The post-apocalyptic, zombie horror television show, based on a comic book series by Robert Kirkman, concluded with a record-setting, eleven season run on AMC to become one of the biggest cable series in history. The Walking Dead first premiered on October 31, 2010 to 5.35 million viewers, making it by far the most popular series debut AMC had seen at that point. By its third season, The Walking Dead attracted the most viewers of any cable or broadcast television series with a peak of 17.29 million viewers per episode and maintained an unprecedented streak of 75 consecutive episodes with more than 10 million viewers. By comparison, other hit shows such as Madmen and Breaking Bad, which were critically-acclaimed series, averaged about 2 million viewers per episode. The Walking Dead was a rating phenomenon that few cable series have ever equaled. The multi-billion dollar franchise has been so successful that it has spawned six spinoff television series, video games and other media properties. While zombie-themed media existed before, The Walking Dead also brought the genre into the mainstream, leading to a resurgence of zombie content in films, books, and video games. The success of the franchise demonstrated that horror and genre shows could attract broad audiences and significant investment from networks, leading to a boom of similar shows with high production values. The Walking Dead was praised by critics and viewers for its focus on character development and moral dilemmas, setting a new standard for how genre television could delve into complex themes and character arcs. One of the ways in which we kept the focus on the characters was by removing visual distractions that would take away from the action and dialogue moments. A way we did this was by always having the camera locked-off on tripods or steady during handheld camera movements. We wanted the story to develop within the frame and so the actors could interact with the set and move around in planned ways so that the visual composition was always serving the story, rather than relying on having big, sweeping cameras on cranes or drone shots to tell the narrative. This approach kept the series grounded on a more visual level, but also story-wise it kept the threat of a zombie apocalypse feel more real and relatable to the characters in the show as we were always seeing things from their point of view and not as an omniscient audience member. The pacing of the show was incredibly important to us during the film editing process. This wasn’t a snappy courtroom drama or superhero action flick, it was a show focused on hope and what it means to have humanity when the world’s infrastructure and society has collapsed into borderless anarchy as people fight for daily survival. So the story we wanted to tell involved slower, nuanced movements of what life looked like for a group of survivors trying to find safety in a community amongst the zombie plague and violent humans trying to oppress the rest. A way we achieved that in post production was by letting takes play out as long as they needed to, without the need to cut to the next shot, until it was the right time to do so based on what the story needed at any particular moment. You’ll hardly find a shot under two seconds long on the show, except for high intense action scenes. We also avoided cutting to a new shot unless the angle of the camera on the subject was at least 45 degrees different from the previous shot. Meaning, we would never cut from a medium shot on a character to a close up along the same plane, only if we were going from a direct frontal shot to a side profile angle for example. These rules kept a framework for the feel and tone of the show that took it from just a simple zombie TV series to an award-winning, prestige cinematic experience that lasted twelve years and created an entire fandom of millions of engaged viewers.