Special Effects Supervisor Loni Peristere refined the dusting effect used when a vampire is killed, showcased by Gunn's "fly-through dusting" in the opening scene of this episode. This technique, which costs $5,000 per use, depends upon a CGI skeletal frame surrounded by simulated dust, carefully matched to a projection of the live action footage. This allows for a "complete organic transition" from vampire to dust, says Peristere.[2]....
Producer Tim Minear liked the concept of an "entire subculture living under Los Angeles that you don’t really see," which is a metaphor for the wealth stratification in LA: "You’ll have upper class neighborhoods and a block away poverty... The upper class people sort of don’t notice the poverty, or choose not to."[1] He also liked the scene in which Angel is rescued from the meat locker by Wesley and Cordelia, who ask, "Why didn’t you call us on your cell phone?", because it turns the concept of the action hero "on its head a little bit." The defining moment of the episode, Minear thinks, is when Angel - rather than offer his help - instead indicates he may later need Gunn's help.[1]
In his book on the mythology of vampires, Peter Day points out the depiction of vampires as "gang-like" is a unifying characteristic of the LA sub-genre, which includes (among others) The Lost Boys, the Blade films and television series, and Blood Ties. In this episode, gang violence is presented as a conflict of race - the racially diverse humans, led by Gunn, battle the uniformly vampire gang, who are presented as "fascist skinheads looking to maintain the purity of the blood supply." Their shared vampirism unifies the gang and provides them with a sense of community identity, in "a city whose urban sprawl has led to social and cultural segregation of communities," Day writes.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Zone_(Angel)
