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The Last of Us’ showrunners and actors explain how filming at real world locations helped improve HBO’s ambitious video game adaptation.
HBO’s The Last of Us showrunners and actors discuss how using real world locations improved the horror drama. Based on the PlayStation video game of the same name, the popular live-action adaptation stars Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller, a hardened survivor tasked with smuggling precocious 14-year-old orphan Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across a post-apocalyptic United States. The series proved a massive success with both critics and fans alike, racking up impressive viewership numbers that rival recent Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon.
During a Creator to Creator roundtable discussion for Sony, The Last of Us‘ showrunners, Pascal, and Ramsey discuss the benefits of using practical sets for the show.
Original game creator and series co-creator Neil Druckmann initially talks about the benefits of directing a video game, explaining how the actors are in a virtual set where every single detail can be specialized and tweaked. The same isn’t true of a television set, but that brings other advantages. Read what the group, which also included Last of Us co-creator Craig Mazin, say below:
Mazin: The amount of mental endurance required to shoot a show, when it’s cold on screen, it’s cold. I mean there’s this — I just remember [Pascal] walking. We were in deep snow, and the only thing we were missing that day was just a lot of wind. Out comes the big fan that’s sort of…blowing arctic ice chips into his face, and he’s struggling.
Pascal: We had the real mountains, the real woods, the real river, the real snow. It was just like very little left to the imagination in terms of having to fake it. You dressed entire areas of the downtown. Calgary and Edmonton…a stretch of highway —
Mazin: But it was important to give you guys a real world to be in.
Druckmann: I will say, it was such a cool feeling, ’cause I’m flying back and forth to Naughty Dog, and then I come here and whenever I show back up in Canada, Craig’s like, “You got to come check this out. Come check this out.” And he walks me over, and it’s like I’m standing in the game. I am standing in the game. It’s authentic, and you could touch it, and you could walk around it, and then seeing all the extras.
How Shooting on Location Brought The Last of Us to Life
Prior to the release of HBO’s The Last of Us, Druckmann and Mazin reassured fans that the adaptation would honor the award-winning video game. Early leaked photos showed the level of care production designers took when building the show’s sets as they meticulously recreated may of the game’s environments. Following the series’ premiere, Druckmann and Mazin were proven right as the show brought to life the haunting and visually stunning world of The Last of Us.
One of the most popular chapters in the original game saw the player take control of Ellie in the middle of winter. Following Joel’s near fatal injury while searching for the Fireflies at a Colorado university, Ellie took it upon herself to hide Joel as she looks for supplies to nurse him back to health. The series appears to faithfully recreate the look and feel of the chapter, with the Last of Us episode 8 trailer teasing an Ellie-centric episode. Shooting in the frigid temperature in the middle of winter adds an extra layer of authenticity that a game has yet to achieve.
Many high-budget television shows that rely on an expansive, fictional world fall back on CGI to create the characters’ surroundings. While The Last of Us does use plenty of VFX, the above conversation with the show’s creative team highlights how often they tried to work with practical settings. This helps ground The Last of Us in realism, and it brings the post-apocalyptic world to life. HBO correctly tapped Druckmann along with award-winning Chernobyl writer and self-professed The Last of Us superfan Mazin to bring to life a truly honest adaptation that succeeds in pulling the audience into its vast world.
Source: Sony
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