Pittsburgh-based production company BrabenderCox has made a name for itself creating political advertisements. Recently, however, John Brabender, co-founder of the company with Jim Cox, has enlisted several members of the team to produce Web videos for his "Web TV station," Zolitics.com. The site kicked off its first entertainment program, the mockumentary-style politically themed series Moving Numbers, in November.

Videography: What is the origin of Zolitics.com?
Brabender: It was interesting last year when Sarah Palin was interviewed by Katie Couric. It was probably one of the most talked-about interviews with a vice presidential candidate ever and it got a tremendous number of hits on YouTube, but Tina Fey's spoof of the interview got about four times more hits. People want to see the funny side of politics.

V: And you see the Web as a good place to offer that?
B: Absolutely. If Hulu were a cable company, they'd have the second largest viewership of any cable company after Comcast. The Web has become a top source for political info, and we think it's a great place for politically-based entertainment, too.

V: Why "Zolitics"?
B: We wanted to remind people of "politics" and have a name that was memorable. "Zolitics" represents our belief that anything you put a z in front of has a sound of irreverence to it.

V: Tell us about your first original program for Zolitics, Moving Numbers.
B: It's a 12-episode series. Each episode is 10 minutes. It's about a fictional dysfunctional U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, but it's based somewhat on people and things that have happened in real campaigns. We're taking real-world political and news figures and marrying them to this fictional world.

V: Since people are kind of writing their own rules about this, why 10-minute episodes?
B: For a very un-scientific reason: it just felt right. It's long enough to have a beginning, a middle and an end, long enough to tell a story that would be interesting to the kind of person who's watching on the Web. It used to be that a 30-second cat trick was enough, but people now are watching whole episodes of TV shows and entire movies.

V: What kind of production values are you putting into Moving Numbers?
B: Some of our staff—producers, art directors, some other crew—are working on the shows. We shoot with the [Sony] CineAlta F900 with crews of about ten, and we try to keep the number of locations down to about two or three. We use Adobe After Effects for some effects and compositing, and everything is edited in-house with our Avid Adrenaline or DS systems.

V: Do you think Web-based entertainment is coming into its own now?
B: Oh yes! I've seen statistics that one in four people watches their TV shows online. Almost overnight, just about everybody with an idea has a place to go, and if it's a good idea, it'll be successful. Just like with [traditional] television, though, if it's poorly done, it's not going anywhere. But there is no longer the same barrier to distribution that has existed up until now. It's definitely an exciting time.