Betaville specializes in writing and directing video for the web and mobile devices.
We create videos that work online, visually, technically and experientially. We know the realities of putting video online—and we see the possibilities.
We can help people engage with a brand in a refreshingly different way. We can dramatize a message and truly bring it to life. We can create something inventive that people want to forward to everyone they know.
Or, we can just tell a really good story.
One Example (or, 13 Examples): Elevator Moods
Andrew and a couple of his friends, Ethan Spigland and Andrew Nahem, wrote and directed a series of 13 short films especially for the web. The films, numbered 1-12 and 14, all took place in an elevator.
They built a set, got some actor friends, and treated the video to look extra-grainy and degraded, as if it had been shot from the elevator’s surveillance camera.
They put the films online, using an entertaining elevator-button interface—choose a floor and get a story.
Word got out in the blogosphere, and Elevator Moods became something of a viral sensation. Sundance contacted Andrew and his friends and asked if they’d be willing to have Elevator Moods as an official selection in the 2004 Sundance Festival.
After appearing at Sundance and also SxSW, Elevator Moods won a Webby Award for Best Broadband Site. Then, the series was acquired by A&E Television Networks, who commissioned a second series of “moods” for use as broadcast interstitials—and for A&E’s new web and mobile channels.
