How do you create a clicker? From designing the blooming fungus prosthetics to choreographing the performers and their erratic actions to any ending digital touches — it’s lots of arduous work that includes an infinite quantity of behind-the-scenes staffers, and quite a lot of departments. And that’s simply one of many many beautiful aspects that cocreators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin needed to totally assume by earlier than bringing The Final of Us‘ expansive video game-based world to the small display screen.
“We realized a lot from doing Season 1,” Mazin tells TV Information Journal for our particular problem devoted to The Final of Us Season 2. “The toughest half was making an attempt to determine tips on how to create the contaminated in a manner that [kept] them related to their very own base humanity — they’re portrayed extra as people who find themselves sick, versus creatures of supernatural origin.”
For Season 2, he provides, “We saved issues grounded, and that meant we’re doing lots of sensible results.” Sensible results are bodily, not computer-generated, and right here, they’re the work of Emmy-winning make-up artist Barrie Gower and his crew. “We additionally realized a ton about tips on how to combine that with visible results,” Mazin says. “We’ve got expanded and improved our course of in order that we will proceed to mix the sensible with the digital in ways in which folks in all probability gained’t discover.”
That seamless mixing of sensible and digital results for the clickers additionally carries over into every little thing else that went into creating this fascinating decimated world—like layering on digitized destruction for panorama pictures, and multiplying the contaminated in a horde with a couple of mouse clicks. And whereas the method of constructing this world for tv is vastly completely different than making a online game, the crew took further care in ensuring each element fell into place as they transitioned between the mediums. “[For] the sport, we don’t make any bodily issues,” mentioned Druckmann in HBO‘s Making of the Final of Us (out there to stream on YouTube). “It’s all digital, it’s all two-dimensional on the display screen. [But] the primary time I walked on set, it was Joel’s home. You already obtained to see the love this crew had for the unique materials. I used to be emotionally moved by it.”
Within the gallery beneath, peek behind the decaying curtain to see how the postapocalyptic drama’s crew developed the beautiful bodily results, designed the horrifying levels of an infection (even how they captured their eerie clicking sounds!), composed the haunting soundtrack and introduced in a real-life giraffe for the actors to work together with. Now, motion!
The Final of Us, Season 2, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO and Max
That is an excerpt from TV Information Journal’s The Final of Us: The Final Survival Story particular problem. For an in-depth take a look at the critically-acclaimed HBO collection, that includes behind-the-scenes secrets and techniques and a preview of the extremely anticipated second season, choose up a replica of the difficulty out there on newsstands on April 11, or order on-line right here.