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The Ars Technica South Park interview

Ars Technica interviews the technical guys behind South Park, and discuss …

Introduction

By now I'm sure that you've all seen the new South Park movie, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. If by chance you haven't, go slam your head in a car door a few times, see the movie and then come on back. This is without a doubt the funniest movie I have ever seen. You could see this movie half a dozen times and not pick up on all of the jokes, slams and pop culture references. It's fantastic.

Thus we were completely stoked when we recently received an e-mail from one of the Systems Administrators for the computer network used to produce South Park. We wasted no time in requesting an interview, and for my part, I threatened to turn mutant pissed-off turkeys loose on everyone if I didn't get to ask the questions. We ended up getting three for the price of one: an interview with Sean, J.J. and Tim, all SysAdmins for the South Park computer network. To quote Eric Cartman: "Kyle's mom is a..."? Oops, sorry, wrong quote. I meant to say "Super-sweet!" Here we go...

Dr. Evil: When did you start work on the series? Did you ever expect things to take off the way they did?

Sean: I started in May of '97. We were all pretty much overwhelmed by the popularity of the show when it took off. I joined the show because it appealed to my own twisted sense of humor. I had no idea that so many people were as twisted as me. :)

J. J.: I started at the very beginning of '98, and by that time it was already a given that things were taking off.

Tim: While I was content to hang around the halls of NASA forever when Sean called me about a position opening up on the feature film, I could not deny the fact that I was a long way from making comparable money as a government employee. I came down immediately in July '98 and have pretty much rolled with the punches for the last year.

Dr. Evil: Give us a general overview of your position and your job responsibilities.

Sean: Seniority being what it is, I'm sort of the lead tech-goon. I'm going to see if I can get the official title 'Grand Poobah of Oompa Loompas'. We handle all of the standard sysadmin stuff. We also do the render wrangling, database development and management, network administration, queuing software programming, web interface development, and pretty much anything that nobody else can figure out.

J. J.: Seniority being what it is, I'm sort of the tech-bitch. Sean pretty much writes a lot of the important code for the queuing system, database interface, etc. I handle all the stuff he doesn't have time or an interest in dealing with. Irony has a way of biting you in the ass, 'cause now I find my self making and maintaining databases, the main thing I wanted to avoid when I left 'SC. ;-P Also, lately, Sean's been really wrapped up in the movie, getting it done, and then shutting the whole beast down, so I've been running the TV show lately. Oh, the power... ;-P

Tim: Seniority being what it is, I'm sort of the tech-mutineer. Since I am only involved with the movie and we are in a separate location, I learned quickly to make things so completely screwed up that Sean would find anything else to do but come over to my ship. "Uhura, tell them we are experiencing sub-space interference, and as we can not make out their message we will continue with my plan". Mwaaaahhhaaahhaaaa! I...mean...I...do...what...Sean...says.

Dr. Evil: What is a typical work schedule/day for you (if there even is one)? Is your work fairly evenly distributed and consistent, or weeks of sheer terror and madness followed by a nice day or two of breathing room?

Sean: On the TV side, the work flow could be described as manic-psychotic. The production has some extended quiet times. This is when the admins need to rush about like madmen and get the heavy maintenance and programming done. We also have "production crunches", where we produce, say, six episodes in six weeks. This is when the admins need to rush about like madmen and make sure all of the information flows as smoothly as possible.

J. J.: Of course, Sean doesn't mention that, at times, we become little more than shot monkeys, whose sole purpose for being is making sure once shots have been done successfully, that they get onto the Avid system so Trey can look at them and make the ubiquitous changes. Not that I mind, since while I'm waiting for a shot to finish I get in a lot of gaming. ;-P In fact, I had to stop playing Dungeon Keeper 2 to write this. Geez... ;-P

Tim: Well, for me I can only say this. I have had 2 weekends off this year. The worst being the last month of the feature when the admins (I have a crew of 4 on the film. Rob, Cheri, and Amir, you guys are the best!) were working around the clock to try and keep up with changes, which were being made up until one and a half weeks before the release. My brain really hurts.

Channel Ars Technica