Principal photography on "Victim's Song" took place from August 5, 2005 to November 20, 2005. Shooting lasted twenty-five days shooting weekends only.
Though the movie is set around Thanksgiving production began in the summer, so precautions had to be taken not to show any green trees and grass through the windows at any of the locations.
The Chandler family characters (Eric, Kimberly, and Kristen) get their surname in the script from Shaun Scott Chandler, a childhood friend of director Jeffrey Stoltzfus. During high school they made countless videos together. Shaun was in Jeffrey's first movie Misdirected and makes a small cameo in Victim's Song. He also worked as a grip on the production.
Eric Chandler's first name comes from the director's college roommate.
The character "Detective Raimi" is named after director Sam Rami, whom Jeffrey Stoltzfus admires.
Many of the locations used in the film are homes and businesses of the friends and family of director Jeffrey Stoltzfus and Producer Russ J. Lichterman.
The police station seen in the movie is a real working police department in Brookhaven, PA. There were many officers on duty both days that the production was there, and shooting was sometimes delayed due to official police business.
Police Chief John Eller was kind enough to allow the production to shoot in his office, even though it required him to work at the secretary's desk for the day.
The doorway dolly used in the film was built by the director. It is a hybrid of a PVC track dolly and a child's wagon. The PVC track never achieved the smoothness that was required during pre-production testing, so air-filled tires from a wagon were substituted for the castors and PVC track.
Casting for the film took place in April, May, and June of 2005. A total of 5 open-call auditions were held for a total of over 200 individual auditions.
Casting took place in two different locations, a rented dance studio, and the community room at the Whole Foods Market of South Philadelphia. The producer and director were dubious of the Whole Foods location at first, but agreed to try it out to save money for the production. As it turned out casting there went extremely well, and two more casting dates were scheduled.
Tom Tansey originally read for the character "Ted" in the script. It was not until his call-back that the director asked him to read for "Bucky."
Bob Bowersox also originally read for "Ted" and "Captain Boller." It was not until his call-back he was asked to read for "Bavich."
Many of the crew worked with Super-Nerve on previous productions, but some key positions were filled through job postings on film.org and craigslist.org, including the assistant director and two of the makeup artists.
Makeup artist Katie Arcand joined the production almost by chance. Just after shooting had started the producer was discussing the movie with some of the other crew members at a bar in center city Philadelphia. The cocktail waitress overheard the conversation and commented that she was attending cosmetology school. She voiced interest in the project and joined the crew soon after.
Director Jeffrey Stoltzfus has several brief cameos is the movie. He can be seen as "Young Father" walking across a parking lot with actors Erica Ford and McKenzie Mitchell, running away from Nicholas Wilder as “the hooded figure”, and heard as the voice of the first 911 operator.
Many of the members of the crew made cameos in some form acting as background or body doubles.
The fictitious town in which the story takes place is Naaman's Creek. It was named after the director's Father Naaman.
The director notes that one film influenced the tone of "Victim's Song" more than any other: Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver." It is for this reason that Travis shares his first name with the main character in "Taxi Driver" Travis Bickle. This is also the reason why Bucky makes a reference to Scorsese in one scene.
With such long hours on set and the graphic nature of the movie, certain scenes involving child actors were filmed twice. First without any f/x makeup and with both actors, then again with full makeup and blood effects and with a stand-in for the child.
Jeffrey Stoltzfus was forced to become the production designer two weeks before the first day of shooting because the original production designer was asked to leave the project.
While sound designing Jeffrey Stoltzfus pulled sound from a number of sources for background sound. Some examples are the crew casually conversing during the shooting of B-roll, the trailer for “Misdirected”, and Tom Tansey's call back reading for the character “Ted”.
The original title of the script that became “Victim's Song” was “And Justice for All”.
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