The Last of Us Part II<\/a>.<\/p>\nThese infected, like the Stalker I watched make themselves a cup of coffee, are somewhat different from their video game counterparts, but that\u2019s by design. \u201cThey [HBO, PlayStation, and Co.] wanted to tweak the design a little bit and give it more of a film aesthetic,\u201d prosthetic makeup department head Paul Spateri tells me. \u201cA lot of video game stuff is quite sharp and edgy, so we wanted to try and soften it a bit and make them look a bit more related, so not quite monstery, making sure there are elements of humanity you can see.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
With my coffee in hand, I return to a tent filled with those cool director chairs that actually aren\u2019t very comfy and ponder why they\u2019re the set favorite for directors and crew. There are multiple monitors around me and the other journalists here, and we each wear headphones to listen to what\u2019s happening on the monitor. This tent, a piece of the \u201cvideo village\u201d as it\u2019s colloquially known, is located in an old milk factory that\u2019s been turned into hunting grounds for 11 Stalkers. One of those Stalkers, Kelsey Andries, joins Spateri for our interview. \u201cWhat you\u2019re looking at really is not the final article,\u201d Spateri says, pointing out Andries\u2019 Stalker antlers. \u201cThe way they self-mutilate themselves by tearing at their skin, tearing their lips off, their eyelids peeling off as well \u2013 it\u2019s sort of like a super masochistic self-harming involved effect \u2013 that\u2019s really a combination of us and VFX.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
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If you hadn\u2019t picked up on it in the show yet, tonight\u2019s episode likely made it clear: Stalkers aren\u2019t part of the traditional Infected evolutionary line that leads to Clickers. They are a different evolutionary offspring, Spateri explains. \u201cThey are more intelligent, they work like a pack, they can think and outmaneuver; they\u2019re not just blindly following the desire to infect.\u201d Making all of this come through on screen not only requires a lot of post-production effort, but the actors themselves in the moment have to do a lot. Andries explains how all the makeup and costuming, including the 3D-printed antlers, takes four to five hours in the makeup chair, \u201cand that\u2019s before we even start shooting.\u201d Then, because Stalkers are on all fours, they work their full body muscles during each scene they shoot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cStalkers are tough because they\u2019re quadruped so we\u2019re on all fours a lot and you\u2019re just crawling around, which is incredibly difficult, immensely, and you\u2019re having to do your movements in that form,\u201d she says, adding that she performs as a Clicker in the series as well. \u201cClickers have so much more fungal growth; their whole face is covered and they have these eye pieces we put in, and once those are in, you\u2019re blind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those eyepieces are installed for close-ups, but in action set pieces, they are removed so the actors can perform. Spateri adds that this is where the symbiotic relationship between set and VFX comes into play \u2013 it\u2019s VFX\u2019s job to make the action scenes featuring Clickers look just as good as those prosthetic-heavy close-ups.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
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Before Andries departs to head back to shoot a scene, she explains how she approaches playing a Stalker. In short, \u201cwith humanity.\u201d She says she 100% believes a human is still in there. \u201cThat\u2019s the thing that [writer and showrunner Craig Mazin] is hammering into us: we\u2019re not monsters; there\u2019s an element of humanity still inside. Everyone\u2019s trapped. You\u2019re fighting this thing that\u2019s taking over you. They are victims and monsters […] and that\u2019s what makes the performance interesting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As we just watched in Episode 5, Isabela Merced\u2019s Dina finds herself trapped by Stalkers (including Andries) in a cage. She\u2019s desperate to kill them and escape death. I hear the pops of set guns a second or two before I see them on screen, and they\u2019re piercingly loud, even with headphones on. Merced, who is my favorite aspect of the season, puts on an excellent performance from what I can tell. But for a reason I\u2019m not privy to, Merced will perform this scene a dozen (maybe even more) times during my set visit. Across my nine hours in that abandoned milk factory, it\u2019s the only scene I watch filmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It loses its luster a bit, and my respect for the actors and video crew grows immensely during this day. They\u2019re patient, dedicated, and determined to get every little detail right, and ultimately, it creates something special to watch on screen at home. This gap, the mundanity and work-focused grit of a production set, and the slickly produced and edited episode that is the final cut of all that work, remains fascinating to me. I hope to visit other production sets to see more of this contrast in person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MIND THE GAP<\/h2>\n\n\n
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I asked stunt coordinator Marny Eng, and later Mazin, about this contrast to see how they felt about it. Eng explains it\u2019s part of the challenge with what they do. They\u2019re working to create a final vision that won\u2019t be seen for months. As a result, they have to lay it all on the line and hope it turns out well. \u201cThe biggest complication is always staying true to the story, making sure we\u2019re telling the story in the best way the creatives are hoping for,\u201d Eng says, noting they have to put aside their own opinions to help someone else \u2013 in this instance, HBO and PlayStation \u2013 achieve their vision. \u201cWe\u2019re facilitators; we try to bring that vision to life by the performances we create.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eng was a stunt performer last season, and now oversees an entire team of performers, including the near-dozen Stalker actors that were on set this particular day. She says the biggest difference between her part in season one and her role in season two is the scale. As the first five episodes of The Last of Us<\/em> season two have demonstrated, the Infected count is way up from season one. There are 11 Stalkers in this episode, and each Stalker gets two makeup artists. For just the Stalkers alone, that\u2019s 33 people involved, not to mention Eng and her team ensuring stunt performances align with what the production needs.\u00a0<\/p>\nThose dozens of people are a tangible view of how much work goes into a scene like the one I watched on set that day. Eng explains there\u2019s a lot of work that happens leading up to this day, too, between stunt concepting, rehearsing, and more. \u201cOver time, getting this sequence together, we\u2019ve been thinking about it forever \u2013 probably two months,\u201d Eng says. That gap I mentioned earlier continues to widen: months of work lead up to a 9-hour day of shooting basically one scene over and over again. Then months and months later, I watch an episode featuring this scene and it\u2019s all the best parts of that long day spliced together into a tense and well-made setpiece. In these moments, I\u2019m reminded of the game development process. Hundreds of people poured thousands of hours into, say, The Last of Us Part II\u2019s development, and the final product is a 25-hour experience I beat in a week. Dozens of people pour hundreds of hours into an episode of The Last of Us<\/em> and I consume it in an hour on my couch on a late Sunday night.\u00a0<\/p>\nEng closes out our interview discussing her work with Ellie actor Bella Ramsey and Abby actor Kaitlyn Dever. Editor\u2019s note: I\u2019m kicking myself in retrospect for not asking about Merced\u2019s work performing stunts, especially after viewing the most recent episodes of The Last of Us<\/em>. Eng says Ramsey is an extraordinary human with a phenomenal ability to \u201cpick things up; they\u2019re a real stunt performer in my mind, and if I could work with someone like Bella for the rest of my life, I\u2019d be in heaven.\u201d I ask Eng about contrasting Ramsey\u2019s performance as Ellie with Dever\u2019s performance as Abby in terms of stunt work, considering how differently postured these two characters are in The Last of Us Part II. \u201c[Dever\u2019s] very talented, very physical, and she cares a lot,\u201d she explains. \u201cShe\u2019s quite extraordinary herself and very good with this strong and calculated and driven character.<\/p>\n\u201c[Ellie and Abby] are very similar but very different. In another world, they might be the best of friends in a weird kind of way because they\u2019re so good at what they do, independently, but they\u2019re on opposite sides.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I don\u2019t get to see Dever or Ramsey perform, though I did pass by Ramsey leaving the set. They were dressed as Ellie, with the butterfly tattoo on their arm, and speaking outside of character \u2013 in other words, it\u2019s quite funny to hear Ellie with a British accent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
HBO\u2019S THE LAST OF OUR SET VISIT<\/h2>\n\n\n
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I\u2019m about four coffees, three 8 oz sugar-free Red Bulls, uncountable sandwich halves, and seven hours into the set visit when a familiar voice echoes in the warehouse nearby. When all you\u2019re doing is sitting in a chair all day, getting a drink and something to eat becomes a great way to give your butt a break. Moments later, a jovial bearded Mazin steps into our media tent. I\u2019ve heard him in interviews before, but I can\u2019t stress enough how funny it is that Mazin, who speaks with passion and love using a voice that I imagine puts any actor at ease, is behind a show like The Last of Us<\/em>. He\u2019s clearly tired and, likely aware of how visible his fatigue is, immediately addresses it: \u201cThis is Day 150, I think, of shooting. It\u2019s going great, but I am whatever is three levels past exhaustion right now; I don\u2019t even notice it anymore.\u201d He calls his work on The Last of Us<\/em> a labor of love.\u00a0<\/p>\nEchoing my conversation with Eng earlier in the day, Mazin speaks to the contrast between shooting season one and season two. He says season two is more difficult because \u201cwith the first season, you don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know. You find out later and you do your best to learn on the job how to do certain things. The scene we\u2019re doing today, we would have approached very differently in season one. It would not have been as efficient, and we would have spent a lot more money on visual effects.\u201d He touches on something Spateri mentioned earlier, noting that VFX plays a big role in bringing to life everything shot on set, though Mazin says the team is trying to do as much practical as they can.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
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\u201cWe try as best we can to do a lot of things practically, so in-camera, and what that means is we build very large sets,\u201d Mazin says. \u201cWe built one pretty large set for season one. We have built multiple large sets for season two.\u201d He adds that, to his delight, it\u2019s much harder to see where the on-set work ends and the post-production VFX work begins, and that includes sets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With so many large sets compared to season one, and a shooting schedule that stretches beyond 150 days, Mazin stresses just how much more work season two is compared to the first. One of the bigger changes is multiple filming units. In other words, the same day I watched Merced perform in an abandoned milk factory, another unit might have been shooting a different scene elsewhere. Managing all of that is a challenge, Mazin says, but one that\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n
When asked about that word \u2013 \u201cworth\u201d \u2013 and what it means on a set like this, where an entire day is spent shooting a scene that lasts just minutes in one episode of a seven-episode season two, Mazin says it\u2019s about the feelings he hopes the show elicits out of viewers when it\u2019s over. \u201cWhen they\u2019ve watched it all, and hopefully they do, and they stay with us for the whole ride, which is incredibly gratifying, I want them to arrive at the conclusion that this was awesome and say, \u2018that made me cry, that made me laugh, all these things, I love this show.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no individual part where I think, \u2018That\u2019s what I want them to love,\u2019\u201d Mazin continues. \u201cI want them to love the experience of the whole thing, and that\u2019s asking a lot because their connection with the story we tell is going to be tested. They\u2019re going to fall in love, get angry, there\u2019s mystery, they\u2019re going to be confused, they\u2019re going to be surprised, and they\u2019re going to be scared, and they\u2019re also going to feel some difficult things. But all that is why we do what we do: it\u2019s to give people a chance to feel difficult things in a safe way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
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Much like The Last of Us Part II, the HBO series is not all it seems. In the game, it seems like Abby kills Joel out of cold blood, but there\u2019s more happening within the person holding that golf club. I keep returning to this, the idea that the HBO series is not all that it seems. What I see on screen is a slickly produced, tightly edited, well-shot, and well-acted hour of television. Thanks to this set visit, I know creating this hour of television was so much more work than its ease of watchability. It\u2019s the work of dozens of people whose job that day was to sit in a makeup chair for hours in an abandoned milk factory in Vancouver, Canada; people who perform a scream behind a cage attacked by a group of Stalkers over and over again, maintaining that fear cut after cut; people who keep cast and crew well-fed and comfortable during long shooting days; people who pour over hundreds of hours of footage to splice together a coherent episode; people who spend hundreds of hours finely detailing the VFX that brings to life Infected and more. Do you see what I\u2019m getting at?\u00a0<\/p>\n
For all the Hollywood of a highly acclaimed HBO series, it is still a job for the hundreds of people involved. It wouldn\u2019t be possible without the work of every single person on the set that day, in the editing bays, and elsewhere. I already knew this about game development \u2013 it\u2019s not any one single person\u2019s work that makes the game sing, but rather the work of a team. Maybe I shouldn\u2019t have been surprised, but I learned this lesson applies to creating a television show like The Last of Us<\/em> as well. That\u2019s the aspect of this set visit I\u2019ll never forget.<\/p>\n\nHBO’s\u00a0The Last of Us\u00a0<\/em>airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sweaty, tired, and hungry, I sit on a small bus alongside other journalists from outlets all around the world. Though most of them are representing international movie and TV-focused outlets while I sit as the lone games-focused journalist, we laugh about how boring a production set can be. I had no idea how much downtime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":15107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-online-games"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"HBO's](\"https:\/\/www.gameinformer.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/body_default\/public\/2025\/05\/08\/efa3be6c\/isabela-merced.jpg\")
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