AMC and The Walking Dead production team have done a really good job of providing us zombie fans with steady information regarding the upcoming season. Today, they have posted a "Dispatches From the Set" Q&A with Frank Darabont, where he talks about the first weeks of filming, upcoming locations, and how they are dealing with upcoming plots from the comic series:
Q: How are the first weeks of production going?
A: Tough! It's a very challenging show to do, and this is why it really helps to have a fantastic crew and a really great director. The time I spent on the set was reasonably minimal because I was out scouting other locations and going through a bit of prep, so there's a lot of tromping through fields and picking ticks out of me when I got back to my room. You probably should know that the cast and crew are braving heat, humidity, ticks, every source of disgust you could imagine -- all to entertain you for an hour a week. [Laughs]
Q: Last season was very urban; now you're in the country. What kind of difference does that make?
A: Well it certainly is a great advantage because we're gonna be dropping anchor at Hershel's Farm for most of the season. Last season was so challenging because it was different locations pretty much every episode. Here, we're sorta following the template of the comic book and that puts us at Hershel's Farm for a good chunk of the season. Obviously we range out from there, but it's a primary location for the season and that's a terrific advantage really.
Q: Tell me about this farm you've found.
A: Well, it's got the farmhouse that was built in the late 1800s, I think. It's got such a magnificent, beautiful, Andrew-Wyeth-painting, Southern Gothic feel to it. And then it's also got just a hint of the house from Amityville Horror or from Carrie. It's got this wonderful blend of beauty and isolation and it's just a little bit creepy. Georgia has just provided such magnificent locations for the show. If it were not for the unbearably insufferable heat, it would be perfection.
[SPOILER WARNING] Q: You've said before that you like to treat Robert Kirkman's comic as a road map, even as you veer off the road from time to time. What detours are you planning this season?
A: We're fleshing out the story in so many different directions. Once you're into this with real actors playing these characters, the dynamics develop over time from episode to episode. There's so much rich story and character to plunder. I don't know if we're giving anything away, but... [SPOILER ALERT!] something as simple in the comic books as "Lori gets pregnant" winds up being sort of a fantastic complication on screen. In the story we're telling, it's just not that simple as it was in the comic book because you have those opportunities to really spin the story out in many different layers. So, that kind of stuff is tremendously exciting to me. [END SPOILERS]
To read the rest of the Q&A, head over to AMC's official blog for The Walking Dead TV show at the source link below.
After spending more than 10 years as a consultant in the tech and entertainment industry, Jonathan James launched Daily Dead in 2010 to share his interest in horror and sci-fi. Since then, it has grown into an online magazine with a staff of writers that provide daily news, reviews, interviews, and special features.
As the Editor-in-Chief of Daily Dead, Jonathan is responsible for bringing the latest horror news to millions of readers from around the world. He is also consulted with as an expert on zombies in entertainment and pop culture, providing analyses of the zombie sub-genre to newspapers, radio stations, and convention attendees.
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