Document of the Dead

In 1978 George A. Romero was shooting Dawn of the Dead in a shopping mall outside Pittsburgh. Roy Frumkes walked onto the set with his camera and recorded the production from beginning to end: the makeup table, the staging of the crowd scenes, the editing room, what working on a low budget actually looks like. The documentary places Romero's earlier films around that footage. Frumkes designed the documentary as teaching material for film students, so the account is not fan work but goes straight at method. Tom Savini's effects work and the way Romero cuts his own films are the most detailed passages. Over the years the film was expanded several times and updated with new footage. It is now regarded as the earliest and closest documentary made about Romero.