The makers of Elephant were determined to shoot the film in a real high school. Producer Wolf was able to secure the school system’s permission to use a recently de-commissioned high school in northeast Portland. The school’s furniture and fixtures were still mostly intact. "In pretty short order we had the whole place looking like it was a normal school again. We wanted it to be as real as it could be," Wolf explains.

Elephant filmed for twenty days in November 2002. The film marks the third collaboration between Van Sant and acclaimed director of photography Harris Savides, who shot Van Sant’s Finding Forrester as well as Gerry, which earned Savides a 2002 Independent Spirit Award nomination. Shot in 35mm, Elephant is remarkable for its pictorial beauty and detail: the vistas of land and sky; the long tracking shots that quietly follow the students; the patient observation of a human face. Yet it is also a very immediate and authentic portrait of an environment, and the people within it.

In arriving at the film’s visual aesthetic, Van Sant and Savides drew inspiration from the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman (Domestic Violence, The Store, High School) and the photography of William Eggleston. Says Van Sant, "Wiseman is always shooting in relatively difficult places to film, whether it’s a department store or a high school. He’s really trying to get a portrait of the situation, the people, the place. Same with William Eggleston: he’s taking still shots of environment, but it’s also characters and people. With both Wiseman and Eggleston, you’re not exactly sure where they are, but wherever it is, it looks amazing. So we were thinking in terms of things that look great but aren’t necessarily pampered or overthought or over-worked. We used a lot of window light, or whatever light was there, really – and tried to find what was beautiful in that."

The decision was also made to shoot the film in 1:33 ratio, rather than the wider 1:85 ratio used in most contemporary films. The format had been the industry standard until the mid 1950s, and Van Sant had used it in his early 16mm films. He was eager to use it again. "I really like the shape of that format. Also, we were going to be shooting in situations that I thought would look good in 1:33, like hallways," he explains. Moreover, American schools showed 16mm films in 1:33 for decades, until video became the norm.