The art pieces that Lizzy created in the movie have been made by artist Cynthia Lahti, who lives in Portland, and whose work writer-director Kelly Reichardt has followed for a long time. She also happened to be a longtime friend of Jonathan Raymond, who is the co-writer of this movie. Her work was on Reichardt's mind as she was writing the movie, but when Reichardt first contacted her, she was on the verge of giving up her career. She trained Michelle Williams in sculpting before filming, and while working on the movie, she found a renewed urge to create. By the end of the shoot, she had created so many new pieces that it became difficult to walk inside her workshop.
According to writer-director Kelly Reichardt, the movie deconstructs the idea of a genius. For her, it's a pure construct: the movie (and its title) refers to the idea of showing up to work every day, and taking time to hone a skill, until it becomes automatic, like eating.
While director Kelly Reichardt likes to shoot in the 4:3 ratio when it comes to filming nature, it wasn't suited to this movie, with the long horizontal buildings of the school. So, she decided on a more rectangle ratio, which also enabled her to keep every character in the frame in certain crowded scenes.
In an art imitates life moment, director Kelly Reichardt mentioned that the day after she finished wrapping filming on this movie she was out for a walk and a baby bird fell out of a tree while she was walking and that a woman came along and ended up tending to the injured baby bird.