Filming
Principal photography for Dawn of the Living Dead (its working title at the time) began on November 13, 1977, at the Monroeville Mall in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Use of an actual, open shopping mall during the Christmas shopping season caused numerous time constraints. Filming began nightly once the mall closed, starting at 11 PM and ending at 7 AM, when automated music came on. As December arrived, the production decided against having the crew remove and replace the Christmas decorations—a task that had proved to be too time-consuming. Filming was shut down during the last three weeks of the year to avoid the possible continuity difficulties and lost shooting time. Production would resume on January 3, 1978. During the break in filming, Romero took the opportunity to begin editing his existing footage.
The airfield scenes were filmed at the Harold W. Brown Memorial Airfield in Monroeville, an airport located about two miles from the mall. The scenes of the group's hideout at the top of the mall were filmed on a set built at Romero's then-production company, The Latent Image. The elevator shaft was located there as well, as no such area of the mall actually existed. The gun store was also not located in the mall—for filming, the crew used Firearms Unlimited, a shop that existed in the East Liberty district of Pittsburgh at the time. The police dock scene was filmed in downtown Pittsburgh right next the Monongahela River at 1 S. 6th St. The building, landing pad, and pumps are long gone, and the location is now an outdoor art gallery called The Color Park. The truck yard scene was filmed at the B&P Motor Express Co. which is now a First Student school bus company in Irwin, PA, about 22 minutes from the Monroeville Mall.
Principal photography on Dawn of the Dead ended in February 1978, and Romero's process of editing would begin. By using numerous angles during the filming, Romero allowed himself an array of possibilities during editing—choosing from these many shots to reassemble into a sequence that could dictate any number of responses from the viewer simply by changing an angle or deleting or extending portions of scenes. This amount of superfluous footage is evidenced by the numerous international cuts, which in some cases affects the regional version's tone and flow.
According to the original screenplay, Peter and Francine were to kill themselves, Peter by shooting himself and Fran by sticking her head into the path of the rotating main helicopter blades. The ending credits would run over a shot of the helicopter blades turning until the engine winds down, implying that the two would not have gotten far if they had chosen to escape. During production, it was decided to change the ending of the film.
Much of the lead-in to the two suicides remains in the film, as Francine leans out of the helicopter upon seeing the zombies approach, and Peter puts a gun to his head, ready to shoot himself. An additional scene, showing a zombie having the top of its head cut off by the helicopter blades (thus foreshadowing Francine's suicide) was included early in the film. Romero has stated that the original ending was scrapped before being shot, although behind-the-scenes photos show the original version was at least tested. The head appliance made for Francine's suicide was instead used in the opening SWAT raid, made-up to resemble an African American male and blown apart by a shotgun blast.
Tom Savini, who had been offered the chance to provide special effects and make-up for Romero's first zombie film, Night of the Living Dead, before being drafted into the Vietnam War, made his debut as an effects artist on Dawn of the Dead. Savini had been known for his make-up in horror for some time, prior to Dawn of the Dead, and in his book explaining special effects techniques, Bizarro, explains how his time in Vietnam influenced his craft. He had a crew of eight to assist in applying gray makeup to two to three hundred extras each weekend during the shoot. One of his assistants during production was Joseph Pilato, who played a police captain in the film and would go on to play the lead villain in the film's sequel, Day of the Dead, Captain Henry Rhodes.
The makeup for the multitudes of extras in the film was a basic blue or gray tinge to the face of each extra. Some featured zombies, who would be seen close-up or on-screen longer than others, had more time spent on their look. Many of the featured zombies became part of the fanfare, with nicknames based upon their look or activity—such as Machete Zombie, Sweater Zombie, and Nurse Zombie. "Sweater Zombie" Clayton Hill was described by a crew member as "one of the most convincing zombies of the bunch" citing his skill at maintaining his stiff pose and rolling his eyes back into his head, including heading down the wrong way in an escalator while in character.
A cast of Ross' head that was to be used in the original ending of the film (involving a suicide rather than the escape scene finally used) ended up as an exploding head during the tenement building scene. The head, filled with food scraps, was shot with an actual shotgun to get the head to explode. One of the unintentional standout effects was the bright, fluorescent color of the fake blood that was used in the film. Savini was an early opponent of the blood, produced by 3M, but Romero thought it added to the film, claiming it emphasised the comic book feel of the movie.
Savini rented a skeleton from Larry Wintersteller, who acquired it in the early 1970s and knew that it was a real skeleton. Wintersteller sold the skeleton to Marilynn Wick, who was unaware that it was real. The skeleton was on display at a costume shop in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, before County Coroner Joshua Perper confiscated it in 1982. Fake flesh from the skeleton's use in Dawn of the Dead was still on the skeleton when Perper confiscated it. The skeleton was buried on March 19, 1983, and was reported to have belong to a woman who died 100 years before at age 35.
The film's music varies with Romero's and Argento's cuts. For Romero's theatrical version, musical cues and selections were chosen from the De Wolfe Music Library, a compilation of stock music scores and cues. In the montage scene featuring the hunters and National Guard, the song played in the background is "'Cause I'm a Man" by the Pretty Things. The song was first released on the group's LP Electric Banana. The music heard playing in a sequence in the mall and over the film's end credits is an instrumental titled "The Gonk"—a polka style tune from the De Wolfe Music Library written by Herbert Chappell, with a chorus of zombie moans added by Romero.
For Argento's international cut, the Italian director used the band Goblin (incorrectly credited as "The Goblins") extensively. Goblin is a four-piece Italian progressive rock band that mostly provides contract work for film soundtracks. Argento, who received a credit for original music alongside Goblin, collaborated with the group to get music for his cut of the film. Romero used three of their pieces in his theatrical release version. The Goblin score would later find its way onto a Dawn of the Dead-inspired film, Hell of the Living Dead. Many tracks would also appear in the Tsui Hark film Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind. The version of Dawn released on video in the mid-nineties under the label "Director's Cut" does not use most of the Goblin tracks, as they had not been completed at the time of that edit.
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