The process of bringing Exorcist: The Beginning to the big screen was a scary story. All images, unless otherwise noted, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures © 2004 Morgan Creek. All rights reserved.

One of the scariest movies ever made, The Exorcist traumatized millions of spectators with its groundbreaking make-up effects by Dick Smith and inspired direction by William Friedkin. It grossed more than $400 million worldwide, a staggering amount in 1973. Two sequels, in 1977 and 1990, failed to generate a similar response from audiences. However, the very successful Version You've Never Seen reissue ($30 million) in '00 gave rise to the new prequel, Exorcist: The Beginning, which has generated more controversy and acrimony than anyone ever anticipated, with two different versions produced — one by Paul Schrader that was scrapped for not delivering the prescribed goods and a more conventional scare fest by Renny Harlin that Warner Bros. is releasing on Aug. 20. But there is talk of releasing both versions on DVD next year.

Hired to direct the prequel was John Frankenheimer. The veteran filmmaker worked on the project for several months before poor health obliged him to step down. He eventually passed away only one month after he had resigned. Schrader was then brought in to helm the project, but when executives at Morgan Creek watched his first cut of Exorcist: The Beginning, they found that the movie was not scary enough to their taste. Schrader had delivered a subtle psychological thriller instead of the in-your-face horror flick that they had in mind.

Starting from Scratch
Since the movie did not provide the requested frights, Morgan Creek initially looked for a director to do a few re-shoots in order to enhance Schrader's version. When that did not pan out, they took the unprecedented decision of throwing away just about everything Schrader had shot and starting from scratch with a new director. The movie was entirely re-shot in Rome, Italy, with Harlin at the helm, a new script, some new actors, and visual effects supervisor Ariel Velasco-Shaw overseeing plate photography. However, when the shot list grew from 150 to more than 500 shots, Harlin felt more comfortable bringing in Brian Jennings who had supervised the effects work on all of his latest movies. A veteran of large-scale productions, Jennings wasn't available for principal photography due to a prior commitment to Man on Fire.

The new visual effects supervisor was faced with the daunting task of jumping into an enormous project for which he hadn't even shot the plates. "Basically, we had four months to do 600 shots and a very little budget to do so!" laughs Jennings. "We didn't have the money to farm out all the shots. So, the only solution was to set up our own studio. I figured I needed about 20 people. I especially looked for artists that had their own gear. We paid them a salary for their work and a rental for their equipment. For those who came without gear, we bought a bunch of Macintosh G5s. 2D work was done in Shake, Combustion and After Effects under the supervision of Jeremy Burns and Tom Mahoney, while 3D effects were created in Maya and Houdini by a team lead by Robert Emrich."

430 Shots In-house
Originally, Schrader had planned to have all the effects realized in Italy by Cinecitta's Proxima, a company owned by the son of great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (who shot both versions of the movie). However, when Harlin took over the project, the decision was made to relocate the entire effects work in America. "The previous supervisor had already hired Meteor Studios to do a sequence involving CG hyenas. I brought Pixel Magic in to do other sequences and we did the rest with our own unit. So, the organization was completely different from what had been arranged for the Schrader version. We tried to do as much as we could in the production effects unit, but there just wasn't enough time. We still managed to produce some 430 shots in four months with a crew of 20…"