For a man who worked on Tales from the Crypt for years, AMC's comic book adapted tale about the zombie apocalypse isn't necessarily a far stretch. But production Designer Greg Melton has always taken a realistic approach to his sets.
"I always approached that show (Tales from the Crypt) from a realism standpoint -- trying to set up a realistic world, and then let the surreal horror spin out of it. And that's the strategy I've taken with this, to root it in reality as much as possible and let Rick move through this world and see it get more and more skewed," said Melton.
When going into more detail he also revealed that they ended up taking the comic book and making it even more disastrous in scope then what the pages initially contained.
"A great example is when he (Rick) wakes up in the hospital. It just gets worse and worse. It's like there was a running gun battle through this hospital. There were grenades. He comes outside and it looks like Dachau. Then as he comes to the parking lot, there's going to be an entire military hospital unit that's been overrun. It just keeps unfolding. When you read the comic, Rick walks outside and there's a car crashed into a tree. [Laughs] I'm like, "OK yeah, we'll do this burned out bus and dump trucks stacked with bodies." he said.
Here's an image of the hospital straight from the pages of the comic.
Speaking of the massive scope that
The Walking Dead is undertaking, Melton makes no bones about his set looking like the end of the world when he talks about the time they lost an aircraft in the oodles of apocalypse.
"The set was so large, when Frank [Darabont] got there he didn't even see we had a Huey helicopter landed in the street. He's like, "Where's the helicopter?" "It's down there!" "Well bring it up here!" So we immediately brought that up. That's how big it was - the helicopter got lost," said Melton.
An image of downtown Atlanta from the comic.
So we know that AMC isn't skimping on the show's production cost and I'm expecting a ton of practical effects, but what about the always glossy CGI in post production? Melton has an answer to that one as well - but for the full interview hit the jump and go to AMC (they've linked some of my articles on the official AMC page as well - sweet).
"I have to say rather proudly that there are two or three sets that we've done - downtown Atlanta, the gas station - that were going to have a lot more CG work done to them. But when we got done with them, Frank was like, "We kinda have it," which was great for me. He's like, "I don't think we need to extend this set. This is actually much more than I thought I was going to get." That's been kind of cool, to actually be able to deliver enough physical scenery to fill the shot."
So there you have it - Melton did such a badass job destroying Atlanta that we won't have as much glossy CGI touchups. Expect some oldschool mayhem my zombie goons.