One of the great — and terrifying — things about directing a television pilot is that you’re effectively writing the handbook for the look and tone of the rest of the series. So when filmmaker Adam Davidson landed the plum job of directing the pilot for Fear the Walking Dead, the prequel to the AMC zombie hit, he was able to immediately establish the visual and narrative cues that would set this series apart from its parent show. In a wide-ranging conversation with Yahoo TV, Davidson provides an insightful account of how he devised the visual style of Fear the Walking Dead, what happened when the series moved its production base from L.A. to Vancouver, and the numerous times he had to explain to customs officers why he was bringing women’s clothing into Canada.

I was born and raised in L.A., and it’s never been the place that I’ve seen portrayed onscreen all the time, with perfect weather and the people looking perfect. For me, growing up, I always saw the cracks in the concrete, the smoggy air, the houses and buildings blown away by windstorms. So in Fear the Walking Dead, we want to tell the story of the people who don’t makeL.A. look so glamorous. This is the backstage of L.A., the people who live on the other side of the river of concrete. For them, it’s hard enough to keep your kids in school, have a relationship, and get through the day. It’s like, “The car’s broken, the kitchen needs work and what the f–k, now we have killer zombies!”

Related: Ken Tucker Reviews ‘Fear the Walking Dead’: Artful Suspense, Not Bloody Horror

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For me, what was interesting about directing the pilot was to explore not shooting it as a horror movie, but as something very real and grounded. Obviously there are scary moments, but it should feel very much like you’re right in the trenches with these characters. Very early on I spoke to [co-creator and executive producer] David Erickson, and said “You’ve got to check out Philip Kaufman’s 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” That’s a good touchstone, because it dealt with a similar idea of people discovering what’s human and what’s not human. The real person dies and is replaced by these pod people. And you don’t know that they’re fresh-turned! In Fear the Walking Dead, we’re in a world where our characters don’t know anything about zombies. There isn’t zombie literature or zombie movies. They have no understanding of what’s happening apart from “What’s wrong with my friend and my neighbors?” You have to get close to find out, but getting close puts you in more peril.

Related: ‘Fear the Walking Dead’: Showrunner Dave Erickson on What to Expect in Season 1 (and 2)

When L.A. is portrayed on film and television, you often lose the shadows because everything is overlit. Growing up and living here, I know that most people hide from the sun. They pull their shades down and live in the shadows. So one of the stylistic choices we made was to embrace the shadows, which is a metaphor for the story itself. There’s a darkness looming that people aren’t aware of. And I wanted the camera to feel very much present and immediate, so you’ve got to retrain the camera operators. They’re taught as technicians to anticipate things, like if someone’s talking and somebody enters the room, the camera will turn to catch that person coming in. Here, we wanted the camera to be a little late, because when we’re living life, we’re not always catching everything right away. We’re always a little bit behind. I think that adds to the anxiety: We’re just catching things at the last second. We should be on guard, and we’re not.