The Last Of Us Nailed This Week's Explosive Shot In Just One Take [Exclusive]
This post contains spoilers for episode 5 of "The Last of Us."
Well, there goes the neighborhood. On last week's episode of "The Last of Us," Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) entered Kansas City with plans for an uneventful drive. This week, they leave the carnage of Kathleen's (Melanie Lynskey) crew up in flames, along with a massive pile of infected — including the infamous bloater from the video game. Oh, and Sam (Keivonn Woodard) and Henry (Lamar Johnson) didn't make it out either.
The latest chapter of "The Last of Us" was one of the show's bleakest to date, but it was also one of the show's biggest. On a sheer spectacle level, the episode included some of the season's most impressive shots, including one in which an armored vehicle narrowly misses mowing down Ellie before instead crashing into a building and exploding. For /Film, I spoke to episode cinematographer Eben Bolter about the complex planning that allowed the crew of the series to nail that shot on its first and only take.
'We got it. We nailed it.'
"So many of our conversations were about that scene," Bolter revealed. "We storyboarded the whole thing, we had a model built in the office, with little plastic people and plastic cars. And it all was constantly like, 'I know, the sniper should be here, and then it should come in here. And then the truck needs to come here.'" The filmmaker also notes that other tricky shots in the scene, like one in which clickers standing behind Ellie get hit by a car, required VFX pre-vis. Special effects teams were tasked with creating mock-ups of exactly how the vehicles would interact with Ramsey and the rest of the actors involved.
When it finally came time to shoot the explosion, Bolter said the crew had four cameras trained on the location "to make sure we got all of our angles." As is typical with major stunt scenes, the stakes were high. "We had the ability to take two, but it would have taken them three days to reset it over a long weekend, so we really didn't want to do that," Bolter said. "So we put a lot of emphasis on rehearsal, make sure everything's perfect so that we do this once."
The rehearsal paid off — Bolter said the house explosion was a wrap after just one take: "We got it. We nailed it. It was a one-and-done." On screen, the scene looks great, with an orange fireball lighting up the night sky and keeping Ellie and Joel's faces aglow as they witness the devastation unfolding around them. "Once the fire happens, all bets are off," Bolter said, and it's a statement that likely applies to both the controlled chaos of filming and the harrowing mayhem of the scene itself.
'Everyone was an expert in their field'
Eben Bolter may have been the one to capture the chaos, but he also gives credit to the teams behind the many moving parts that make this climactic sequence work. He points to a previous shot in the same scene, in which four actors run from a moving car that's smashing into other cars, as another major stunt that required safety and logistical planning, as cars were "flying all over the place." Whether smashing cars or burning buildings, though, he said, "we have an incredible stunt team, amazing SFX, everyone was an expert in their field."
This week's episode of "The Last of Us" is the best of both modern and old-school filmmaking, with exhilarating scenes that marry CGI with real stunts and excellent live-action performances. It also sounds like it was the result of a whole lot of teamwork and talent, and as with any great one-and-done shot, maybe a little luck too. Ellie and Joel may be headed out of Kansas City, but we're not going to forget what it was like watching the place crash and burn anytime soon.
"The Last of Us" airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO and HBO Max.