Full Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 comply with.
At IGN Live immediately, The Last of Us Co-Creator and Executive Producer Craig Mazin was joined by a number of of the show’s core inventive group – together with Ksenia Sereda (Cinematographer), Ann Foley (Costume Designer), Don Macaulay (Production Designer), Alex Wang (VFX Supervisor), Timothy Good (Editor), and David Fleming (Co-Composer) – to debate the great quantity of work that went into the just-completed second season of the HBO collection.
As the panel started, Mazin remarked, “The truth is that Neil [Druckmann] and I are vastly over-credited for the success of the show. We work really hard on it but these are the people that bring it to life and they deserve so much credit… All of it is necessary to make it what it is.”
When the panel was requested to call their favourite episode from Season 2, almost everybody named both episode two ("Through the Valley") or episode six (“The Price”), which made sense since they have been such standouts – and segued properly into the truth that these have been the 2 episodes moderator Amelia Emberwing centered on for the dialog.
"Through the Valley” of course had two monumental events, including the horde of infected attacking Jackson and, well… that other thing which we’ll get back to. With footage of the massive attack sequence playing, Mazin noted that there were visual effects in basically every shot, saying, “I think Alex had to touch nearly everything here.”
Rewatching the attack on Jackson, Macaulay joked, “All I can think about is the thousands of meetings we have,” saying they quite seriously probably had 10 meetings about how the barrels would be launched from the town gates into the horde. As he put it, “Nearly every shot in this took 10-15 meetings. Craig loves meetings!” Even after all of that there was “a lot of retrofitting on set. Lots of rooftops we weren’t planning to do.”
Foley said episode two was definitely the hardest part of the season for her as the costume designer because of how many actors and extras were in that episode working on multiple filming units – and that it was all taking place while they were also working on the Seraphite costumes for upcoming episodes. As she explained, this involved "65 people in three totally different areas.”
Wang harassed that previs is essential, and the various discussions they’ve about what Macaulay will build vs. what Wang will oversee being added digitally. It’s a long course of, with Wang noting, “You’re planning for success 6-8 months down the line” and that he’s continuously in communication with Macaulay, the stunt group, and lots of more. Mazin joked that when he calls Wang in for one of his notorious conferences, “His heart sinks because he knows he’s about to go over budget again.”
One cause the contaminated horde was so tough was that it handled such a massive military and as Wang defined, within the visible results world, when you’ve a group that enormous “repetition is usually okay,” since you’ve characters in the identical costumes or creatures of the identical sort. Here although, Mazin wished to promote that these have been all initially totally different human beings who have been totally different sizes and ages in several outfits earlier than they have been contaminated. As he put it, they almost “broke Wētā [FX]” over the specifics they requested for.
Then there’s Good and his essential work as editor. He has to start enhancing with out the ultimate results in place, which might be tough. And not simply because, as he identified, within the early footage “a Bloater isn’t a Bloater, it’s a green dot.” But after they could have cut of the episode they're proud of, “we get the animation back and every part’s modified. The movement’s develop into sooner than a human actor is ready to do," so they have to re-edit to adjust.
When it came to scoring the “Through the Valley,” Fleming described it as particularly challenging, because Mazin asked him, “How do we start this at 11 and then keep going up for the whole episode?” The idea was they were “building up momentum so it just felt relentless relentless relentless. Then at the end, it was kind of the opposite with the pivotal scene with Joel.” When Fleming paused and said he’d been avoiding talking about how that episode ended for so long, Mazin couldn’t resist chiming in: “He died!”
As Fleming explained, the original music for Joel's wrenching death scene was much busier but then “Craig asked ‘strip it back.’ It was a less is more situation.”
While praising the performances of Pedro Pascal, Kaitlyn Dever and Bella Ramsey, Good revealed that for Joel’s death “I actually edited it five times before I was ready to show it to Craig,” because he knew how important it was to get it right.
As Joel’s death scene played out, the panel couldn’t help but become somber and when Mazin cracked, “Let’s talk about the golf clubs we picked out. They have lots of meaning" to release some stress, he then paused and added that truly, when it got here to which actual membership Abby would use to beat Joel with, “There was a entire dialogue!”
The dialog then moved to episode six and its flashbacks to Joel and Ellie collectively set between Season 1 and a pair of. The sequence the place Ellie climbs the dinosaur was proven and Mazin remarked, “I love this in the game. I love that we got to do it!”
He added that this was a funny scenario the place the precise dinosaur constructed for Ellie to climb “was wobbling too much so then Alex stopped it from wobbling. But then it looked fake so we had to make it wobble [again] a little bit.”
Discussing Joel and Ellie’s garments, Foley famous they did their finest to match their seems within the game, although there is likely to be slight adjustments often for particular causes. One such case was within the museum scene. In the game, Ellie is carrying a tank prime on this sequence. However, on the show, they wished to underline that Bella Ramsey was taking part in a more youthful model of Ellie in these flashback scenes, so that they ended up making it a t-shirt as a result of “changing it from a tank to a t-shirt made it look baggier and make her look younger.” In common although, “Joel and Ellie are in the same things they wear in the game because there’s no reason to change it.”
Ksenia Sereda mentioned she was each excited and nervous about taking pictures the scene the place Ellie and Joel go inside the space capsule, as a result of “the way it was done in the game was so brilliant,” together with the close up on Ellie smiling, imagining going into space. Sereda joked the game offered “the most expensive previs I’ve ever had to work with.”
Mazin marveled how Sereda lit the display screen so that every one of the sunshine adjustments on Ellie’s face have been executed virtually, with out visible results needed. Sereda defined how tough it was, as a result of “the whole sequence is lit through this teeny tiny window on the side of the capsule. It was very challenging to find this whole look.”
This sequence had specific significance to Mazin as a result of “This is the first thing that Neil ever showed me from the second game.” He elaborated that when he went to Naughty Dog to talk to Druckmann about turning The Last of Us into a TV show, the group have been nearing the completion of The Last of Us Part II. When Druckmann confirmed Mazin the space capsule sequence, his response was, “‘We’re doing that!’ In my mind, I was like, 'We need to do a good enough job for Season 1 that we’re renewed [to do that].'"
With Season 3 of The Last of Us now in the works, Mazin said he was eager to get back in the thick of it, turning to his fellow panelists and saying “I can’t wait to do that. I can’t wait to do that with all of you.” He then proclaimed: “Don, are we going to have meetings!!”