I think it was like fifty percent “ehhh” and fifty percent “ehhh, we don’t have the time.”

Kerry: Little bit of column A, little bit of column B. Little bit of column C.

Miles: Ooh, talkin’ ‘bout that C column!

[Laughter]

Kerry: There’s this Brad Pitt SNL skit from like four years ago that I just showed Miles, and he hates it.

Miles: [Laughing] I HATE it! It doesn’t make sense!

Kerry: It makes perfect sense!

Miles: Brad Pitt doesn’t talk like that at all!

Kerry: He talks like that! Anyway…

Miles: Okay, I’m gonna go ahead and get this out there. I think, honestly, my favorite thing to happen in RWBY Volume 2, is getting to see Weiss trying to be a friendly person.

Kerry: Yeah.

Miles: It melts my heart, man.

Monty: It’s pretty awesome.

Miles: She’s still the Ice Queen, but…

Monty: Was it mostly planned? Or was it part performance, part…you know…

Gray: This powder kept coming off.

Monty: Right. I don’t think you guys did it intentionally, it just kinda happened, right?

[6:00]

Miles: It started off, just when it comes to fight scenes, you do a good job of keeping in mind how long a team’s been together, how much energy they expelled, at what point they’ve been together for x amount of days, years, months, whatever the heck. Love that guy. What a jerk.

Monty: Yeah, [unintelligible]? Kerry.

Miles: So anyway, anyway-

Monty: There were so many drawings of that shot right there.

Gray: Yeah, within a day or two, it was really quick.

Miles: You do a really good job of trying to keep up with the character relationships in fight scenes and stuff, and that was something we wanted to try and do - I love that shot – with the girls. And we wanted to try and make a point with Weiss a little more friendly, making them a little more open, but she’s still Weiss. Kara really nailed that awkward, friendly-kinda vibe. They just blend well together.

Monty: I remember reading it and thinking “It’s pretty subtle”, but when you see people react to it, I was like “Man, she’s really trying!” And all the crazy poses and action she goes through, once it gets through animation and performance, then-

Kerry: The execution really made it. I think it’s just part of natural character progression.

Miles: Hah, loser.

Kerry: As you get to know people, you open up a little bit more.

[7:00]

Monty: I wanted to do more with Jaune in this fight, by the way. In my fights, it’s easier when you have x amount of people, in this, it’s eight people, you just KO people as soon as possible.

Kerry: Seven’s the perfect number. Eight is just “ahhh!”

Monty: You’ve got to establish that someone’s KO’d for x amount of time so you can get to…

Kerry: I thought you said kale.

Gray: Speaking of food, shoutout to the Beacon cafeteria staff for leaving a bajillion whole watermelons and turkeys just lying around.

Kerry: Yeah, you know.

Miles: It was Swordfish Saturday, too!

[Laughter]

Miles: Oh man, yeah, this was just a delight to see. One thing that was unique this season, for me at least, was that Red vs. Blue’s been taking up so much of my time that I haven’t had the – oh, this was just great.

Monty: We put this in the trailer, and everyone was like “What’s gonna happen?!”

[8:00]

Kerry: Yeah, we took out all the food.

Gray: We took out all the stains in their clothing, we took out all the food and cups in the background, just to mess with them.

Miles: Okay, real quick, now Ren, I think, would totally have this fight, but there’s one problem. Upskirt right there, totally distracted. He can’t focus, it’s game over. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s down for the count!

Kerry: So, by the way, that’s celery. It started out as-

Monty: Those are leeks. And they started out – if you look at that table –

Kerry: I don’t know vegetables.

Monty: I may have said it in another commentary, he picks up a pair of cucumbers, but all it looked like was that he was trying to smack Yang with a pair of wobbly dildos.

Gray: I thought it was sausages or something, wasn’t it?

Kerry: My suggestion was sausages, but it was like “Really? We’re gonna make ‘em flesh-colored?”

Monty: I tried to add spots to the cucumbers, then they started looking like, you know…

Kerry: A spotted dick.

Monty: Very spotted dick.

Kerry: Gross.

Monty: And I was just like “I have some leeks lying around, I’ll just give him the leeks.” But there’s a table full of dicks there that he could have used.

Miles: What I was getting at with the RvB thing was uh…

Kerry: So, another interruption…

[Laughter]

[9:00]

Miles: Last year’s commentary, I hadn’t had a chance to see the final episode with the Penny fight, and I was blown away. I was just like “What is this? This is awesome!” That’s been every episode of RWBY this season, and it’s great every time Thursday hits, because it’s just like “Oh my god. That was ridiculous.”

Kerry: You COULD just get the episode off our internal server.

Gray: So as we’re doing the commentary, you’re more or less binge-watching your own show.

Miles: Yeah, pretty much. I remember what we wrote, and now I get to see how it was executed.

Monty: Also, as we record this today, Chapter 5 is coming out.

Miles: Oh my god, is today Thursday?

Kerry: Yeah, you get to watch five early now, Miles.

[Laughter]

Miles: Take that, Internet!

Kerry: Special screening.

Monty: I also have to fly in about four hours to PAX. We’re so last-minute on everything.

Kerry: Yeah, we’re not this when it’s 6am this time, but we’re doing this…

Monty: Oh, this shot is awesome.

Miles: Yeah, this was really, really cool, dude.

Kerry: Who ended up doing this? Shane?

Monty and Gray: Shane, yeah.

Miles: Oh, no kidding?

Monty and Gray: Yeah.

Monty: Shane did the simulation.

Miles: Oh my god.

Monty: He bowling-balled a sphere to the tables, and then had Jeff do a reverse.

Miles: Yeah, Shane was like “Man, it’d be cool if all these key frames were backwards”, and Jeff was like “I can do this.”

[10:00]

Gray: This whole thing is foreshadowing for something we’ll be talking about later.

Kerry: Dun dun dun.

Miles: I gotta say man. Mad props to Shane. He always manages to find a way to slip in so much character into every little shot. Like that last table that’s late to the party, he didn’t have to do that at all, but it gives that table a little bit of character. And you’ll see in the next scene with the bad guys, he’s always giving a perfect f-

Monty: You can point at Emerald.

Miles: Yeah, the facial expressions. Like Torchwick’s whole cuttin’ the throat and all that stuff? He just added that in and it was beautiful!

Monty: It was not planned. That was just Shane being Shane and adding random shit.

Miles: Oh my god, it’s great.

Monty: If we’re lucky, he’ll probably end up adding in a random rap video when we’re not looking.

Kerry and Miles: Yo.

Gray: Or a Raptor video.

Monty: Or a Raptor video.

Miles: Oh man, did Raptor make it into this one?

Gray: Yeah, I hear he’s in.

Monty: Wait, what?

Gray: Yeah. We’ll see.

Miles: Oh god. Gray, I love you. Can I just say that? I love you. Torchwick makes me smile every single time he is onscreen.

[11:00]

Gray: [whispers] I’m not bad, I’m just written that way.

[Laughter]

Monty: I even got to do a little Torchwick animation this year. Like, not action stuff.

Kerry: Oh yeah.

Monty: And it is so much fun to do Torchwick.

Gray: That sass.

Monty: Like, he is so sassy, he could be a black woman.

Kerry: Jesus. [Unintelligible] hair gel.

Miles: I love it when bad guys get together and hate each other.

Kerry: Yeah, they’re still assholes.

Miles: Yeah, they’re still total jerks.

Kerry: It’s not like they get together and are like “Hey man, what’s up? How’s it goin’?”

Miles: Yeah, it’s so great. And this was a lot of fun again, getting to show off to Torchwick, these are just some kids that happen to have a very, very powerful boss that he’s kind of afraid of. And he thinks he’s hot stuff, but at the end of this scene, Emerald takes his little lighter thing. I dunno, that was just another moment that I thought was a lot of fun.

Monty: Like this moment right here, just watch Emerald, she’s like…

Miles: Denied.

Gray: Senpai, notice me!

Miles: Denied.

Kerry: I was so worried people wouldn’t catch that, but that was the main comment about this episode.

Gray: Yeah, everyone got it.

Kerry: I was so happy.

Monty: Our viewers are so perceptive.

Kerry: Yeah, they are.

Gray: Yeah, they really are.

Kerry: Yeah, they keep doing things where I think “Is that too subtle?” And that’s what they’re talking about the most. I’m like, “Okay, I guess that wasn’t subtle!”

[12:00]

Miles: About as subtle as that Red vs. Blue reference that we just threw in?! [Laughs] That was fun. Oh gosh… and there it is. I love you, Shane. God, I’m gonna go hug you as soon as this is over.

Kerry: Do you wanna group hug him?

Miles: Dude, yeah. Let’s team up on that guy.

Kerry: Let’s give him a circle.

Miles: Oh man. Shoutout to Jessica Nigri.

Gray: That was Jessica, as Cinder.

Miles: She. Was. Awesome. Continues to be awesome.

Monty: Yeah, she does so much with… It’s a hard voice to do, ya know?

Gray: You can tell she’s been watching and studying anime for a long time, but this is her first real voice part.

[Assorted Assents]

Gray: [unintelligible] just nailed it right out of the gate.

Miles: She’s such a goofball. It was so much fun getting to hang out with her the weekend we recorded this.

Monty: When we had conversations about potential characters, she was like “How about this character? How about this character?” And I was like, “Let me mash that in my head for a bit and come back to you.” ‘Cause like that’s how kinda the genesis of Cinder, she had a lot of comparison of animes that she likes and stuff, and things she thinks she could play, so it’s like “Yeah, I think I have a place for that.” So it’s really cool, like this moment right here.

[13:00]

Gray: Yeah, that was fun.

Monty: And then Shane’s little acting right there, with the smile? It’s like, “What’s goin’ on there?” Oh, and then you had a little bit of fire in that shot.

Kerry: Just a little bit. Just a little bit.

Gray: Jess still hasn’t cosplayed Cinder as of this recording, though.

Kerry: As of this recording. We’ll see.

Gray: Hint, hint.

Monty: Well, maybe there’s another outfit that she could wear.

Kerry: Hint, hint!

Miles: I don’t get it.

Kerry: She’s gonna cosplay as Jaune.

Miles: Nice!

Monty: She could do it, too.

Kerry: She could, absolutely.

Miles: Well, that works great, ‘cause I was working on a Cinder cosplay, so this just works out.

Monty: Awesome.