My name is Eben Bolter.
I was the Cinematographer / Director of Photography on three episodes
of The Last of Us.
My name's Peter Hoar.
I'm the Director of Last of Us episode three.
“My name's Frank.” “Oh, yeah.
Here's the thing, Frank.
If I feed you, then every bum you talk to about
it is going to show up here looking for a free lunch.
And this is not an Arby's.”
“Arby’s didn’t have free lunch, it was a restaurant.”
I had been an avid fan of the game.
I often get excited by prospective jobs and prospective shows
coming around and thinking, “Oh, that's exactly what I want to do.
I hope it will come round by me” and then it doesn't.
So I sort of thought to myself, The Last of Us won’t come my way.
I've just let it go.
And then I had an email and I scroll down and there the words The Last of Us.
I was like, you are kidding me!
I played the game, The Last of Us, the day it came out on the PlayStation 3.
And it was the first game that my wife
got sort of sucked into and would sit and watch it like a movie.
And it got to the point where I wasn't allowed to play it without her.
And it moved us both to tears.
It was just, you know, such a sort of breakthrough, remarkable piece of media.
But it really felt like the first thing that was crossing into my world
as a cinematographer,
where I just felt
like so many of the decisions were interesting
and in my wheelhouse and the sort of things
I tried to do with cameras and lighting.
And at that point, I would have done it regardless, whatever they sent.
When she said, “okay,
would you like to read the script?” So I said, “yes” and then I did.
And it arrived. And I did.
And then it became -- it made more sense,
like why they might have asked for me
because I did a job, I did a show recently called It's a Sin.
And not that they are remotely like each other, but
there is a thematic running through
and I think that was something they, they were keen on talking to me about.
I kind of, for the next almost ten years, I've been sort of preaching
about this game and telling people how great it is
and trying to get people to play it who don't usually play games
and it was always there as a dream job.
If anyone, if it was ever going to be adapted
I always thought this is a dream job for me.
So when it was announced that Craig Mazin was going to adapt it,
that's just two incredible things -- I mean, Craig,
what he did on Chernobyl, I thought was, you know,
an absolute masterpiece of a sort of perfect miniseries,
the perfect person to be adapting the perfect series.
Episodes one and two were incredibly well-written.
I thought, this is a brilliant, perfect adaptation.
They're just walking off the path a little bit in the right ways,
very exciting.
But when I read episode three, it was sort of like a...
I just couldn't believe how good it was.
It really just, as a screenplay episode three was just phenomenal.
I've never read a script so brilliant.
Everything is in that script.
All of the all of the tiny details, the song, everything.
Obviously there were key bits of costume that were introduced.
I think, I can't
-- sometimes you can't remember who had the great ideas, but I know
one of our jobs was to make sure that Joel chose
the right shirt, which is from the game that he will then wear for some time.
I think we had the idea of putting it on Frank in an earlier scene
so that you would see that it was real because I said I think I said,”
it's always a bit convenient when the shirt that the entire fandom are
waiting to see is suddenly found and oh yeah, here it is”.
But if we put it on Frank in a scene, no one will -- people forget or not
even notice it was there and then it's, “oh yeah, he got that shirt.”
And I also thought that was quite sweet, particularly because of the way it worked
that you know, it was not just any shirt, it was Frank’s shirt.
“Do I ask for things?
Ever? Why am I even saying that?
This isn't for me. This is, this is for us.
Who cares what they look like?” “I do!” So for me and Peter it was a case of,
like, just honoring that and just sort of trying to do what it said.
And that sounds sort of simple, but
so often with scripts,
great scripts, good scripts, there's still an element of elevation of
this is written and we're about to use actors and real locations and cameras.
And how do we make this even better? How do we elevate it?
How do we bring value to it?
Sometimes things like dialogue, it's okay, well, we'll improvise that,
we’ll will change that line.
We're talking about how do we improve this scene?
And there's a lot of sort of work that still carries on on the script.
This wasn't that.
This was here's the script; it’s outstanding.
Let's just shoot it.
So for Peter and I, it was a case of just learning it inside out,
getting into all of the subtext, all of the intention,
what's happening on the surface level, what's really happening underneath,
and then just, you know, just doing our best
as filmmakers to honour that and make it the best it could be.
But we never felt like, “okay, we've got to make this better than the page”.
It was just actually trying to keep up with what was what was given to us.
I played the game.
It was tough.
It broke me quite a few times, but the Bill section was hard work.
I remember it being quite involved.
A lot of clickers and scary moments and a lot of death.
Me mostly because I couldn't get through it.
So the Bill story to me was scant.
And it was Eben that said, “do you remember this,
this and this?” and I was like, “okay, not all of that”.
I did remember Frank hanging from the rafters.
“He was my partner.
He's the only idiot that would wear a shirt like that.”
And I, I vaguely remember the stack of pornography under the seat.
And so we sat there
and watched those cutscenes and were like, you know, and he says about his partner,
he says, “Frank was my partner.”
And I think because a game has to be forward
thinking, has to be pushing relentlessly forward, it’s the nature of it.
You wouldn't go round cyclically, you wouldn’t go flashbacks
although they do them in cutscenes,
but you know what I mean, the game has to work that way.
And I feel like it's clever storytelling because what I was left with was this
thought backwards going, “so that was who Bill was.” And it lingered with me.
It stayed with me.
And I think what's clever about episode three,
because in order to do that, you have to give us more, not less.
So you have to weave a little story together of Bill
and Frank and do it in a way where it will linger with you.
And as you go through the episode, you'll still think back to that
and, and also for Craig it was about what, you know,
the core of the whole, you know, story is about humanity
and what survival is for and why do we bother surviving,
You know, without without love, there is no survival.
So it was a perfect opportunity for him to go off and do this other story.
It's an adaptation.
So we never felt like we had to copy anything.
That being said, that there's the game, particularly the way the score works,
Gustavo's score the world.
You know, there were a lot of things that are inherently Last of Us, and I think
it really helped being a fan because being a fan of the game
and knowing it so well, I at least was aware of what we were navigating.
You know, sometimes
we'd get very close to the source material and sometimes we would stray.
And I could understand that from sort of both sides of the coin.
The responsibility of it,
yeah, I was very aware of that.
But I think it was actually more to do with, I felt a kind of protection over it
because I saw an interview with Denis Villeneuve
when he was talking about doing a Blade Runner sequel, and he felt that
if someone was going to do a Blade Runner sequel and it wasn't Ridley Scott
he wanted to do it
because he wanted to shepherd it and make sure they didn't mess it up.
And I understood that feeling.
I felt like I knew it really well and it was sort of happening at a point
in my career where I felt that I had a good chance of making it.
You know,
I was gonna say the best version of what it could be,
but a good version of what it could be.
There was a great tweet about our episode, which is sort of like,
“The Last of Us writers.
Joel needs a car.
Okay, let’s write an hour of the most heart-breaking,
troubling TV that we could ever...” you know, it's like that.
Basically what Joel needs is a vehicle.
But what I like about some storytelling in a
in a world that obviously I know well as a gay man, but others do not,
is that sometimes if you come in wearing a pink shirt,
everyone's like, okay, this isn't for me. I'm going to go.
But if you tell an earnest,
simple, heartfelt story
about two individuals who happen to be men
and that the way that that journey, you know, evolves
and how it grows, blossoms
and then all of a sudden people are in it and believing it
and loving it and going, “God, it is it’s two men.” That was what my point was.
It's like, you know, it's not so much the trick as it were, but it's the idea
of telling the right story and then, you know, easing people in.
I look, I'm also all for
putting it in their faces sometimes
because quite frankly, there's been enough straight rubbish around.
So I think it's only time.
But yeah that’s what it for it's -- I've debated Bill’s sexuality
or at least Nick Offerman as Bill
a lot with people because I think that
he's never had the opportunity to express himself in the world
before the crisis or during.
And if it hadn't been for Frank,
he may never have he may never have found out who he was.
You know, he may,
in my sexual awakening, was a point -- wow I'm being very open now.
But my sexual awakening was so weird because I hadn't got the words.
I didn't have the words to say out loud.
Somebody else got them out of me.
And as soon as they said something
and expressed themselves to me, I was like, “yeah, that's me too.
That’s how I feel.”
So I sort of understand that if you were a Bill
living in Massachusetts and you know, sharpening knives
and making guns and going to Home Depot and doing all this stuff
and having a mother who's probably a little bit overbearing as well
because he's still in her house and all of this is like,
it's a perfect recipe for a man who stays in the closet.
And so it's about individuals as well.
It's about Frank and Bill.
It wasn't just anybody. It had to be Frank.
And Bill fell in love with one man, Frank,
you know, one person who have to be a man and was Frank.
But Frank's the important part more than the man, if that makes sense.
One thing I've been really proud of is their performances,
and not to take any credit for that because they’re such
good actors with such good words in their mouth from that script.
But I really wanted to make sure we created an environment on set
where they could perform
and we were sensitive to the actors say things like the piano scene.
We played out that whole sequence in one shot, really,
but with three cameras giving as much coverage as possible,
allowing them freedom to be where they wanted to be, cross shooting
so you can get both performances at the same time.
And I think that atmosphere that we created of sort of openness
and acceptance was kind of
it created a kind of it was a factor in creating magic.
And we didn't have to do too many takes
because we were getting so much coverage every time.
And yeah, that was a really special scene to be in the room for.
It felt in the room exactly what it feels like in the show.
That's what it was like watching it live on monitors.
And it's one of those times when everyone, all the crew were crying, you know,
showrunners, writers the script supervisors, everyone's crying,
which is pretty remarkable.
So I'm very proud of that scene I think in particular.
I mean, I don't think I felt under pressure
to remain within the guidelines of the game
because the two people who I was working with, Neil
and Craig, they didn't have that pressure.
I mean, particularly Neil. I think Neil had always
he had a very clear idea why the game should be adapted in the first place.
He had a very clear idea about when to stick with the game and when to deviate,
and he actually said at one point, if it's better than we deviate, you know,
if it's if it's a better story, a deeper story, a more impactful story, then we go.
Murray is an incredible singer, incredible piano player.
So he had to bring it down into that --
what he does, which is incredibly funny, but you don't want to get you know,
there's a there's a line there
and Murray, you've seen White Lotus he’s so great at that dramatic comedic line.
And with Nick it had to be so soulful.
So they did work on their performances and just,
just how the song is going to come across as a rehearsal.
But I'm pretty sure they never ran it all together with everything.
I think we kind of saved that for on the day.
So there was a fresh,
you know, seeing things for the first time.
And I do remember Nick, you know, Nick's character, Bill
has to is opening up there in a way he's never opened up before in his life.
It's a very sort of nerve wracking thing to do.
I mean, he's coming out to somebody in that moment.
And you know, Nick is such an amazing actor,
such an amazing man, so funny in between takes.
He's the Nick Offerman
you'd hope he would be.
But I do remember seeing his hand shaking during that scene
on camera and off camera because he was so, I think, nervous.
But living with that character was living.
He really was in that headspace of of being open and receptive.
You know, Nick is Nick.
And there’d always be a pause and I thought and a really funny line
and Murray is the warmest, wonderful most gentle person.
But what I didn't expect from Nick necessarily because I never met him,
was how big his heart was.
He's such a wonderful human being and I think they clicked.
They just clicked on that level of being great people.
And, you know, I've mentioned before in
other interviews that
there was the occasional meta moment where
it was true that Murray was showing
Nick how to do things as a gay man.
It's like, you know, and they lie in bed and it's like, is this your first time?
Well, yeah, it was.
It was Nick's first time.
And there was nerves, but there were nerves
not about being playing gay, but it was nerves
about getting it right and doing it justice.
And that, you know, Nick
just really wanted it to be the right...
the right way, do the right thing, be the right Bill and all of that.
He could feel the pressure, I think, from the game.
He could feel the pressure from playing a gay character.
“This isn't for me. This is this is for us.”
“Who cares what they look like?”
"I do!
Our home isn’t just our house. It's everything around us!”
“Gimme a fucking break!”
Episode three, there's this sort of soulful connection to nature,
and we very
much wanted to ground it with a sort of cinematic naturalism.
So it felt at one with nature.
It felt very real.
Whereas in practical terms, we built that whole town, you know,
none of that was there.
Every house in Bill's town is built.
All of the interiors are in a soundstage, so there's a lot of technical work
that goes into making it feel inevitable, like,
oh we just stumbled upon this cool house and inside
and outside it's easy.
“I'm asking for some paint and some gasoline
for the lawnmower, that's all.” Craig was our showrunner on the ground.
He was at the monitors every single day.
He directed episodes himself.
He wrote every episode.
He was, he was across everything.
Neil was a bit more of the long distance show runner.
So Neil was very much a part of the whole process
in the development of each episode, when I say the development of the episode.
So when you start a show like this, you do lots of meetings and lots of zooms
and you have people coming at it from various
places, costume, makeup, whatever, and also from a creative point.
Now there was -- Craig was always there in the room.
Neil was very much just making sure we knew what it was.
During prep we'd have him on Zoom calls all the time.
Anything to do with the sort of history of the game, the sort of lore of Cordyceps
of who were the, you know, all the different groups of people
and their backstories.
Naughty Dog have, you know, 10 to 15 years of history of this world.
So he's just an encyclopedia of what and why before.
And also he just sort of knows the culture of that world and the game.
So in this version, he's a great sort of a voice for why should we deviate?
Is this a good deviation or bad deviation?
So he was involved an awful lot in the prep process
of every episode.
“Not today, you New World Order jackboot.”
Here's an exclusive for BAFTA, but as far as I'm concerned, there is no two hour cut.
The process, of course, as you know, is there's a lot of filming.
It goes back to the editor.
The editor produces an assembly and there's a possibility
that that very loose, amorphous
cut was near 2 hours, but you wouldn't want to watch that.
That's not a director's cut.
My cut that I handed to Craig as I left
saying, “I'm really sorry.
I know I assumed it should be 60 Minutes, but
I can't cut it down any further than this.” So basically,
the cut that Timothy Good our incredible editor gave to me was 77 minutes.
And I thought, “oh, that's a lot!
Okay, let's get going.” And we managed to cut it down to 72,
thinking, I don't know what else to do.
We thought there were some clever moments that we pulled together.
I can't remember what we did, but we had definitely cut things.
And then I yes, it's come out in 75.
So I think some of the things I thought I'd have to cut
went back in.
So again, it seems that Craig,
Neil, HBO didn't they weren't worried about the duration.
It was like no, let's tell this the best way.
There is one scene missing with Ellie and moths,
and it was a beautiful shot with beautiful light.
And we again, it was Eben going, “it has to be here
facing that way at that time.” And we hit it
and they were walking through this bit of forest.
And the whole point was that Ellie just stops and these moths are all over.
And she puts a hand up like this and they sort of fly around and it was all CG...
Well, you know, so we just did the bit with the hand.
It was so beautiful to look at, and that wasn’t in.
And I think for the sake of 10 seconds, I think it's a shame.
But there you go.
That's the only thing I know that's actually missing.
(Offscreen) That's the director's cut, those extra ten seconds.
Yeah, I'll give you that.