How ‘The Walking Dead’ Will Look Different in Final Season

The Walking Dead returns on Sunday, Feb. 28, to kick off the next phase of season ten, and longtime fans of the show might notice some differences. Namely, the fact that production switched from shooting with film to digital. Showrunner Angela Kang explained to Insider that this was done as a safety measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on set.

“Yes, these episodes are filmed on digital,” Kang confirmed. “The decision came about because there are fewer ‘touch points’ with digital than 16mm. We don’t have to swap out film every few minutes, for example.” This is a major change for the show, and will likely affect the look and feel of the show.

The decision to shoot on 16mm film was a serious decision by the team, who briefly toyed with shooting digitally in season two. “One of the things that drives the show is the fact that we shoot on 16mm film,” cinematographer Stephen Campbell told The American Society of Cinematographers in 2016. “Although they did test digital formats during the second season, they decided, ‘That’s not the show.’ Because the show, being on 16mm, has additional grain in it. It has motion blur, if only because it’s still going through a gate. That adds a bit of a classic horror vibe to the show. And I think they’ll maintain shooting with film as we go on with the show.”

Kang told Variety in 2019 that shooting on film was “something that differentiates the daytime zombie look that’s on the 16 that is not exactly the same as when we try to mimic it with digital.” All production teams have had to adjust to the ongoing pandemic in order to film safely, and the decision to switch to digital was not made lightly. “We will be continuing on digital in season 11 but using post-production techniques to maintain our classic TWD feel,” Kang told Insider.

The Walking Dead will wrap up an eleven season run in 2022, but fans won’t be left without zombie content for long. Two spin-offs have been announced, one of which will focus on Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride). “I didn’t know the flagship show would end,” Reedus told Entertainment Weekly. “The whole thing was we would take off and we’d come back and check-in and we would take off. So I didn’t know that was going to happen. And to be honest, I was hoping that would never happen because, you know, that’s the mothership. I’m scared to leave the mothership. That’s scary new ground. I mean, I’m excited for the spin-off and I’m excited for the type of show it will be, but I didn’t see that coming that. That kind of came out of nowhere.”