The elaborate set of Tativille had its own roads, electrical systems and - in one of the office buildings - a fully working elevator.
For the restaurant sequence, Jacques Tati had to work out each part and direct each character separately. It took him seven weeks to shoot it. First he'd set up all the different movements in the background, then he'd set up each action in the foreground, looking through the lens while composing each shot so he could see everything at once. He had to shoot it all in sequence.
To cut production cost cardboard cut-outs were used as extras in the background. To give them life some human extras would interact with the cut-outs.
Production took place from October 1964 to October 1967. Filming began in April 1965 primarily on a set dubbed "Tativille", where 100 construction workers built two buildings using 11,700 square feet of glass, 38,700 square feet of plastic, 31,500 square feet of timber, and 486,000 square feet of concrete.