The filmmakers entirely self-financed the movie, writing the script to fit the confines of their limited budget.
John Rhys-Davies filmed two scenes portraying Mr. Bezzerides. However, his scenes ended up being deleted from the final cut. The filmmakers issued an apology to Mr. Rhys-Davies, which appears during the closing credits.
The decision to have the camera be instant film vs digital was because it made sense for an aging retired scientist to build the steampunk-like Polaroid machine out of the old tech that he had lying around his apartment. But because Polaroid film is hard to obtain, the art department for the movie faked thousands of Polaroid pictures by shooting them on digital, color correcting them in Photoshop to look like instant film, cutting the insides out of old Polaroids they got on eBay, and then sliding the printed digital pictures into the instant film sleeves.
The plot of this film is very close to an episode of The Twilight Zone. In A Most Unusual Camera (1960) aired in 1961, thieves steal a camera from a curio shop, discover it can take pictures of events a few minutes into the future, and try to use it to win at horse racing and other things.
The character of scientist Mr. Bezzerides was based on a real-life scientist at the top secret scientific nuclear laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the hometown of Director Bradley King.