How did they pull off that battle sequence in The Last of Us episode 5?

Virgin Radio

13 Feb 2023, 08:06

The secrets of the hit fantasy show, revealed!

If you've watched the new episode of The Last Of Us, where Joel (Pedro Pascal), Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and their new allies Henry (Lamar Johnson) and Sam (Keivonn Woodard) find themselves facing off against revolutionary leader Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) and a whole load of rabid infected, you'll know that you witnessed a TV event that was truly extraordinary.

Now, during a recent chat with Metro.co.uk, series director of photography Eben Bolter has opened up about how the remarkable sequence came together - including the debut of the monstrous Bloater.

Eben says that one of the most difficult challenges his team faced in pulling off the episode was the lighting, with the majority of the episode being set at night.

"As a cinematographer, moonlight is one of the hardest but also most fun things to do, because every little molecule of light that you see is fake, is created, is from us," he said. "Moonlight doesn’t really exist. You can’t shoot with the real moon and just hope it looks good," he said, adding that this particular sequence was "the most difficult lighting job I’ve ever had to do’."

He continued, "I was trying to be as naturalistic as possible with the moonlight so people don’t really think about it. I didn’t want it to look like the real cheesy version of moonlight. Naturalistic moonlight is difficult, particularly on a huge scale, particularly outside where we’ve got winds that could get up to 70 miles per hour. So we really had to lay it out with a model and track where they would walk and track what we’d need to build. That was just a green field, and we had to pour the concrete for the road. They built 19 houses. It’s just stacking layers upon layers of coordination and artistic intent.’"

But what of the hulking Bloater - a favourite, or at least a bullet sponge, adversary of fans of the video game series which the hit TV show is adapted from...

Apparently practical shots were used when filming the battle sequence, though Eben was amazed by the work of the series VFX department, who replaced everything with visual effects for the final image.

"The very final shot, the Bloater roars in the street and they all chase off the remaining soldiers," he said. "We shot that as a practical shot, and I think it went great. We were all happy with it. But that’s 100% VFX replacement now, so every single thing in that image is VFX, which is just mind-blowing to me. Every infected, every human, all of the houses are a VFX recreation, because they wanted to basically amp it up a little bit, change the action of a few things, and it got to a certain point where VFX painting on top of what we had shot didn’t make sense anymore, and they just did a full replacement."

"I love the shot that we did practically, and they’ve built upon that and made an even better shot completely digitally. Love it," he added.

'The Last of Us' is available to watch on Sky and NOW, with new episodes released Mondays.