While the official story is that the film stock was accidentally damaged during development, it is also known that Tarkovsky was unhappy with how those scenes were originally filmed. He wanted to reshoot them, but the budget committee turned down his request. Shortly afterwards the film was mysteriously ruined. The committee had no choice but to let Tarkovsky film the scenes again. Since they could not afford to buy more color film stock, the reshoot was done in black and white.