Director Guy Ferland shares the secret to orchestrating walker mayhem and weighs the pros and cons of living in either a post-apocalyptic prison or Woodbury.

Q: You've directed episodes in all three seasons. How does this season compare to the first?

A: There's a little bit of first season peeking through this season. In the first season it seemed like everything we were doing was new and there was a lot of discussion about who was going to live and who was going to die and what kind of tone the show was going to take. This year the same thing was introducing Woodbury. We were always asking the same questions: How self-sufficient do we make it? What are the citizens like? What kind of power does the town have?

Q: What's the secret to directing big groups of walkers?

A: There were a lot of instances this season where the zombie action was relentless but it wasn't spelled out in the script specifically. It would be written [that] Rick and the others... dispatch the remaining walkers, so it's my job to figure out what I wanted. Where is Daryl stabbing people once he's shot his bow? I'm always looking for new ways to execute the zombie action and I think we've done a lot of shooting in heads, so I was trying to bring something different.

Q: What are some twists have you've been bringing to the action?

A: Well, I really like to reveal everything -- reveal the zombies' geography and reveal the choice of how to kill the zombie -- all from the hero's point of view. So if you follow Rick when he has to deal with a zombie, you'll see I reveal it when Rick sees it. You want it to feel like a funhouse with lots of surprises.

Q: You've said that Alfred Hitchcock was one of your big influences. Any particularly Hitchcock-esque moments that you've worked into this season?

Continue reading "Dispatches From the Set - Season 3 Director Guy Ferland " »

The Walking Dead's costume designer Eulyn Womble describes how to make fake pus and chooses her ideal wardrobe for the zombie apocalypse.

Q: Any big wardrobe changes this season? Do our survivors finally get a fresh set of clothes?

A: They never get a fresh set of clothes. [Laughs] It wouldn't be The Walking Dead if they looked clean... Maggie is much much tougher this year. She's left the whole farmgirl thing behind. Nothing cute or frilly anymore. Daryl is also changed. This season he has a poncho. It's not quite Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It's got a little bit more edge than that.

Q: What's the biggest thing you've learned since Season 1 about dressing the cast and the walkers?

A: In Season 1, the walkers had a lot more personality. We made them individual. As the story progresses, we're trying to turn them into a herd, with one mind. So you'll find that when we dress them, the tops and bottoms match, so it's gray on top, gray on bottom so they melt away and blend together. In the cast, from the first season to now, they didn't know if this whole apocalypse thing was going to last. They had more hope that it would just fix itself and they were clinging desparately onto who they were, onto their jewelry, their fancy little earrings and sandals. Now they know they have to be prepared.

Q: Greg Nicotero told us that the walkers are becoming more decayed and putrefied over time. Are their clothes getting more decayed as well?

A: Absolutely, they are. If you look closely, you'll actually see pus [on their clothes]. We actually paint it on. We've got the clothes more tattered, but they're rotting from the inside. And I've said this before, I really do want the audience to smell them when you see them on camera. We try to make them as gross as possible.

Q: What's the pus made of?

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The Walking Dead's Season 3 Location Manager Mike Riley chats with AMCtv.com about what makes the South well suited for horror and where he'd go if the world ended.

Q: What's been the most challenging location to secure for The Walking Dead thus far?

A: The problem we've run into is our writers are in Los Angeles, and they're sitting inside a building somewhere making this stuff up, and a lot of what they write may not be physically possible to do in the area of the state that we're in.

Q: Can you think of a specific example?

A: There was an upcoming script where the writer wanted this river where it was dangerous to ford. Well, that doesn't exist here.

Q: Does the principal work in reverse, where you find unexpected locations near where you're filming?

A: During the first season...when [the cast] found themselves at the quarry, you assume they went out of town. Well it just so happens that that quarry was 15 minutes from our stages where we were based for the first season, which was in Atlanta. It was a place I knew about from when I was a kid.

Q: The water looks pretty picturesque. Did you used to swim there?

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Today, Mon. May 7, production of The Walking Dead Season 3 officially kicks off. Now AMCtv.com begins its series of on-set interviews with the show's talented creative team by chatting with Executive Producer Robert Kirkman about Danai Gurira's (Michonne) sword skills and the most impressive set he's ever seen on the show. (Yes, we're talking about the prison.)

Q: After two seasons, you must feel like an old pro on set. What aspects of production still surprise you?

A: One thing that's surprising me is how much I've fallen in love with Georgia. The town Senoia where we're filming is absolutely beautiful...The big change this season is we've got this amazing prison that we're filming in. It's absolutely stunning, and I never get used to being on set.

Q: What went into constructing the prison?

A: They've taken a lot of what you see in the comic book series and brought it to life in ways that I didn't think possible. This is going to be one of the most impressive looking things that's ever been put together for a show.

Q: The room in the prison with all the guns and the SWAT gear in the comic is really cool. Is that going to come up on the show?

A: We're a big fan of the SWAT gear here at The Walking Dead writer's room... maybe that's an indication that we'll be seeing that stuff in the show. It's important to us to maintain the tone of the show. Thus far [the characters] have been out on the road, desperate and living in the heat, and we don't want it to be that they're relaxing in this safe place now.

Q: With the evil Governor in the picture, does that mean the humans are the bigger threat this season?

Continue reading "Dispatches From the Set - Comic Creator and Series Executive Producer Robert Kirkman" »