Before and during the film's shooting, he had experimented with the reel to give it an old, withered look. In one such experiment, he ran the unexposed negative against sandpaper to scratch its surface before shooting. Unsatisfied with the results, Merhige decided to use an optical printer for further processing. The "rephotography" removed almost all of the gray midtones from the footage's visible spectrum, leaving only extreme contrasts of black and white. He was unable to find an optical printer priced within his budget, so he built one himself. He constructed the printer over a period of eight months with spare parts from camera stores and special effects houses where he had worked before.