They wanted a hit.

Evan Padgett, Vikas Shah and Sarah Walpert were working with Campus MovieFest — the latter as an intern — and, in their spare time, they were making videos.

Friends since elementary school and creative partners since college, Padgett and Shah wrote and directed videos under the banner of 1072 Productions — with an eye on cubicle-centered absurdism.

The only problem was, no one was watching.

Sarah Walpert (right) doesn’t want to be an actress — but she does love acting in the videos of 1072 Productions, like its hit ‘Shit Girls Don’t Say,’ made by her friends and alumni Evan Padgett and Vikas Shah. Courtesy Sarah Walpert

They had “maybe less than 20 subscribers,” said Walpert — a 2009 alumna.

But they wanted to be bigger, go bigger; they had an “itch” to have original content, Padgett said.

They just needed an idea.

And all it took was a little shit.

“Shit Girls Say,” the weeks-old YouTube video that spoofed supposedly feminine follies sparked many copycat videos — and 1072’s creative process.

“And we were like, ‘Dude, we could do one of these,’” Walpert said. “‘These are funny.’”

The brainstorming began in earnest. Names, like “Shit College Girls Say,” circulated the office.

Then Shah realized they could find success in the opposite.

“What if we turn it on its head?” Walpert said. “And we were like, ‘Oh my God, that’s awesome.’”

And so “Shit Girls Don’t Say” was born.

But even before the birth, it was clear that Walpert would be the star.

“She’s great when it comes to comedic timing, gestures and faces … She can play the bimbo role pretty well,” Shah said.

They were certain of something else as well: the shoot would have to be quick.

“Or the Internet would be on to the next meme,” Padgett said.

Shot out and around Decatur — at a cemetery, an apartment and an office, among others — the video features Walpert constantly in mid-sentence:

“And then he wanted to talk about feelings.”

“I mean, ‘The Notebook’ is just so unrealistic.”

“Yeah, I’d be into a threesome.”

“You’re right. You’re right. You’re right.”

The writing process itself was a series of stops and starts, starting with an email chain that circulated the office and including a multi-hour marathon session to bang out the best lines, or the funniest ones, or the most daring.

“It was a lot of, ‘Is this too much?’” Walpert said. “‘Is this funny enough?’”

By the end of the only day of filming — a 15-hour-day — they were all a little exhausted. And yet, in their exhaustion, they found more humor, running through re-dos of takes lost, with the first try, to shoddy audio.

“We were all so delusional that some of those are actually the funniest ones,” Walpert said.

It was those kinds of moments, when Walpert and Padgett were trying anything, that the strongest stuff stuck out.

“Hey buddy, eyes down here” — meaning Walpert’s breasts, meaning the not-named guy in-frame should ogle away — came out of one such moment, and Shah just spit it out on the spot.

It is one of Walpert’s two or three favorite lines of the night, and of the video — and Shah’s, too.

But there were times, during filming and after, in post-production, where the trio felt like maybe their feelings were wrong.

Maybe they weren’t as funny as they thought. Maybe the video’s premiere online would go nowhere, unseen.

“We just had to hold on to the fact that, initially, it amused us greatly,” Padgett said.

Both Walpert and Padgett said they had moments of apprehension or anxiety as the video was being finished.

“When it was finished, I was like, ‘I don’t even know if this is funny,’” Walpert said.

It was as if, they thought, those hours they spent laughing over their one-liners wouldn’t be shared.

They were wrong.

The video went up on YouTube.

“And then within one day we had like 19,000 views,” Walpert said.

1072’s subscriber numbers shot up, too: from the double-digits to the triple digits. It now has more than 800.

Word about the words girls don’t like has gotten out.

“My phone was literally blowing up,” Walpert said.

Shah started seeing the video pop up in friends’ news feeds all over Facebook; people he didn’t know and comments by the hundreds came out, all saying the same thing: the video was funny. It worked.

The goal now, for 1072 Productions, is to keep working. Padgett, Shah and Walpert are brainstorming possible follow-ups: “Shit Girls Don’t Say 2,” a blooper reel or something else entirely.

The what isn’t as important as the when.

“We’re always looking to make something people haven’t thought of yet,” Shah said.

And, for Walpert — the daughter of actors, formerly of commercials, lately a minor sensation — the when is only as important as the who.

“That’s way more than doing some paid commercial acting job,” she said, “actually connecting with people.”