making a movie. We shot it in 23 days, so we were moving very, very fast; I just didn't have a lot of film to be able to do a lot of takes. It was a bunch of friends getting together to make a movie. It was like, 'Are people going to get this? Is it working?'" Hess describes the film as being "so autobiographical". "I grew up in a family of six boys in Preston, Idaho, and the character of Napoleon was a hybrid of all the most nerdy and awkward parts of me and my brothers growing up. Jerusha really was like Deb growing up. Her mom made her a dress when she was going to a middle school dance and she said, 'I hadn't really developed yet, so my mom overcompensated and made some very large, fluffy shoulders.' Some guy dancing with her patted the sleeves and actually said, 'I like your sleeves ... they're real big,"' Hess said in an interview with Rolling Stone. The film is set during the 2004–2005 school year, as shown on Napoleon's student ID card in the title sequence. The film contains several culturally retroactive elements harkening back to the 1980s or 1990s. For example, Deb wears a side ponytail and Napoleon wears Moon Boots, both popular fashion trends of the 1980s. One scene is set at a school dance that plays only 1980s music such as Alphaville's "Forever Young," whereas an earlier scene features students performing a sign language rendition of "The Rose" (1980) sung by Bette Midler. Much of the technology in the film is also archaic; Napoleon uses a VCR and Walkman cassette player, Kip connects to the Internet via a pay-per-minute dial-up connection and Uncle Rico drives a 1975 Dodge Tradesman. The song Napoleon Dynamite dances to at the end of the film—"Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai—came out in 1999. Opening sequence The film was originally made without opening titles. Audiences at test screenings were confused about when the film was set. Eight months after the film was completed, the title sequence was filmed in cinematographer Munn Powell's basement. Ruell, who played Kip, suggested the idea of the title sequence. The sequence shows a pair of hands placing and removing several objects on a table. Objects like plates of food had the credits written in condiments, while other objects like a Lemonheads box or a tube of ChapStick