Gavin Free

Gavin David Free (born 23 May, 1988) is an English actor, entertainer, producer, and filmmaker. Originally from Thame in Oxfordshire, he is best known for his work at the Austin, Texas-based production company Rooster Teeth – where he currently serves as creative director – featuring in many of their projects including the Achievement Hunter gaming division; starring in his own YouTube-based web series The Slow Mo Guys, which he created with friend Daniel Gruchy; and co-starring in the animated comedy series X-Ray and Vav alongside Ray Narvaez, Jr..

The Slow Mo Guys features slow-motion footage of various stunts and experiments, garnering over 790 million views since it launched in 2010. In April 2011, the channel was voted the winner of YouTube's On The Rise program, which highlights up-and-coming YouTube partners on the homepage. In September 2012, their episode involving crushing watermelons was featured on The Tonight Show. Free appeared alongside Gruchy in YouTube Rewind 2013, 2014, and 2015.

Greatest hits album

A greatest hits album, sometimes called a "best of" album or a catalog album, is a compilation of songs by a particular artist or band. Most often the track list contains previously released recordings with a high degree of notability. However, to increase the appeal, especially to people who already own the original release, it is common to include remixes and/or alternate takes of popular songs; even new material (previously unreleased). At times a greatest hits compilation is the original release for songs that have themselves been released as a single and charted successfully.

Notable compilations

Madonna's The Immaculate Collection is the best selling greatest hits compilation by a solo artist; all of the songs on it are presented in different versions than the original hit versions. The Eagles' Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) is the best selling greatest hits compilation by a group and also one of the ten best selling albums in history. Greatest hits albums are typically produced after an artist has had enough successful songs to fill out an album release. Some artists, such as Mariah Carey, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Kenny Rogers, Aerosmith, Kiss, U2, Dolly Parton, Journey, Los Tigres del Norte, Queen, Kylie Minogue and Billy Joel, have released multiple greatest hits albums through their long careers. Some greatest hits albums are released only at the end of the artist or group's career. For example, My Chemical Romance released a greatest hits album after they disbanded. Other artists, like Eminem have released hits albums in the center of their success. He released Curtain Call: The Hits in 2005 and then Shady XV as a compilation album in 2014.

Achievement Hunter

Achievement Hunter is a video gaming website and a division of Rooster Teeth Productions. Founded by Geoff Ramsey and Jack Pattillo on July 6, 2008, the website is largely based on the achievement mechanic found in seventh and eighth generation video game consoles. Since its founding, Achievement Hunter has grown to become a core component of Rooster Teeth, hosting a wide variety of videos related to video games. The most frequent videos are hosted by the six most prolific employees: Geoff Ramsey, Jack Pattillo, Gavin Free, Michael Jones, Ryan Haywood, and Jeremy Dooley.

Achievement Hunter has a large presence on YouTube – where it runs four different channels: Achievement Hunter, LetsPlay, GameFails and Achievement Hunter Community – garnering a combined total of 5.4 million subscribers and 1.4 billion video views.

History and development

2008–10: Inception and growth

In 2008, Geoff Ramsey's interest in gaming achievements resulted in the realization that no community-based website related to achievements existed. As a result, Ramsey approached Burnie Burns, then CEO of Rooster Teeth, about creating a website based on achievements; Burns agreed, and Ramsey created Achievement Hunter, which shares a similar design to the main Rooster Teeth website. Alongside employee Jack Pattillo, Ramsey regularly released achievement guides and Easter egg videos, often receiving assistance from select volunteers from the Rooster Teeth community. David Dreger also assisted in the founding of the site.

Rooster Teeth

Rooster Teeth Productions is an American production company located in Austin, Texas; Flower Mound, Texas; and Los Angeles, California, involved primarily in the production of machinima (films created in real-time video game environments) with its long-running series Red vs. Blue, as well as live action shorts and series, comedy gameplay with the branch Achievement Hunter, and full animated productions such as RWBY and X-Ray and Vav. Rooster Teeth hosts its convention, RTX, annually in Austin, Texas and most recently Australia.

Rooster Teeth was founded by Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Gus Sorola, and Joel Heyman in 2003. Burns created voice-over-enhanced gameplay videos of Bungie Studios' popular first-person shooter video game Halo: Combat Evolved. Eventually, these videos led to the creation of Red vs. Blue, which premiered in April 2003 and is still in production, making it the longest-running web series of all time. The production team also focuses on projects such as reality shows, video game development, entertainment news programs and podcasts. Rooster Teeth released its feature film debut, Lazer Team, a science fiction action comedy film in 2016.