"The Walking Dead" cinematographer David Boyd is seeking to shake up audience expectations in Frank Darabont's adaption of Robert Kirkman's acclaimed zombie-apocalypse comic.

Boyd, whose credits include "Firefly" and "Friday Night Lights," is carefully reconstructing Kirkman's nightmarish vision for AMC, which will premiere the series during its 14th annual "Fearfest" event in October.

"Everything comes from the comic book," Boyd said in an interview with AMC. "And then Frank's taken it to its own place where it needs to be for us. Photographically all I've done is take most of the color out -- I've desaturated things and I'll bleed the color out. It's still a color image, it's still acceptable for television."

Another facet of the comics Boyd hopes to enhance are the horrors of "The Walking Dead," especially since many scenes take place during daylight.

"I think the challenges are to just get the idea that there's something to be afraid of around every corner," he said. "Because it's daylight you're not normally scared -- we're scared at night. But the levels of this are brilliantly laid out by Frank: The rooftop is a little safer than street level, street level is really terrifying, and below street level gets safer. So the scary places start to be the safe places, and the safe places start to be the scary places."

Body is also experimenting with a few more visual techniques to keep the audience off balance.

"We do tricks like we make it a little cooler -- like the warmth has disappeared from the world," he explained. "And we use film so that the blues come out a little stronger, but I'm trying hard to keep it purely on a psychological level.

"Also, it's normal policy to make a camera perfectly level with the horizon, but not here. We don't do the obvious tilt left or right, but all things are a little bit off. My aim is to make it off-kilter enough to where there's just something subconsciously wrong with every image -- it starts to become a world where nothing's right."

"The Walking Dead" centers on police officer Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln ("Love, Actually," "Teachers"), as he leads his family and a group of survivors across a devastated country in search of a safe home.

Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile"), who is executive producing, is also writing and directing the pilot.

In addition to Lincoln, "The Walking Dead" stars Emma Bell ("Frozen") as Amy, Jon Bernthal ("The Pacific," "The Ghost Writer") as Shane, Steven Yeun as Glenn, Sarah Wayne Callies ("Prison Break") as Rick's wife Lori, Chandler Riggs ("Get Low") as Carl, Jeffrey DeMunn ("The Green Mile") as Dale and Laurie Holden ("Shield") as his girlfriend Andrea.