The first disc puts together their three Rooster Teeth Shorts volumes, but it also adds a little extra fun to the mix. Sure, you can go from menu to menu and watch the shorts as if you had bought the three volumes individually, but why do that when you can watch a mockumentary, behind the music-like film that attempts to string the crazy shorts together into a semi-cohesive history of the Rooster Teeth studio.
Oddly enough, this is the first time that I’ve sat down and watched what is technically a special feature before seeing the main content. The feature is called "The Kinda True Story of Rooster Teeth Shorts" and it uses between-shorts interviews and narration to get the viewer to the next video. Through this funny process, you go from a short that involves cloning new employees to trying to get some paperwork out of the crew or from a search for scissors to an odd obsession with cardboard cutouts. The story even finds ways to connect characters played by the same actor like one of the crew’s Dad who later shows up as an evil sorcerer.
The set’s other DVD is a collection of the company’s Animated Adventures. Basically, the employees get together and tell stories (these might be part of a podcast, but I’m not sure about that), and then another employee draws out a cartoon showing what was said. Most start off with the group at a table in front of microphones, but as the story gets going, the settings change and you are brought into the odd semi-stick figure world of Rooster Teeth Animated Adventures. While the shorts aren’t strung together like a mockumentary as seen with the live-action videos, you do have the choice to either watch the adventures individually or as part of a longer experience where several adventures are played and then it cuts to some of the employees on a set talking about what they just watched. This makes for an interesting form of commentary that doesn’t actually interrupt the shows themselves.
Rooster Teeth: Best of RT Shorts & Animated Adventures comes with a few amusing special features as well. There are a few extra shorts that weren’t previously released on a DVD, as well as a computer-screen recorded time-lapse video of the animator building one of the Animated Adventures with a commentary track. One of the adventures was also converted into a 3D animated short.
Rooster Teeth has a ton of funny videos out there, and this collection offers quite a few hours of entertainment. If you already enjoy the studio’s videos, then you should already be looking at picking up this DVD set. If you haven’t seen their stuff before, then go check out some of their videos on their YouTube channel (linked below).
