WIRED has a great article on the process involved with making the film adapation of 'The Road.' Basically, director John Hillcoat decided to use as many real world settings / real footage to create his apocalyptic settings as possible; relying on CGI to alter scenes rather than create them entirely from scratch. After reading about the process I'm even excited to see the film, even if the trailer features a bit too much Charlize Theron for my taste. Excellent book to film adaptations are an extremely rare breed but it honestly sounds like this one has the possibility of nailing it.