blaming Bush for his misery. Production Filming The funeral scenes in the film include footage taken from archival coverage of Ronald Reagan's funeral, and President Cheney's eulogy for President Bush is a news clip of Cheney's eulogy for Reagan. CGI special effects and existing footage of President Bush helped to re-create the filming of his assassination. The rifle used by the perpetrator in the film was actually an airsoft replica of an AR-15. Image editing software was used to add the actors' images to photographs with President Bush. Although all imagery related to Bush's assassination was created using digital special effects, an apparent actual death, captured on tape, is included in the film during a piece of war footage in which an Iraqi insurgent prepares to launch a rocket, but is shot in the head first. Except for specific scenes, most of the actors portrayed in the film were not told of the premise surrounding the story. During a post emergency surgery news conference, the chief physician's comment that he had "never seen such a strong heart in a man of the president's age", is a reference to President Ronald Reagan's own attempted assassination. In addition, the interview of a middle-aged African American outside the hospital recalls an interview of a witness on the streets of Washington, D.C. in 1981 following that assassination attempt. Filming was done entirely on location in Chicago, Illinois. Music The film score was composed and conducted by Richard Harvey. Sound effects and music elements were mixed by Alex Riordan. Director's notes The film's director, Gabriel Range, noted that the film is not "a leftist jeremiad" and further said: The purpose of the film was not to imagine how the world stage would reset with the assassination of George Bush. The intent of the film is really to use the assassination of President Bush as a dramatic device—using the future as an allegory to comment on the past. [....] If people go to the cinema expecting to have some great moment of catharsis watching the president being shot, I suspect they're in for a pretty big surprise. I think that anyone who's expecting this to be a liberal wet dream is in for quite a shock ... It was very important that the film was not a political rant. It was not just a condemnation or polemic because I think that polemics are easy to dismiss.