How many working hours do you guys lodge putting one of these films together?
We did eight weeks on "This Land," but by the time the animation is in full swing, Evan is the guy burning the midnight oil. He was working at least 14-hour days, seven days a week. And that's Evan -- he's an animal with Flash, since he's been working with it for five years. For other people with less experience, it would take twice as long. He went to art school at the New School at Parsons and then just picked up all the technology on the fly.
When did you guys realise that you had a hit?
We released "This Land" in July to about 200,000 people who subscribe to our newsletter.
We try to send things out on Thursday afternoons, since Friday seems like the best day to goof off at work and surf around the Web. We had typically seen about 40,000 content views the first day, but with this one, we were closer to 100,000 views. Three days later, we were at more than a million and a half views, and after that, things were going nuts. We weren't sleeping. We were doing anything it took to keep the site functioning.
How has the response to "DC" been? You had some site performance issues.
It's been great. The performance issues were tough on Friday. After we appeared on the "Today" show, the site got crushed, but it smoothed out by the end of the day. I think the stat for over the weekend was 7 million views. It's doing very well. It's been well-received, and that's thrilling, because we took a real chance doing the second one.
Everyone was so glowing about "This Land," and as a result, we got invited on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", and he asked us to do another film for the show. You can't say no to that. We just said OK and panicked and did it. If you had asked us what our goal was, it would have been to get a few laughs and not do any damage to the accolades we'd already received. But it seems to be playing just as well, and some say that it's even better.
"DC" is a racier production than "This Land."
We did this one for the late-night audience, with Leno in mind, so it's a little edgier. But in the realm of online content, I think we did a pretty good job of censoring ourselves. If DreamWorks can put Pinocchio in women's underwear in "Shrek 2," having (US Attorney General) John Ashcroft come out of the closet isn't really that bad.
Why do you think the films appealed to such a wide audience?
I think "This Land" took off because of how divisive the public dialogue over the presidential election has been.
I think everyone was ready for something that both sides could laugh at together. Maybe more technically, you don't have to filter it. You can send it to everyone you know. You don't have to say, "I can only send this to my liberal wiener friends" or "I can only send this to right-wing nut jobs." You don't have to worry about upsetting anyone, really.
