Inside Land of the Dead Part 3 - Creating Romeros World

This 3rd look inside Land of the Dead is about the creation of George Romero's world, the SFX, the making of the Dead Reckoning and more. The reletionship between the director and his new SFX wizard begins when Special effects makeup supervisor Greg Nicotero (half of the team that also included Howard Berger, both of KNB EFX Group) received his first job in the industry on Romero’s Day of the Dead in 1984, working on Tom Savini’s team. Since then he has become one of the industry’s elite cadre of special effects makeup experts. Nicotero relished the chance to put his imprint on Romero’s cult creatures and says, "It’s amazing—given that I started my career on a George Romero movie—to get the opportunity to take everything that I have learned over the past 20 years and apply it the newest Romero zombie movie."

Romero, Grunwald and Nicotero spent hours discussing the particular look of the zombies—"We wanted to make sure that the zombies still felt fresh and different," explains Nicotero, "if you can use that terminology with the walking dead. A lot of the designs of the characters were done with that in mind." Nicotero feels obliged to differentiate the film from the spate of zombie films released in recent years: "It’s not a movie with zombies running 90 miles-an-hour, and you never get a chance to look at them. Romero zombies are slow, so the camera is on them for extended lengths of time. So each zombie has to look great." Romero adds his own perspective: "Karloff’s prosthetic makeup in Frankenstein was great—but that was just one makeup. Nicotero and his team had to do that about 15 times every day, for our ‘hero’ zombies, the ones on-camera the most." The use of radio-controlled animatronic heads also gave Romero more flexibility in designing the stunts possible. By varying the level of decay from zombie to zombie, Nicotero was also able to expand the look of the crowd scenes.

Nicotero claims to have seen every zombie film ever made. His familiarity with (and passion for) the genre motivated him to once again redefine the zombies’ appearance. While obviously needing to pay homage to the walkers that have come before, Nicotero also wanted to make these zombies particular to Land of the Dead. One of his innovations was to change the zombies’ eyes. "Each zombie actor is wearing contact lenses so that the life is taken out of their eyes." Their lifeless gaze, in combination with their unsteady gate and varying states of decomposition, enhance the feeling that they are indeed coming back from the dead. Also, attention was lavished not only on the facial and body makeup, but on the hair of the walkers as well—realizing that the dead have been "living" outside in all kinds of weather, the hair and wigs were styled to be matted, stringy and, as Greg supplies, "just gross."

The makeups for such leading zombies as Big Daddy, Number 9 and Tambourine Man were patterned on the actual faces of the actors cast to portray them—to make them as realistic as possible and their looks more diverse. "We tailor-made each of the hero zombies to look like exaggerations of their characters." Other design concepts were used to conform to Romero’s mode of filmmaking. "George didn’t want to go heavy on digital effects in terms of the zombies. We really want to have the makeup effects feel live," comments Nicotero. On the largest filming days, Nicotero and his team were responsible for as many as 100 individualized zombies. Application of intricate latex prosthetics for the leading zombies took two hours to apply. For the larger hordes, actors were outfitted with an array of generic cheeks, vacuform dentures, chins and other facial parts which were then painted by a crew of makeup artists. Masks and wigs were also utilized to vary the looks. The resulting horde of walkers created under the supervision of Nicotero realize a horrific vision of a world gone wrong.

And how did Romero direct his stalking hordes? "You can’t tell zombies how to move. If I did that, then I’d get 100 people moving and groaning in the same way. I basically say, ‘Okay, you’re dead, you’re stiff.’ And I ask them to use their imaginations. Then I end up with some amazing interpretations. Some are a little over the top, but the variety is great for the camera." The setting of Land of the Dead is a post-plague world of the near future, when a few enterprising businessmen have created a city in their own image—where the rich live in denial and the rest live in hell. The world outside the city, as much as anyone can guess, is a vast wasteland, studded by a few other "outposts" and populated by the walkers. "What’s great about George’s stories," observes producer Goldmann, "is that, like the best science fiction writers, he’s created an intricate and believable mythology that underlines his films. Because of his work, for instance, it’s accepted that the only way to kill a zombie is by destroying the brain. It’s believable because it’s rooted in the real world."

While unreal in its horrific vision, the world Romero envisioned lay very much in reality—slight flashes of futurism blended with a post-modern junk heap of salvage from the world "before." Cinematographer Miroslaw Baszak and production designer Arv Greywal were given the task of translating Romero’s vision of this world into cinematic reality. "Arv and Miroslaw push the boundaries by embracing George’s vision wholeheartedly and then making it real," offers producer Canton. Greywal decided to ground Land of the Dead in a world that was familiar, but yet was clearly one step removed from reality. "I based the look on a concentration camp that held people in, so that it wasn’t that they were protecting themselves as much as they were also penned in. Their protection is, in effect, holding them prisoner," explains Greywal. It is this environment that increases the citizens’ encroaching paranoia and lays the groundwork for the chaos to come as the hothouse society begins to implode and the denizens turn on each other.

Greywal’s concepts for Dead Reckoning—the armored retrieval vehicle originally of Riley’s design that he is then charged with returning to Kaufman—caught Romero’s attention. The designer explains, "George liked the idea that it would be made out of used and reclaimed train and car parts—the back looks like a garbage truck, the front looks like a train hood and the center is a freight car that has been cut out and repurposed." The final version that became the onscreen Reckoning was created from a massive truck, completely deconstructed and reassembled to the production’s specifications. The interior is a conscious mix of old and new technology—a mixture of pipes, industrial equipment, used heavy machinery—anything that suggests weight and gravity. The finished vehicle measures more than 75 feet long and eight feet wide.

To enable it to travel from one location to another, Reckoning was constructed to conform to the highway code. Greywal also wanted the machine’s industrial look to be reflected by the sounds made by its engine. "The gears whir and hum, like a chain being run through a machine," he explains. Romero’s tradition of including social commentary into his sagas was also incorporated into Greywal’s design plans. He utilized "images that skewer the norm of the day, anything that is quaint and colloquial" to physicalize Romero’s thematic concerns. "George has been making social commentary since his first movie and we brought all of those elements back with such things as store signs, overgrown foliage—the opening scenes, where the mercenaries are out on a run, bear the signals of what is to come."

Miroslaw and Greywal collaborated on the movie’s look from a lighting perspective. "In a regular film, the lighting is a big part of the design. In this one, it plays an even more important role. In a world that does not have a lot of electrical power, you can’t light everyone as you would in a typical movie. I wanted to have as much on-camera lighting as possible. Miro had the same types of ideas about lighting, so we were able to forge a unified vision. Also, this is George’s style—it keeps to his vision of making movies. We wanted to give him the look that his fans are used to." The final lighting scheme gives the outside world a bluish tinge that adds to the feeling of death and decay. By contrast, the scenes in Dead Reckoning employ a warmer hue adding to the sense of life and hope.

After her own discussions with Baszak and Greywal, costume designer Alex Kavanagh started to put ideas in play. "The zombies have been dead for a while so their clothing must suggest that," explains Kavanagh. "Their colors are de-saturated, muted. We over-dyed anything that the zombies are wearing—for example, anything blue was dyed with orange, gray and brown for a murky look." The citizens of the ghetto sport a textured and layered look. These are streetwise, colorful characters—hookers, gamblers—so a decision was made that the colors of their costumes suggest the feel of a market. "Colors, patterns, textures, layers—a lot of the people are very poor so the clothing is worn and has been repaired frequently," continues Kavanagh.

As the mercenaries, the ones who venture outside the ghetto for supplies, Riley and his team are the "coolest" of the citizens, according to Kavanagh. To make them stand out from the rest, Kavanagh utilized leather, sporting equipment and other materials to suggest each character’s idiosyncratic attempts at protection. "They are wearing a lot of motorcycle gear, leather, whatever they think they need to prevent zombie bites and eventual infection," explains Kavanagh. Argento appreciated Kavanagh’s attention to detail: "I like what Alex did with the characters. It’s very minimal but believable at the same time, especially in the scenes in the arena. It’s a freak show, with weird people everywhere, but Alex was able to make it work."

Land of the Dead attempts a balancing act for its writer/director, whose overriding aim is to satisfy hard-core enthusiasts of the genre, as well as introduce new audiences to his zombie universe. "What we are trying to do is let George be the best he can be with the genre that he created. He’s the master of what he does. The passion for this genre is unbelievable, and it’s all because George figured out a way to create a world that was scary, horrific, hip and cool. He’s remains that guy," comments Canton. Grunwald agrees, "Zombies have always been my favorite movie monster, because they’re not exotic. They’re the people next door. They’re us. Frankenstein is a creature of science, and Dracula is a creature of myth and legend. Zombies are just normal folks. That’s where their power to scare comes from."

Goldmann adds, "We live in a violent society, which has always been a part of George’s films. What’s really scary about zombies, though, is not just that they’re violent creatures—they’re relentless. They call up all those nightmares as a child, trying to run away from something that just keeps coming and never stops." Romero closes, "My films are not at all traditional horror films, slashers or anything. I just think of them as stories, basically—people stories underneath it all. The early horror films, as beautiful as they were, were about a crisis that could possibly destroy the world; it was all about restoring order. The real horror in my films is that order is never going to be restored."

You can read the other 4 parts of our Look Inside Land of the Dead at the Links below. And don't forget to check out our Land of the Dead Gallery which now has 125 pictures. Land of the Dead comes to cinemas June 24th, 2005.

Part 1 - The Production
Part 2 - The Casting
Part 4 - The Cast
Part 5 - The Filmmakers