This was originally screened as a genuine documentary to an unsuspecting New Zealand public, and was only revealed to be a hoax a few days afterwards.
The television network that first broadcast the film received mountains of angry and even threatening mail. Some of these letters are reenacted with voice overs in Behind the Bull: Forgotten Silver (2000).
On the DVD commentary, co-director Costa Botes noted that in the process of "aging" the faked film clips, the production team decided to avoid the use of line scratches, which was considered to be too obvious and clichéd. To age the film, the crew spent a great deal of time running the film through dirt, rubbing dust and spit into it, and dragging it around on the floor of the basement of the processing laboratory facility.
The film notes that Colin and Brooke McKenzie invent color film around 1910. In September, 2012, the National Media Museum in Bradford, England, announced that they had identified the earliest known piece of color film, which was dated to 1902 and created by Edward Raymond Turner. Prior to that, the earliest-known experiments in color film had been the Kinemacolor Two-Color Additive Process, also a British invention.
According to the DVD commentary by Costa Botes, one shot from 'Salome' showing dozens of extras fighting on the palace steps swallowed almost half of the film's overall budget, even though digital compositing was used to make it seem like the size of the set and number of extras were much greater.