The Walking Dead: Movie Analysis

Before analyzing The Walking Dead, it is important to note that the writers and producers of the show, Gale Anne Hurd, Frank Darabont, and Greg Nicotero have worked on popular films previously. A prime example of this Greg Nicotero having worked as a special effects supervisor for the widely acclaimed novel to movie adaptation of Stephen King’s The Green Mile, which Frank Darabont also directed; later the two also worked together for Stephen King’s novel to film adaptation of The Mist; whereas Gale Anne Hurd was the writer of 1984’s cult classic, The Terminator, later serving as producer for the graphic novel to live-action movie adaptation of Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk, released in 2008. Based on these facts, it is no wonder that The Walking …show more content…
The pilot episode begins with a near four-and-a-half-minute flash-forward prologue scene that starts off with an extreme long-shot view of protagonist Sheriff Rick Grime’s police car approaching the camera, staying in deep focus to show how empty the world is at that point. The camera then begins panning to the right towards the car as it gets closer. As the car stops the camera goes to a blocked shot of Rick Grimes exiting his car before giving the viewers a series of long-shot views of the protagonist’s full body, as he gets out of his car and grabs a gas canister and proceeds to search for gas. This is an example where the creators make use of the challenge of modern television’s HDTV’s wider frame, in contrast to the earlier televisions prior to the digital age as “Victoria O’Donnell suggests in her book Television Criticism, stating that “a wider frame provides challenges to the creators of [a television show] with regard to visual the visual information contained in the picture and the composition within the frame that conveys information” (56). The extreme long shot was used with very little challenge, due to fact that the setting of the scene and the majority of the episode takes place outside, negating any needs for artificial lighting throughout most of the episode, presumably allowing the line crew …show more content…
The scene then uses the audio and visual cues of the police siren being turned as both a graphical match cut and a sound bridge to the following cut, a close-up shot of two crows feasting on an animal carcass in the middle of the highway as the camera tilts up towards the two police cars. The focus of the staging of the two crows in the transition acts as foreshadow in the show’s narrative, as evident a few scenes later at the end of the fast-paced shoot-out scene when both suspects are shot dead, with Sheriff Grimes also being shot