Scenes said shot at Nakoula home

A crew member on the film said in an interview with Reuters that he was there when scenes were shot at Nakoula's house in Cerritos. The man, who did not want his name used due to concerns about his safety, said he was told at the time that it was the home of the producer, Sam Bacile.

In film clips circulating on YouTube, distinctive front doors shown from the inside in one scene were nearly indistinguishable from the front doors of Nakoula's house as seen from the outside. Both have frosted glass, semi-circular cut-outs with stenciled rose designs in the wood double-door entrance.

The film crew member said he heard the budget was under $100,000 and that the man he knew as Bacile was in charge of the money.

"He said he raised it himself," the man told Reuters. "He said he owned gas stations throughout Orange County and all this other stuff, and he said he saved it out of his own pocket."

The Wall Street Journal has reported that assistant director Jeffrey Robinson said the film's budget was $250,000.

An expired Backstage.com casting call described the production as "ultra low budget," and commentators have cited the amateurish film's fake beards and stilted dialogue as evidence of its crude production.

The casting call lists the film as a "historical Arabian Desert adventure film" and the crew member said he was told that it was a period piece set in Egypt thousands of years ago and dealt with conditions for women at the time.

He said that when he was working on the production, under the title "Desert Warrior," it was not described to him as being about the Prophet Mohammad. The script was distributed only two or three pages at a time, he said.

In several scenes from the film circulating on YouTube, actors' voices appear to be dubbed over to insert dialogue relating to Mohammad or the Koran.

The nonprofit group Media for Christ took out a production permit for the film, according to officials from the city of Duarte, California, where the group is based. Tax documents list Joseph Nasrallah Abdelmasih as the head of Media for Christ.

An online video posted in 2010 shows Abdelmasih at a New York rally, where he urged a crowd to "stop the Islamization of America" and oppose the construction of a Muslim center at the site of the World Trade Center attack.  

The crew member who worked on the film said some shooting occurred at the offices of Media for Christ, which broadcasts satellite TV shows and seeks to reach audiences in the Middle East and North Africa. He said people from the organization were present during the filming.

Representatives of Media for Christ could not be reached for comment. Their offices were closed when Reuters visited them over the past two days.