The CW Source

CW Source: With choose your own adventure options…
AM: Exactly! That one was such a nightmare. One of my betas came up with that I idea – "Wouldn't that be cool if the person could choose what came next?" I was like, do you understand the flow chart I'm going to have to draw with for this? I had a nice chart to figure out no matter where you went, you eventually ended up at door four. That was interesting.

CW Source: How many betas do you have, and can you explain to me what that means?
AM: Basically the betas' job is to make sure I go on with my pants zipped up and my shirt on the right way, so there's not anything glaring. I have three principals and they each have their own strength. Carly, her screen name is Slytherinblack, tends to be good at finding plot holes – you didn't explain this, or you didn't show that. SenorCoconut1, that's Heather, she's all over my grammar and spelling. If you look at some of the earlier episodes, I didn't have anyone look it over, I just put them up. People would comment "You spelled that wrong, you missed a word there." Just to make it look cleaner, it was nice to have another pair of eyes, because after you've read it four or five times…(laughs) You need someone to catch the errors that are there. The third person who tends to look it over is MissyJack, Jules, she gives it an overall, big picture looks. It's usually not plot points, they usually don't say "It would have worked better if Sam had this," because they know the pictures have already been taken and I already have the story that I need.

CW Source: Talk us through the process.
AM: Sunday's shooting, Monday's PhotoShop, Tuesday is coming up with the text boxes and the story. I try to put it up for the betas late Tuesday night so they have all day Wednesday to look it over and say, "This is wrong, you should probably change that word there, this is spelled wrong." I usually have an hour before I put it up when I go back and do one more read through to make sure there wasn't anything I missed. It goes up 9 pm Wednesday.

CW Source: You've talked about some of the limitations of working with the dolls, like Plastic!Dean can't bend his arms. How do you make those work for you, and what are the bonuses of it?
AM: There are a finite number of poses the boys can do, and trying to keep it interesting and original... it's getting harder. It is a challenge sometimes, how can I do this scene. People tend to expect some of the same things every episode – they all want them to put their "Oh Noes!" pose up, and they want Sam to kick his leg up when he hugs somebody. There are specific things I'm always going for. You notice after a while of doing it that if you shoot it at a certain angle with his head tilted a certain way, you can almost get an expression out of it. Every episode there's usually one shot where I think, "That turned out really cool and I never tried that before." Most of it is accidental.

CW Source: What sort of traffic figures are you getting?
AM: I don't actually track that. I usually look at comments, which I know is not an accurate way to judge it. I've often thought about tracking hits. The one time I did, there was a YouTube click in the middle of it, and that gave me a rough estimate of how many people were watching it. I think there were 1,200 hits there.

CW Source: Do you think there are a lot of people who follow Plastic!Winchesters who don't actually watch Supernatural?
AM: It's funny the comments that I get. I think if you see the show it makes sense on a different level than if you don't see the show. I have people from other fandoms who come over – "Somebody told me you play with Barbies and it's funny and I wanted to check it out." They get the premise, it's two boys and they're hunting demons and they're on the road – and from there they just think it's funny. It still makes sense to them, but you need to watch the show to get some of the more subtle things that are going on.

CW Source: Do you see it as a way you're promoting the show?
AM: Absolutely. I've gotten some comments saying "I came in here to watch your Barbie show, and I thought I'd better check out the real show too to see what's going on there." One of them was really funny – she said "The show's not funny." I was like, "Yeah, I know, this is kind of a parody." She didn't catch on with that. "But the show isn't funny!" (Laughs) Sorry, I guess I should have put a disclaimer on there. That was one of the best comments ever.

CW Source: What other comments have you been getting – anything that sticks out?
AM: It's nice when people say "Oh, that was funny," but I like when people say specifically "This scene here was what I enjoyed about it, this line here." It's always funny because there are usually certain lines where I think that really works, I think this part there was really tight, and if people don't mention it in the comments I think maybe I was off. Sometimes they'll mention a line that I reworked four times, and I'll feel totally validated that they got that line, and I worked until it got to the point it finally was funny and they liked it. I like when I get comments saying specific things, but it's nice to get a general head count of people who say LOL.

We've got much, much more to come from our interview with Andie. Stay tuned!