In one scene Seth Green's character Douglas must deliver a five-page monologue about paranoia to Andras Jones' bewildered Trevor. Director Kasten felt that the only way to express the scene's complexities was to shoot the monologue in one continuous shot, moving constantly throughout the ballroom-sized game room in circles. Kasten rehearsed Green for three days in the room where they would be shooting; pulling Green on a predetermined path through the room and slowly increasing the tempo on a metronome.
In keeping with Kasten's vision for off-kilter hyper realism, the hospital location was exactly that; an abandoned hospital in Downey, California.
Many of the effects, including the self-igniting match, had to be devised as practical, theatrical or in-camera effects.
The last exterior in the film was to take place in a dream sequence. It was to be the big digital effects sequence where Trevor escapes from the house in a dream, finding himself on a street where every house is identical to the last detail. Kasten was sure he could shoot it and add minimal effects in wide shots, but only if they could find a street where the houses were almost completely the same, a street with no cars and no trees. Though the producers tried to find such a street, the task became practically impossible and the filmmakers were close to abandoning the scene altogether. At the last minute a call to an airforce base turned up a deserted military housing community.
The producers negotiated free scanning for the digital effects sequences from one of the leaders in the industry. The night before the digital effects work was to start on the film, the small effects house that had agreed to do the work for the film on a deferred basis backed out. Within the week, the filmmakers were meeting with Manex Effects, one of the biggest houses, and the people responsible for the Academy Award-winning effects in "The Matrix". Manex designed and created almost two dozen digital effects shots for "The Attic Expeditions."