Filmmaker Jonas Mekas gave Conrad rolls of film and helped obtain a Bolex camera to use.
He shot the black frames by covering the camera lens.
He first tried unsuccessfully to shoot the white frames by removing the lens but ultimately ended up shooting a sheet of white paper.
Conrad shot the material over the course of a few days.
He produced one 16 mm roll with 47 arrangements of black and white frames and made ten copies.
He used an inexpensive 8 mm film splicer to reorder the frames such that each of the 47 arrangements was repeated ten times.

Conrad knew a friend who had died from an epileptic seizure, so he talked to a doctor at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital's seizure clinic about the film.
He was told that less than 0.01% of the population was affected and that prompting non-epileptic people with a warning could cause them to have "seizures".
He was still concerned about legal liability after finding two cases in New York where theater owners had been sued after people suffered reactions from a frame rate of 16 frames per second.
With this in mind, he decided to add a warning to the beginning of the film.
He also added a long section with the film's credits to lull the audience into a state of compliance, making the flicker effect stronger.

The soundtrack for The Flicker was made by Conrad on a synthesizer that he built solely for the film.
He operated the synthesizer around 20 Hz so that the people could hear it as either a rhythm or pitch.
The soundtrack uses tape delays and heavy reverb.
Conrad intended for the audio to be played from a separate stereo tape because of film's poor sound fidelity.
Filmmaker Jonas Mekas gave Conrad rolls of film and helped obtain a Bolex camera to use. He shot the black frames by covering the camera lens. He first tried unsuccessfully to shoot the white frames by removing the lens but ultimately ended up shooting a sheet of white paper. Conrad shot the material over the course of a few days. He produced one 16 mm roll with 47 arrangements of black and white frames and made ten copies. He used an inexpensive 8 mm film splicer to reorder the frames such that each of the 47 arrangements was repeated ten times.
Conrad knew a friend who had died from an epileptic seizure, so he talked to a doctor at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital's seizure clinic about the film. He was told that less than 0.01% of the population was affected and that prompting non-epileptic people with a warning could cause them to have "seizures". He was still concerned about legal liability after finding two cases in New York where theater owners had been sued after people suffered reactions from a frame rate of 16 frames per second. With this in mind, he decided to add a warning to the beginning of the film. He also added a long section with the film's credits to lull the audience into a state of compliance, making the flicker effect stronger.
The soundtrack for The Flicker was made by Conrad on a synthesizer that he built solely for the film. He operated the synthesizer around 20 Hz so that the people could hear it as either a rhythm or pitch. The soundtrack uses tape delays and heavy reverb. Conrad intended for the audio to be played from a separate stereo tape because of film's poor sound fidelity.
The Flicker