The Walking Dead - Gale Anne Hurd Interview

After that knockout of a midseason finale, it’s safe to say that fans of The Walking Dead have been clamoring for the show’s return. These midseason breaks aren’t all that fun on the viewers’ end.
[Laughs.] It’s funny, because we haven’t stopped working on it at all, so I get to spend time with it every day. That’s one of the joys of what I do: I don’t have that separation anxiety.

Going into the beginning of the second season, did you and the rest of the people involved behind the scenes approach it as two mini seasons, in a way, knowing that there’d be a break?
Well, we knew that we wanted a big midseason finale—we call that “Barnmageddon.” [Laughs.] But other than that, not really. We just knew that that episode was going to complete the story arc that made sense before we’d go off the air for a couple of months.
And I really have to give a lot of credit to the writers, who are tremendous, but also to Michelle MacLaren, who directed the episode. I think she did a remarkable job; when you think that she had, essentially, eight-and-a-half days to shoot that, I think it’s pretty impressive. We only have eight days to shoot per episode, actually, but how she was able to execute such big moments and great tension, to such a cinematic degree, in such a short amount of time is something that should be commended.

Source: Full interview @ Complex