In the late 1990s, George Romero began exploring the possibility of a TV adaptation of Night of the Living Dead, writing a treatment in 1997 that retold the beginnings of the zombie apocalypse from the perspective of a different cast of characters. In 2004, he adapted that idea to a style and structure modeled on The Blair Witch Project: the series would consist entirely of footage shot within the world of the film, primarily from the cameras of the film students that would be its main characters. After Land of the Dead was released to modest box office returns, Romero returned to the Night TV pilot script with the thought of making an ultra-low budget zombie movie, possibly with film students at Valencia College in Florida, and adapted it into Diary of the Dead. When a production company suggested a slightly larger budget with the prospect of a theatrical release, Romero added a few action setpieces to give viewers their money's worth, but, most importantly, he added one major character (Debra, the nominal protagonist of the film) but otherwise he otherwise kept most of that TV script with minimal changes. 

At this time, Romero had moved away from his longtime home of Pittsburgh, where he had lived and worked for most of his life. But he compensated by setting Land explicitly in downtown Pittsburgh, and making Diary's characters students at the University of Pittsburgh. There is a great deal to say about the evolution of all these projects, but I wanted to begin with this paragraph from the Night of the Living Dead TV pilot script describing his then-former hometown. If you wanted to know about the Steel City, this is as good an introduction as any.

...PITTSBURGH. An urban environment, not too small, not too large. Thought of as an armpit, the brunt of many a one-liner, Pittsburgh has always been a progressive city. It boasts the first radio station in the country. The first TV station, the first movie theater. The home of the Salk vaccine, it is currently ranked #1 in pediatric medicine and organ transplantation. The original Carnegie Hall sits in the heart of its cultural center which contains five major universities, including Carnegie Mellon, the home base for C.E.R.T., along with the world's most advanced experimental laboratories in computer technology, serving, among others, the U.S. Defense Department.

-Adam Charles Hart