The exteriors were shot at Simi Valley, California while Mike Muscarella, the Construction Coordinator, oversaw the construction of the interior sets at MGM.
According to Richard Edlund, lingering thoughts of a director’s strike rushed Poltergeist into production.
“That way, even if the strike happened, we’d still be able to continue the effects end of it.”
-Richard Edlund from Cinefex #10.
Matthew Leonetti served as the Director of Photography. According to Leonetti, 90% of the movie takes place on a stage:
“We worked on a set 10 out of the 12 weeks. The only time we were inside the house was when they in the kitchen looking out and they were digging with a big tractor. Any other times when looked outside to see the hills and all that background. The rest of it was on a stage.“
The filmmakers filmed the first act of the film in a pretty mundane way so that the rest of the movie could be more dramatic.
Leonetti brought in his own equipment, including a custom 35 mm, called the Ultracam, that he built with his father. The Ultracam was designed to be as silent and light as possible. Cinevision animorphic lenses were used on the film. Leonetti used “hard light” to light a great deal of the scenes to make the them seem “crisper and richer.”
Many in-camera tricks were used in the film. For the now famous “They’re here!” moment, simple strobe lights were used to create the flickering light effect that is supposed to be coming from the television.
For another strobe effect in the film, the incredible light coming from the children’s closet, two 2500wtt HMI spotlights were put behind a wheel creating a “shutter” effect. They varied the speed of the wheel with a dimmer to make the rays of light less consistent. Two more spotlight were used little pieces of mirror glued to a board with springs to make smaller rays of light for some of the shots.
The scene where Diane turns and finds the chairs arranged on the table was done all in one shot. As the actress and camera turns away from the table many crew members would quickly place an already assembled group of chairs and get rid of the previous chairs as quickly as possible.
The exterior shot of Lesh’s office building was shot on the campus of the University of California Irvine. Scifi fans might recognize this location as the setting for Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
In an interview with AMC, JoBeth Williams commented on her experiences of making Poltergeist:
“The whole thing was an incredible education for me because Steven Spielberg was very intimately involved in making every part of that movie. To be around him and watch how he worked, absorb his extraordinary energy and excitement at making movies was thrilling.”
Williams also commented on working with Spielberg in a 1982 newspaper article:
“I had no idea what these special effects would looks like. Steven would hold up a stick and say, ‘this is your eye line – follow this.’ Then he’d say, ‘now you’re really scared.’ And I’d say, ‘what am I really scared of?’ And he’d say, ‘we don’t really know what it’s going to look like, but it’s really scary.’ So we really had to use our own imaginations.”
