LoadingReadyRun
LoadingReadyRun, often abbreviated to LRR, is a Canadian entertainment group that produces video and audio comedy. It often covers video games, internet trends, and popular culture.
Founded in October 2003 by Graham Stark and Paul Saunders and based in Victoria, British Columbia, the group's output has included sketch comedy, video game streams, panel shows, game shows, podcasts, and reality TV shows. LoadingReadyRun have also run the fundraiser Desert Bus For Hope since 2007. LoadingReadyRun produces videos and podcasts independently, and has also worked under contract with other companies, under the legal name Bionic Trousers Media.
History
LoadingReadyRun was founded by Graham Stark and Paul Saunders in October 2003. It began producing a weekly sketch video which it uploaded onto its own website. LRR never missed that weekly deadline, even while traveling. LRR's name and graphic design for its title cards, credits and website was based on the Commodore 64.In 2007, LoadingReadyRun broadcast Desert Bus For Hope, a fundraiser to raise money for the charity Child's Play. LRR have repeated this event every year since.
In December 2008 Graham and Paul tied for first place in The Escapist's Second Annual Film Festival with Unskippable, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 style take of the introduction cinematic to the video game Lost Planet. For winning the contest they were rewarded with a contract to produce a weekly video for The Escapist. Unskippable was LRR's second series after the sketches, and would be followed by further series produced for The Escapist including Escapist News Network, Feed Dump, and Daily Drop. The sketches were also hosted on The Escapist during this time.
Some of LRR's videos have been featured in film festivals such as the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival in San Diego, and shown on major television networks, including G4 Canada and CNN.
In 2013, LoadingReadyRun announced that the sketches were becoming too labor- and time-intensive to produce on a weekly basis without impacting other projects. It ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund one final year before retiring the videos in 2015. The Kickstarter also provided funding to start live streaming.
On 25 March 2015, Stark announced on their blog that they would be leaving The Escapist and subsequently ending Unskippable. Unskippable could not be continued as The Escapist owned the property. Feed Dump was continued by LoadingReadyRun independently. On 13 July 2022, LoadingReadyRun announced the acquiring of Unskippable from The Escapist and started republishing it under their own brand on the channel LoadingReadyRun Video Games, with new episodes to come after the archive is uploaded.
LoadingReadyRun has produced paid video content for other companies. LRR produces Friday Nights, a scripted comedy about Magic: The Gathering. It was produced under contract from Wizards of the Coast from 2012 through 2019, but is now produced in-house by LRR. LRR also produced content for Penny Arcade's PATV, including the reality TV show Strip Search, and made Tabletop Deathmatch for Cards Against Humanity. LRR has also produced Fairway Solitaire commercials for Big Fish Games and Pocket Planes commercials for NimbleBit. Today, LRR's income comes primarily from direct donations, which it receives from viewers through Patreon, Twitch, and YouTube. A number of its members work full-time for LoadingReadyRun, and they have said that they plan to bring more of their contract workers on full-time as funding and interest increase.
On 28 June 2022, Graham Stark announced that he was suffering from an aggressive form of lymphoma, for which he was receiving chemotherapy. It was announced on November 14 during Desert Bus 2022 that he was in full remission, with no expectation of recurrence.
Members
The main crew of LoadingReadyRun consists of members who have regular shows on their Twitch channel, and/or are frequently involved with production. Some former crew members will still occasionally appear in videos, streams, or podcasts.Main crew
- Graham Stark
- Paul Saunders
- Kathleen De Vere
- James Turner
- Alex Steacy
- Cameron Lauder
- Brendan "Beej" Dery
- Heather Dery
- Ian Horner
- Coriander "Cori" Dickinson
- Adam Savidan
- Ben "Bengineering" Ulmer
- Matt Griffiths
- Benjamin Wheeler
- Serge Yager
- Nelson Salahub
- Jordynne Hatton
- Natalia "Tally" Petter
- Tim Sevenhuysen
- Morgan vanHumbeck
- Bill Watt
- Ben Wilkinson
- Jeremy "Jer" Petter
- Matt Wiggins
- Wes Borg
- Andrew Cownden
- Brad Kirkland
- Johnny_Lunchbox
- Nathan Mosher
- Kate Stark
- Raymond Steacy
- Molly Lewis
- Ash Vickers
- Missie Peters
- Bradley Rains
- Devin "Featherweight" Harrigan
- Chris "Fugiman" Gamble
- RebelliousUno
- Jacob Burgess
- Ashley Turner
- Jeremy White
- Liam Coughlan
- Taylor Quinn
- Dale Friesen
- Elisa "LeeLee" Scaldaferri
- MangledPixel
- Johnny Blakeborough
- Ben Soileau
- Lissette Arevalo
Work
Scripted comedy
LoadingReadyRun began as a series of short one- to two-minute short films, posted to the LRR website each week. The sketch series ran from 2003 to 2015. Sketches with notable success included:; How to Talk like a Pirate : Part of a fictional 1970s-style language-learning series, this video teaches the nuances of pirate speech. It was released for International Talk Like a Pirate Day, 2006. Subsequent Talk Like a Pirate Days have led to the video being recirculated once a year.
; Three PS3s : Posted around the release of the comparatively scarce and expensive PlayStation 3, this video features Paul brazenly claiming to own "three PS3s". The video spread quickly when it was posted to YouTube, with viewers posting death threats and incensed comments as well as video parody responses. In truth, the entire crew owned zero PS3s; they borrowed two of them and the third was a hollow display model. With the launch of the PlayStation 4 in 2013, Paul recorded another video, in which he now claims to have four PlayStation 4 consoles, and did so again in 2020 with the launch of the PlayStation 5, claiming to own five PlayStation 5 consoles. Otherwise, the theme and tone are the same in all videos, albeit with increased complexity and production value in each successive video.
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In 2013, LoadingReadyRun announced that the Weekly Videos were becoming too labor- and time-intensive to produce on a weekly basis without impacting other projects, and began a Kickstarter campaign to fund one final year before retiring the videos in 2015. Instead of the weekly comedy sketches, LRR produces shorter sketch videos called Crapshots as well as Magic: The Gathering-themed short sketches called Sick Rips.
LRR also produces commodoreHUSTLE, a plotted series dramatizing the personal lives of the crew, officially described as "A web series about the creators of a web series". The crew play exaggerated versions of themselves – Paul Saunders is often portrayed as a technical genius without common sense, Graham Stark is abusive to his roommate Matt Wiggins, and Morgan VanHumbeck is an egotistical buffoon – and a running theme in the series is the group's dysfunctional nature and infighting. commodoreHUSTLE is now produced as part of LRR's Loading Ready Live shows.
LRR was commissioned by Wizards of the Coast to produce a four-episode commodoreHUSTLE spin-off miniseries called Friday Nights, detailing the crew's growing obsession with Magic: The Gathering. The series then became an ongoing commission to produce Friday Nights about once a month for the Wizards of the Coast YouTube channel.
LRR also produces Qwerpline, a podcast that parodies a typical 'morning radio' show, recorded by Graham, Alex, Beej, Ian, and Kathleen. Set in the fictional town of Nsburg, Qwerpline is mostly improvised and then edited; similar in concept to shows such as Reno 911, each episode is written with only a rough outline, recorded live and then edited for broadcast. Each episode opens and closes with a promotional spot for that week's 'Qwerpline sponsor', which is conceived and performed by Beej.
Streaming and live shows
LoadingReadyRun streams mainly Let's Play-style shows on Twitch, where hosts play through a video game and comment on it. Other streams have included playing through board games or running role-playing games, or streams of crafts and construction.LRR's streaming includes LoadingReadyLIVE, a monthly live variety show. Described initially as a hybrid comedy/talent/panel show, LoadingReadyLIVE's structure has varied but can include short game-show segments, prerecorded events filmed on the day of broadcast, highlights from other streamed shows, an "AskLRR" viewer-mail panel, and an episode of commodoreHUSTLE. LoadingReadyLIVE's tagline is 'This is/it's live, so something's gonna happen!'.
LoadingReadyRun is contracted by Wizards of the Coast to run Magic Pre-PreReleases, day-long streams where members of LRR along with special guests play the latest set before it is released publicly.
Panel shows and news shows
LoadingReadyRun have had a variety of shows riffing on news. The Whatever Thing was followed by Phailhaüs, then by Feed Dump, each featuring jokes about comical news stories.LoadingReadyRun have also had multiple shows riffing specifically on video game news. Escapist News Network was created specifically for The Escapist. When LRR left The Escapist, it created a similar show called CheckPoint which it produced for Penny Arcade TV. In December 2013, Penny Arcade announced that due to some restructuring they would no longer host 3rd party content on their PATV site. LRR later began to produce CheckPoint independently, streaming CheckPoint Plus, a live stream of CheckPoint and its creation.
In 2018 LRR began The Panalysts, a panel show where panelists are presented with hypothetical situations and reason how to get the best out of them. For the first season, the show was primarily hosted by Kathleen De Vere. Since the second season premiered in May 2019 the show has been hosted by Molly Lewis.
LRR produced Strip Search for PATV. Strip Search was a reality TV show where cartoonists competed for an internship at Penny Arcade. It ran for one season. Similarly, LoadingReadyRun produced Tabletop Deathmatch, a show hosted by Cards Against Humanity whose goal was to find exceptional unpublished boardgames who could win funding for a first printing. Two seasons were produced.