RiffTrax

History

The site was launched by Nelson and Legend Films, now renamed Legend3D, in 2006 and is based in San Diego. In 2012, RiffTrax was purchased from Legend3D by Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett and RiffTrax CEO David G. Martin. As of December 2014, RiffTrax had 13 employees.

The movies chosen for Mystery Science Theater 3000 were predominantly low-budget B-movies because the show itself was low budget and producers could only afford films with expired copyright or that had otherwise cheap licenses. The idea of RiffTrax came about after Mystery Science Theater 3000 was canceled and Nelson had researched and consulted a lawyer about the possibility of directly releasing DVDs of films with the commentaries included. But Nelson realized this initial idea was not feasible since he would be "sued out of existence." Instead, the best way to distribute the commentaries would be to sell them independently of the films, to avoid having to obtain the rights to distribute the movies themselves. There would be no legal or monetary restrictions to prevent Nelson from producing them, though viewers would have to provide the movies themselves.

The early RiffTrax were almost all solo efforts on Mike's part, but it soon became apparent that there was a strong demand for them, and Nelson was quickly able to recruit more riffers for the project. Most official RiffTrax (not counting fan-made iRiffs and the spin-off RiffTrax Presents series) have a stable cast of Mike and former Mystery Science Theater 3000 co-stars Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, a line-up that happens to be identical to that of The Film Crew and the last three seasons of MST3K. That said, the guest slots vary often; other MST3K alumni have been featured, such as Mary Jo Pehl and Bridget Nelson, in addition to Internet personalities Richard Kyanka (of Something Awful fame), Josh Fruhlinger (writer of The Comics Curmudgeon) and Chad Vader, as well as actors Neil Patrick Harris, Fred Willard, and Joel McHale, and parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic. Nelson has said that he would like to bring in other guests. The enthusiasm of guest riffers for the project led to the establishment of RiffTrax Presents, a series of tracks exclusively hosted by guest riffers and sanctioned by Nelson. The success of the guest format is such that "Three Riffer Editions" of some films previously solo riffed by Mike have been produced for the VOD service, which feature new riffs by Mike in conjunction with Murphy and Corbett, and Mike has ceased producing solo riffs since 2007. Most recent works created by Rifftrax are crafted by a small team of writers; longer works are divided into 20 to 30 minute sections for each writer to rewatch and develop riffs for before assembling the entire work.

Along with the feature length tracks, Corbett, Murphy and Nelson have created riffs for a number of short films, typically educational and safety films, similar to the shorts presented before features on Mystery Science Theater 3000. These include films by the Jam Handy Organization, Alfred P. Higgins Productions, Coronet Films and ACI Films, amongst others. Because these shorts are in the public domain, they can be downloaded with the commentary already recorded onto them. Shorts are usually released at least once, and often twice, a week

In 2008, RiffTrax launched iRiffs, which allows fans to upload commentaries to be sold on the website. iRiffs users are paid 50% of the net revenue generated by their products. iRiffs differentiates from normal RiffTrax in that both serious and humorous commentaries can be uploaded. In February 2009, a contest was held by RiffTrax, in which a winning iRiffs user would be given $1,000 and a chance to develop a RiffTrax Presents title, receiving instruction and critique from Nelson, Murphy and Corbett. The winners of the contest were Doug Walker, Rob Walker and Brian Heinz of That Guy with the Glasses, who contributed an iRiff of The Lion King. The RiffTrax commentary they produced was for Batman Forever.

In October 2015, Rifftrax negotiated the rights to release available Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes through Vimeo via an all-access subscription plan, with a new re-release uploaded each Monday; individual episodes could also be rented through the site, and in November 2015, RiffTrax also started to sell Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes on their website. The RiffTrax.com releases contain a newly recorded introduction on each episode by either Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, or Bridget Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl. A substantial percentage from the episode sales on the RiffTrax website goes to the cast members of MST3K.

On July 20, 2016, RiffTrax celebrated its tenth anniversary.

Live shows

As part of SF Sketchfest in San Francisco, California, Nelson, Murphy, and Corbett have appeared several times performing live riffs alongside a screening of a film. As of 2008, they have appeared three times, having riffed Daredevil and Over the Top in 2007 and Plan 9 from Outer Space in 2008, the last being shown in the historic Castro Theater. The RiffTrax crew have done live internet broadcasts on Ustream.tv, riffing public domain films and taking viewer questions.

RiffTrax has teamed with NCM Fathom Events to host special one-night live RiffTrax events. Nelson, Corbett, and Murphy, along with special guests, perform their riffing to a live audience in one theater, which is simultaneously broadcast live to select theaters around the country, except in the Pacific Time zone, where a replay of the broadcast is shown. The first show was performed live at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Tennessee on August 20, 2009, where Mike, Kevin, and Bill riffed Plan 9 from Outer Space, along with the short film Flying Stewardess and guest appearances by Veronica Belmont, Jonathan Coulton, and Rich Kyanka of Something Awful. An encore showing was shown on October 8 of that year. The second RiffTrax Live! show in theaters took place on December 16, 2009, where they riffed several Christmas short films, one featuring special guest Weird Al Yankovic. An encore showing was shown in theaters the next day. The third RiffTrax Live! show took place on August 19, 2010, with the trio riffing the cult classic Reefer Madness (its encore showing took place on August 24). A fourth live show riffing House on Haunted Hill, also filmed at the Belcourt, occurred on October 28, 2010, with special guest Paul F. Tompkins. A fifth took place on August 17, 2011, featuring the film Jack the Giant Killer. A sixth took place on August 16, 2012, featuring the film, Manos, The Hands of Fate. A seventh live event took place on October 25, 2012, featuring Birdemic: Shock and Terror. The live event featuring Starship Troopers took place on August 15, 2013. The ninth live event featuring Night of the Living Dead was performed on October 24, 2013 .

On February 25, 2013, RiffTrax announced a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to secure the rights to riff Twilight, the first film of The Twilight Saga, for their live show in August 2013. Though the Kickstarter was successful, the RiffTrax could not work a deal to secure the rights to Twilight and that they had instead used the funding to secure Starship Troopers.

On May 12, 2014, RiffTrax announced another Kickstarter campaign to raise money to secure the rights to the 1998 version of Godzilla. The Kickstarter raised the goal of $100,000 within a day. On May 29, they announced a stretch goal of $250,000 to secure the rights to Anaconda for their Halloween show; the goal was reached on June 10, the day before the Kickstarter's end.

For 2015, RiffTrax repeated the Kickstarter approach, successfully funding its four-movie event for the year, dubbed "The Crappening". The successful Kickstarter allowed them to riff on The Room, Sharknado 2: The Second One, Miami Connection, and Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny at different live events throughout the year. The Rifftrax riff of The Room will also be performed live during the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival's series of midnight special events.

For 2016, RiffTrax used a Kickstarter campaign to successfully fund their events for the year, meeting their initial goal of $225,000 within four days after the start of the campaign, with $620,999 as the total amount raised. The first event was a riffing of the film Time Chasers on May 5, 2016 and used a high definition remaster of the film provided by its director, David Giancola. The second event was a Mystery Science Theater 3000 cast member reunion on June 28, 2016, and took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The format of the reunion was similar to RiffTrax's SF Sketchfest "Night of the Shorts" shows, using various educational shorts as riffing material. Alongside Nelson, Corbett, and Murphy, the guests were Joel Hodgson, Bridget Nelson, Mary Jo Pehl, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, and Jonah Ray. The third event for 2016 was Toho's 1961 Kaiju classic Mothra on August 18, 2016 and featured a brand new widescreen print. The fourth RiffTrax event was the horror classic Carnival of Souls and took place on October 27, 2016. The print used was the 78 minute colorized version of the film previously released on DVD by Legend Films.

For 2017, RiffTrax again used a Kickstarter campaign to successfully fund their events for the year, meeting their initial goal being $250,000 on March 8, 2017, 16 days into the Kickstarter campaign. The first event is a new riff of Samurai Cop, planned for April 13, 2017. The second planned event is the "Summer Shorts Beach Party", planned for June 15, 2017. The format of the show is similar to the shorts shows from the SF Sketchfest "Night of the Shorts" and the MST3K Reunion Show. Alongside Nelson, Corbett, and Murphy, the only scheduled guests, as of March 4, 2017, are Bridget Nelson, Mary Jo Pehl, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, and Paul F. Tompkins. The third event will be the Doctor Who special The Five Doctors; for legal reasons, Rifftrax could not reveal this until the RiffTrax Kickstarter campaign had officially ended. This event is planned for August 17, 2017.

(1) The name for this Fathom Event presentation was RiffTrax Live: Christmas Shorts-Stravaganza and is available for purchase under that name.

(2) The name for this Fathom Event presentation was RiffTrax Live: The MST3K Reunion Show.

(3) The name for this Fathom event presentation is RiffTrax Live: Summer Shorts Beach Party.

Television special

In conjunction with the National Geographic Channel, Nelson, Corbett, and Murphy was part of a 3-part television special, "Total Riff Off" that aired on the channel on April 1, 2014 and became available to buy as video-on-demand later on the RiffTrax site. Each part was one hour long featuring the three riffing on older National Geographic footage. According to Nelson, the idea of the special came from a National Geographic producer who was also a fan of RiffTrax. RiffTrax and National Geographic worked together to find the best footage to work with for the special. In 2015, three additional episodes of "Total Riff Off" were created (two as 2015 RiffTrax Live Kickstarter rewards), which were also later available for purchase as video-on-demand on the RiffTrax website.

The Rifftones

In August 2008, Nelson, Corbett and Murphy formed a musical trio named The Rifftones, initially to compete in Quick Stop Entertainment's second Masters of Song Fu competition. They won the competition, beating fellow musicians Jonathan Coulton, Paul and Storm and, in the final round, Jason Morris. After the competition, they decided to continue creating songs as The Rifftones, making songs based on the movies they've riffed and releasing a CD collecting them, which is available on the RiffTrax site.

Use

RiffTrax commentaries are synchronized at the start of the movie using a cue. To reassure consumers that the MP3 file is synchronized with the film, fictional character and riffer "DisembAudio" speaks occasional lines in exact synchronization with the movie. "RiffTrax Presents" commentaries feature a female synchronization voice, Debbie. Though RiffTrax are suggested to be played on an MP3 player or with computer software, they are sold as unrestricted MP3s, allowing users to choose the viewing method that suits them the best. A RiffTrax Player is also offered as a free download for Windows computers.

The movies chosen for RiffTrax are based on two criteria: whether the movie lends itself towards a funny riffing, and whether the film is widely available on DVD. These criteria have resulted in a wide variety of genre and era of movies chosen to be riffed. The first audio commentary made available through the web site in July 2006 was for the 1989 film Road House, long cited by Nelson as the cheesiest movie ever made.

RiffTrax Player

The RiffTrax Player (RiffPlayer) is a program which automatically synchronizes the commentary playback to the DVD playback. The RiffTrax Player makes use of a commentary MP3 as well as a text file (.sync) containing the synchronization information of the DVD and the commentary. As of February 2015, the RiffTrax Player currently supports Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X Snow Leopard and up.

RiffTrax On Demand

RiffTrax On Demand features downloadable DRM-Free video files of films with RiffTrax commentaries embedded. RiffTrax On Demand has released many short, public domain, and educational films similar to the ones that MST3K would sometimes mock before a full-length movie began.