Betaville: About the production:

Betaville was shot on a wide variety of formats – DVCam, DV, SVHS, VHS, and 35mm still. and was edited on a Macintosh Media 100 system. Betaville was shot in the winter of 1997, and the editing and music was finally completed in August 1999.

One of the most distinctive features of Betaville is the mixture of live action with computer generated animation, and cartoon like action, complete with speech bubbles.

To achieve the look of a post-technological future without special effects Betaville was shot entirely at night or indoors. Just as in the Plan 9 graveyard, in Betaville it is always night. Without a generator, we were limited to using outside locations that had bright lights. Auckland’s Skytower was undoubtably the most useful prop. I am fortunate that Auckland has a retro SciFi structure that is so big it is hard to shoot outside and not get it in shot.

The advantage to not having much equipment is that one can act as a true guerrilla filmmaker. We never had a permit for filming, so we would turn up at previously scouted the locations and shoot until a security guard came. The poet’s scene (‘There is nothing to compare with our splendid galactic thoroughfares...’) was shot in front of an audience of Korean tourists who piled out out of a bus to watch. They were confused at first but finally pronounced “You are Art People!” The car interiors were shot by running a cable from the car battery to a couple of 100w headlights on the floor and then driving around lit up like a blazing inferno.

All materials © 2006 Phil Davison
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