American Cinematographer - June 2020 - 72

'70s Cinema in AC

"The Power of Christ Compels You!"
From "The Exorcist - How It Was Filmed"
AC Feb. 1974

Recalls Owen Roizman, ASC: "The exorcism sequence did involve some very
special problems. One of these stemmed from the fact that, in the story, anyone who
walks into the child's room becomes extremely cold and develops a chill. The only way
you can really show that kind of cold is to be able to see the breath of the characters
- and the only way to see this breath is to actually have them in a very cold room. For
this reason, the child's bedroom was duplicated and built inside a 'cocoon' - as they
called it - which was refrigerated, generally to about 20 degrees below zero. We tried
it first at just below freezing (about 25 degrees), and you could see some breath, but
it really wasn't enough, and as soon as the lights were turned on, the heat took care
of the cold so quickly that we couldn't even make a take. We found out during the test
period that this wouldn't work, so we went back to the drawing board. A system was
developed that could refrigerate the room quickly to any temperature from zero to 20
below. The breath showed up fine at zero, but [director William] Friedkin wanted the
actors to really feel the cold because he felt that would help their acting. An actor on
his knees for 15 minutes at 20 below zero is really going to feel cold."
The frigid conditions also helped the filmmakers sell the illusion for one of the
movie's most infamous moments, when the possessed Regan's head twists 360
degrees. Noting that the special-effects crew was struggling to create a realistic effect
with the dummy used in the shot, Roizman remembers, "As we were looking at the
dummy in bed in the cold room, I said - as a joke, actually- 'Wouldn't it be great if
the dummy had some frost on its breath?' Everybody looked at me, and the next thing
you knew, they were working on it. When they put that element in, it looked terrific.
It was that one extra realistic touch that made the effect work."
72

June 2020

American Cinematographer - 100 Years

Ford Coppola on The Godfather (AC
June '71), the magazine spotlighted
the cinematographer's contributions
to Alan Pakula's All the President's Men
(AC May '75) and published two-part
coverage of an American Film
Institute seminar featuring Willis (AC
Sept. and Oct. '78). Discussing the
famous look he fashioned for The
Godfather, Willis told interviewer
Gregg Steele, "I felt that the film
should be brown and black in feeling,
and that occasionally it should be
hanging on the edge from the standpoint of what you see and what you
don't see. A lot of cameramen work to
increase the quality of an image, but in
this specific case, I'm working to
decrease it. Most cameramen work to
make the image as structurally sound
and smooth as possible, but it's been
my personal feeling that this isn't the
best way to handle a contemporary
story - and now that I've thought
about it, I'm convinced that it's
absolutely the wrong way to photograph a period story."
Willis noted, however, that this
approach would not be carried
American Cinematographer - June 2020

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