21st July 2000
On the 21st of July I rang up Warwick Burton who was the administrator of the Screen Innovation Production Fund. This fund is a partnership between the Film Commission and Creative NZ, and, if you are not well known it's much easier to apply to than trying to get funding out of the Film Commission. I'm not well known. The only catch is that they don't give you very much money. Their guideline for "emerging filmmakers" is a ceiling of $15,000 (less than $US7,000).

The first surprise was when I asked what the funding deadline was. It was the 28th of July. I asked for the application forms and began scriptwriting. And cancelled all appointments for the next week.

I couriered my grant application off at the last
moment. Remember that the ceiling for 'emerging
filmmakers is $15,000. My budget worked out to
be (surprise) $14,245. I thought a budget of
$14,999 sounded too much like a used car.

29th July - 9th October
It takes this long for the grants to be processed
and a decision made by the judging panel.
I began by making two plans - one for a
completely no-budget shoot and the other
with the grant. Gradually it became clear that
the no budget option was looking less realistic
all the time.

I contacted Lindsay Amos who had interviewed me for an article he wrote after seeing Betaville on TV. Lindsay, a graduate of the old NZBC training, had offered his services to shoot the film, and better yet was prepared to do it for love plus expenses if we didn't get the grant. The last film Lindsay had worked on was called a cheap Aussie flick called Zombie Brigade. When I say cheap I mean more expensive than ours by at least two zeroes.

I also contacted Trish Cohen's makeup school in Auckland and asked her if she could recommend a recent graduate who might be prepared to work for a rate that I could afford. It was Trish who put me on to Meg Baker. There was no way I, or any one I knew could do a complex job such as the one I had in mind for the vampire. Meg and I began to communicate by email about what was possible and what was not regarding the vampire's makeup.

Casting
Most of the cast came together quite quickly. Ellie Swann, Aaron Orr and Christopher Summers were all naturally well suited to their parts but this left Mina and Jonathan still uncast.

An Auckland actor who shall be known as J. was recommended to me for the role of Mina. I organised for her to do a screen test in Auckland and get the tape sent to me. Most impressive on the tape was a startlingly intense scream and I thought that she could add quite a bit to the production. Although she had some general sporting ability and a little stage combat behind her I organised for her to get some Martial Arts lessons in Auckland to help her to be a convincing heroine.

The role of the Vampire would be played by Ben Butler-Hogg, a six foot-four martial arts student of mine. Ben's blonde hair would be shaved off, and his occidental face buried in makeup, That Ben had no acting experience didn't overly concern me as he would have no lines, and it was his martial arts skill and height that would count. The vampire would need to be physically threatening. In movie history some vampires are voluble while others are mute. In some films Christopher Lee's Dracula speaks, in others not.

It would seem that there is only one male Chinese actor in his twenties in Otago, and I was relieved and grateful when I found Vincent Wong Ming to play Jonathan.

Assistant Director Simon O'Sullivan would have double duty as Damien, Merrin's sidekick. I envisaged Damien as a somewhat wimpy character but I thought that with the right clothes Simon's muscular arms would not be too noticeable.

My partner, Pamela, is a teacher at one of the local high schools, and I got her to put the word around to see if there were any older pupils who wanted to get some experience. Soon we had a whole bunch of willing 18 year old helpers. This would work out quite well in that the finished product was intended to be youthful, and the presence of so much youth on the set helped to give a vibrant energy. The down side is that 18 year olds and catering is a surprisingly expensive mix.

10th October
At last a letter arrived saying that the fund had given me a grant. They had received 89 applications asking for 1.4 million. They approved 14 of the applications, giving out $247,280. I rang up Meg and she promptly went out and spent a huge sum on blood and latex.

November the 11th. - The Seven Deadly Vampires of Shaolin
I began to organise a shoot in Auckland to shoot Scene 40, "The Seven Deadly Vampires of Shaolin." This scene is supposed to be from a Kung Fu movie that our heroes watch to learn the rules of Chinese movie vampires. I wanted to shoot in Auckland because at least I knew I could get some keen Chinese people who had some credible Kung Fu, since I had spent several years teaching Martial Arts in Auckland. Nic Coldrick, a student of mine, now an instructor, bears a striking resemblance to the title role in Mr Vampire Part Two. I planned to cover his face in latex to hide any lingering occidentalisms. Chris Loh and Jenny Zhuang are also students of mine, although Chris is also a Kung Fu instructor in his own right. Chris would play the sorcerer and Jenny would play the "pretty girl."

It is surprisingly hard to find a good location by remote control. The description in the script says "somewhere in Hong Kong." Now I know that on our budget we were not going to recreate the Peninsula Hotel or the Star Ferry Terminal, let alone Chungking Mansions or Kowloon at night, but you would think that somewhere in Auckland there would be a place that might be in Hong Kong. A warehouse. A carparking building. A factory. Well, there are these places, but the general idea is that if you want to shoot a movie in them it's going to cost big time. In Dunedin I could find dozens of perfect venues for free, but not in Auckland.

Eventually we got permission to shoot at the old Corban's winery in Henderson for $100. The idea behind the shoot was that I would get a chance to work with Lindsay and Meg on a project that was separate from the main movie. If the results were bad or if we changed a lot of things and they didn't match it wouldn't really matter. This was supposed to be a bad film that we were recreating.

I flew up to Auckland the day before with a small (PD100) camera and tripod and met cast and crew at the site at 8:00 am. Since I had only heard about the location and never actually seen it the first job was to do some reconnaissance while Meg made up Jenny. The site has a collection of old factory buildings, most of which are rented as workshop space to small businesses or artists. Parts of it could be in Hong Kong. Choosing the most international area, a long thin lean-too structure, we started shooting Jenny and Chris while Meg worked on Nic's vampire makeup. Fortunately, Chris and Nic had done some work on the fight choreography otherwise we would never have finished in time. Shooting all day, we wrapped when the light began to fade, having just got the footage required.

December
I began looking for a suitable house to rent. At first this seemed problematic, but then a martial arts student of mine told me that the house he rented would be vacant over summer. The house was especially cool because it is actually haunted (that is to say people really have reported seeing a ghost, not just a film about one). According to the script, the house needed to have an exterior door to the kitchen, a long walk to the bathroom, and enough room to swing a cat (or an actor) in the living dining room. This house had most of these features, except that the bathroom was located right next to the lounge. A little thought later and I worked out a way to get the house into the right shape. The bathroom would be in one of the upstairs bedrooms. A quick trip to a hardware store got me a self adhesive women's toilet sign. Sticking this on the door of an upstairs bedroom enabled us to move the bathroom with ease. Characters going to the bathroom would walk up the stairs to the bathroom. Shots from their POV into the bathroom would be of the real bathroom downstairs, while the reverse shot would be of the actors standing in the upstairs bedroom doorway.

J quits
It was just before Christmas, only three working days before the start of shooting that J backed out of the project (after we could no longer get a refund on her airfare). This left me in the position of frantically searching for a new Mina. I got a couple of actors to screen test, but while they performed well, neither was perfect for the part. It was only later when I was talking to Rosemary Beresford at the Globe Theatre about using the theatre for a location (it's where we shot Merrin's dream sequence) that I asked her if she knew of any actors who might be suitable. She would need to be 20-ish, good looking and athletic, with a certain strength to her character. "Well, actually, that sounds like my daughter, Katherine," she said. And it was true.

Second hand costumes
Costuming was done by taking the actors down to the largest second hand clothing store in town. Chris was outfitted in a rather nice green suit, which unfortunately comes out black on video. Ellie and Katherine had a great time choosing clothing to suit their parts, Elle finding a $10 pair of shoes that she just had to have (and still has). Aaron however looked at each piece of clothing I suggested as if it was covered in lice. Personally I think that Maceo's clothes suit Aaron better than his own, but he still feels that "Maceo's clothes look as if they were chosen by a blind op shop attendant."

The Youth Group van
Prop maker Andy King turned up with a test version of the severed head and the signs for the side of the van. Made of stick on vinyl, they read "Fun in the Sun Youth Group - exciting activities for Catholic Young People." Suddenly my van, a pretty ordinary Mitsubishi that I'd brought from a house painter was transformed into a machine with a mission.

The first shooting was that evening, shooting Lucy's near accident. We had a road closure organised and were on our way there in several cars. I ended up with a bunch of 18 year olds in the van. Suddenly, as we were driving through town, it dawned on them how this must look. People might think they were Christian. Oh No! Soon they were all leaning out the windows and yelling obscenities.

Tape problems
We started shooting the dinner scenes with two cameras (a cannon XL1 and a Sony PD100) and things were progressing rather well when we noticed that their was a strange problem with the timecode, which was constantly reverting to 00:00:00. At first this was merely disconcerting but soon I realised that when it lost the timecode it also lost the video! Horizontal bars appeared on the screen, and gradually the video would return. The start of each take from the XL1 was obliterated. Fully half of the material shot for the graveyard scene was lost in this manner. At first the agent for Hanimex, who had sold us the Fuji miniDV tapes we were using denied that there could be any problem with the tape, but it was obvious that the camera's heads were dirty. The XL1 was sent to Cannon in Auckland to have its heads cleaned while we carried on with the Sony PD100.

However when the XL1 returned the PD100 began to show the same symptoms, and soon the XL1 was playing up in the same manner again. We limped on to finish shooting, with frequent applications of cleaning tape and careful watching for the tell tale revert to 0 timecode.

Even during editing the tape continued to give problems, and both cameras have had to be repeatedly cleaned at their respective factories. According to the shooting logs it took only a couple of hours of shooting time until the heads of the cameras became clogged again. At the time of writing (October 2001) Hanimex has yet to replace the tape although they are making some promising noises.

Aaron goes through the table
One of the big stunts for the movie is the shot of Aaron, (Maceo) being thrown through the table. There is one reason why this stunt has to happen. We need the table there at the start for the dinner table scene. It might have been realistic to have a bunch of students eating their dinner on their knees, sitting in armchairs, but I didn't think it would shoot as well. But by the final fight the table has to be gone to make room to stage the fight. Therefore the table had to be destroyed.

I managed to find an old table that was being sold cheap because it was full of borer. Simon and I began work on pre-destroying the table, taking it apart and carefully breaking every board in the centre. Then we screwed braces in underneath the table and put it all back together. When I had Maceo say in the film "put a tablecloth over it and you won't see the cracks" we were speaking from experience. When the time came we removed the braces and the table stood, held together only by friction at the joins.

Fortunately the table performed perfectly on the one and only take of Maceo falling through it, and we didn't have to spend half a day rebuilding it. Or the actor.

Glass
The other one take wonder is the glass on the Jesus picture that the vampire smashes. Of course we replaced the glass in the frame with breakaway glass before shooting that shot, but it isn't easy to get breakaway glass here in Dunedin, so we made our own. After searching high and low I eventually found a recipe on the net. The first words on the recipe were "to make breakaway glass you must have a grown up to help you."

Essentially, breakaway glass is a giant, clear, lolly pop. Simon eventually mastered the art of getting the temperatures of heating corn syrup just right and poured it directly into the frame on top of the picture. Once again we were lucky that it performed right the first time and we didn't have to rebuild it.

Vampire on a skate board
Then it was time for the rigid vampire trick. What I had in mind when writing the script would be that Mina and Maceo would carry the frozen vampire out of the house and the vampire would be as rigid as a plank. To achieve this I thought we would put two long poles down the inside of Ben's costume and Maceo and Mina would grab the ends of the poles. The first problem was that the poles were six foot long and Ben is 6'4". By shuffling them into the middle there was still just enough to grab, but then it became obvious that Ben was just too heavy. There was no way the Katherine (Mina) could lift her end, so I went back to the imaginary drawing board.

They would have to put him on rollers. Where would you find rollers in a student flat - a skateboard. So that's why the vampire is pushed along on a skateboard. I asked around and sure enough there was a kid brother who had an old tacky looking cheap skateboard.

Unfortunately I forgot to get any closeups, and as I was editing it wasn't really clear what the vampire was rolling on. So six months later I got my beloved Pamela to push herself along, holding on the wall near the back door of our house while I shot the closeups.

The new end
It was obvious that Simon, who does cage fighting for a hobby, was not the wimpy Damien I had in mind, and since it was too late to change the actor I decided to change the part. One morning I turned up on the set with a completely rewritten end. At least this wasn't as bad as Betaville, where I was constantly rewriting the script as we went. In retrospect it amazes me that Betaville has any structural integrity at all.

In the new end Simon becomes a boxing priest. When I recalled that Damien in the exorcist is a boxer I realised that this was the right choice.

The party
During the day we'd been shooting Merrin's entrance, so Simon and I were in costume. That night were scheduled were several scenes that have to be shot outside the house, scenes we should have shot on the previous few evenings but had to be postponed because of bad weather.

At the flat across the road things were warming up for a party. Some people over there were watching our house. The close knit feeling of the crew had created an us & them mentality, and the people in the flat were definitely them. This wasn't helped by members of our crew spying out the windows on the people across the road, commenting on their poor sense of fashion.
"They're just ordinary people" I said.
"No, they are bogans" I was told.

Across the road they were thinking we were a Christian youth group. Although some of the crew members don't dress in what I think of as a Christian manner, I guess they thought of us as a sort of funky modern Christian group. At the moment though I was preoccupied with how we would shoot things this evening.

As we took our dinner break and waited until dark, more guests arrived at the party. I remembered when I was in my first flat, some time in the 1970s, we had a party. Word got round the local pubs and soon there were people jammed into our house as tight as sardines. There wasn't any trouble until people tried to dance (which in that confined space was quickly interpreted as fighting). This party across the road was heading like that one.

As soon as we had some darkness we went out side and tried to do some shooting, but there was no way we could record dialogue with the noise from across the road. We did get Maceo and Mina walking back into the house after realising that they didn't have the keys to Jonathan's car, however. We also shot the scene where Maceo hands Mina the axe and Mina says "Why me?" complete with shouting from across the road, which I managed to carefully edit out later. But soon it was obvious that the night was going to be a washout, so we wrapped.

By the time we were all leaving the police had arrived and were closing down the party. Anybody getting into a car was told in no uncertain terms to go away and not try to return. I was dropping several young women home, so we got into the van. For us, the police behaved quite differently, respectfully, stopping other traffic as I reversed the van out of the driveway. I guess being dressed as a priest and driving the youth group van is good for some things. Do priests often drive groups of funky young ladies around in the middle of the night?

Finding a pav at 6:00 AM
The scene set for the last day of shooting was the morning after scene on the porch where Maceo eats the Pav. This was set for an unseasonable seven a.m., and it was just that morning as I awoke to realise that the only pav we had was the plaster one that had been sitting on the set for the last three weeks. It is a tribute to our modern society that even in Dunedin at Six am on a Sunday morning one can find a pav (if you look through every 24 hour dairy in town.

All materials © 2006 Phil Davison
All rights reserved.