THE LAST OF US PRODUCTION
LEFT BEHIND Rather than replicate the game’s single- take death scene, the show’s DOP leaned into cinematic pacing to deepen Ellie’s emotional arc
to her quest for revenge. Unfortunately, Ellie is forced to watch it all happen, and the audience sees the sequence largely through her eyes. Goldschmidt, Mylod and the show’s creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann landed on three cameras to capture the scene. While the audience knows what’s about to take place before Ellie arrives, “when she comes in, we are with her. We discover the scene with her,” explains Goldschmidt. “To keep the camera rooted in her perspective, we’re staying wider and closer with her and using a longer lens [to show] how she would be seeing Joel across the room.” When Abby kills Joel, the camera doesn’t cut away; instead, it lingers while the audio distorts. A few seconds later, the camera is on Ellie before shifting to an aerial shot of her holding his body. “We knew people would need to take a breath, and that once Joel is dead and Ellie has crossed the room and gotten to him, that would be the moment to do it,” Goldschmidt states. “This practical location had these incredibly high ceilings, so I knew we could get an arm in there. That change in perspective lets
the viewer come out of the scene and have this appreciation for just how alone Ellie is now.” COLD AS ICE Joel’s death, while devastating, isn’t the only major blow in episode 202. Through the Valley begins with a storm brewing, and while it’s used in part to foreshadow, it also pushes the plot. Abby goes out into the storm, slides down the mountainside
and lands on a pile of infected (the name of the zombie-like creatures who host the lethal cordyceps fungus); this initiates a domino effect of unfortunate events, including an attack on Jackson itself. Shot in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada, the snow-filled scenes required additional forethought. “We had to be technically prepared. All the tools we used were the same; the only difference was they all had to have snow tracks
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DEFINITIONMAGS
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