Land of the Dead (2005)

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.”

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