Assault on Precinct 13 is a cool film, but Halloween is great. The difference was the scale of investment supporting Carpenter. The easy explanation for this observation is that more money enables better production quality. This is partially true. Carpenter, along with his then unknown director of photography, Dean Cundey, spent nearly half of Akkad’s $300,000 on brand-new, lightweight Panavision cameras—a new technology at the time that allowed them to film in long, gliding Steadicam shots while maintaining a cinematic aspect ratio.
