Full transcript
0:00- The irony of it is, I hate mushrooms.
0:02I can't stand mushrooms.
0:04I won't eat mushrooms.
0:05I can't stand the smell or the texture of them.
0:07So it's typical that we land a project
0:08which is all centered around mushrooms and fungus.
0:11Hi, my name is Barrie Gower,
0:12and I'm gonna break down how we designed
0:14and created the infected for "The Last of Us."
0:17Cordyceps is a natural parasite
0:19that is a real thing in the real world.
0:21So, the idea and the science behind "The Last of Us"
0:23is that what happens if this infected the human world?
0:26[light music] [creature trilling]
0:31[creature screeching]
0:32We were incredibly inspired
0:33by the original video game,
0:35created by Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dog.
0:37We went back to Neil and said,
0:38"Do you have, in theory, what's like a greatest hits
0:41of your favorite art from the original video game?"
0:43So he sent us a folder of about 10 to 15 images,
0:46and we used that with a combination of our own artwork
0:49and of real funguses, real mushrooms, real mold slimes.
0:53When we looked at a lot of this fungus,
0:55there's a very repetitive pattern.
0:57There's lots of holes, lots of clusters of shapes and forms.
1:00And it's something my daughter and I suffer from,
1:02phobia against lots of holes, or lots of parallel patterns.
1:07Very interesting to the eye, but I think it's also something
1:09which would trigger that phobia.
1:10And if we did that,
1:11I feel we're probably quite successful.
1:13[gentle music]
1:17With the infected characters,
1:18we used the leaf miner shapes to create
1:21all this beautiful, organic network of veins, raised veins.
1:24We also used a lot of reference of shelf mushrooms,
1:26which are mushrooms which grow very parallel
1:29trees and environments.
1:30For the Clickers, we used a lot of reference for
1:33Chicken of the Woods,
1:34which is a large mushroom which grows
1:36with these soft, rounded petals,
1:38which are usually vibrant oranges and yellows.
1:41We also reversed the colors as well.
1:43[creatures trilling]
1:46In episode two, we have a sequence where Ellie, Joel,
1:49and Tess enter a a Bostonian museum set.
1:53And as they come through the doorway,
1:54they're met with a plethora of cordyceps
1:57and fungus and mushrooms, and eventually get to a staircase,
2:01which all our cast walk up through
2:03all these kind of decomposing, infected bodies
2:06which have become part of the environment.
2:08To do that, we worked, again, with John
2:11and the art department, and with visual effects as well
2:13to decide what we would need to create practically,
2:16and what would necessarily be extended digitally
2:19to go up the walls and onto the ceilings.
2:21And actually what we ended up filming
2:22was pretty much pretty close to about 80 to 100% practical
2:26that our team created.
2:27It's almost like vinyl,
2:28it's like a retro effect we've had
2:31where productions have started leaning more towards
2:33practical effects again.
2:34So, we've been very fortunate
2:35with our last so many projects,
2:37especially something like "The Last of Us,"
2:39or something like "Stranger Things" or "Chernobyl"
2:41or "Game of Thrones,"
2:42where we worked very heavily with visual effects.
2:44and we've been asked to provide
2:46as much as we can on camera.
2:47[gentle music]
2:51Having worked with Craig Mazin before
2:53on "Chernobyl" for HBO,
2:55we worked very closely with him
2:57in developing a series of stages for radiation burn victims,
3:01and we had about four or five different stages
3:03over that show.
3:04With "The Last of Us," it was very similar
3:05that we wanted to establish a series of different stages,
3:09going from recently infected human,
3:11up to the Clicker and then the Bloaters.
3:13We spent probably the best part
3:15of about three or four months
3:16developing all the different stages for the infected,
3:18and we would start initially with
3:21what was two-dimensional straight makeup,
3:23to adding products around the eyes
3:25and the nostrils and the mouth,
3:26to almost suggest conjunctivitis,
3:28and some kind of infection to the eyes and orifices.
3:31To our first prosthetic stage, as such,
3:34was a very shallow but raised network of veins on the face,
3:38which gave the suggestion that this parasite,
3:41the cordyceps inside the human body,
3:43was actually making a race
3:45and a channel for the brain to infect the host.
3:47From there, we would start getting
3:49a little bit more extensive.
3:50We'd have our stage two, stage three.
3:52We would start introducing silicone appliances,
3:55which would have little shelf mushrooms
3:57and little sprouts of things coming out the skin.
3:59As we started to get to stages four and five,
4:01there would be more and more extensive appliances,
4:04more extensive coverage.
4:05Be it further over the head going into the scalp.
4:08They're glued so well to the actual skin
4:10that if we would just try and tear them off the skin,
4:12we'd probably take a layer of skin with them.
4:14We had an infected character played by a stunt performer
4:16who was pretty much fused to a wall.
4:18We had him sitting there for several hours
4:20whilst we got him in place.
4:22We have to remember,
4:23we're dealing with a human at the end of the day.
4:25And it's always important that we're keeping them hydrated,
4:28we're making sure they're comfortable.
4:29It's always taking that into consideration.
4:31We then jump into our Clickers.
4:34Their anatomy and the design of the character
4:36has this huge kind of floral petals, organic shapes,
4:41which are breaking out the cranium.
4:43[creatures shrieking]
4:48One of our biggest sequences for the first season
4:50was in episode five,
4:51which we coined the cul-de-sac sequence,
4:53and that's when we have all of our main cast
4:56who are spread over this cul-de-sac set
4:58with cars and various bits of rubble between them.
5:01And we have this truck
5:02which sort of breaks into this building,
5:04and there's a huge explosion.
5:05It creates this crater in the ground.
5:07And from this crater erupts this absolute flood
5:10of infected characters and Clickers.
5:12And we have two actors, two Canadian incredible actors,
5:15one called Samuel, one called Olivia,
5:17who played those Clickers.
5:18They wore fully practical foam latex crayons
5:21on the top of the head.
5:22And because we had very low light source,
5:24we could actually Velcro that out of the appliance,
5:28and all their eye area would be free
5:30so they'd have complete vision.
5:31So, for an awful lot of the cul-de-sac sequence,
5:34these stunt performers are running past frame,
5:36they're climbing over cars, and jumping onto each other.
5:38And there's a lot of combat as well.
5:39They had their eye areas removed,
5:41so anything that you catch in camera or close-up,
5:44they would have that area augmented
5:46and replaced in post-production.
5:48The Bloater is potentially
5:49the most extensive infected character that we have
5:53in the first season.
5:54We had the task to create a full body suit
5:56for a UK stunt performer called Adam Basil
5:59who, I think Adam's about 6'8".
6:00And we took a complete body scan of Adam
6:03and a life cast of his head and hands,
6:05and assembled it here in the workshop.
6:06So, we had a duplicate copy of Adam,
6:08and we sculpted the entire Bloated suit
6:11over his body former in a modeling clay.
6:13It's basically like Adam wearing a sofa,
6:15and walking around in this huge, massive rubber sofa.
6:19The weight is pretty extensive,
6:20but it's very elastic, it's very stretchy.
6:23It gives him a lot of freedom of movement.
6:24The build in total from start to finish,
6:26creating the Bloater suit,
6:28was probably the best part of about nine to 10 weeks.
6:30They scanned Adam fully and had a three-dimensional file,
6:34and, as an asset, that they were able to work
6:36with the digital company, Weta Digital,
6:38who created a fully digital Bloater for the final sequence.
6:42[Bloater grunting]
6:44[gentle music]
6:45Throughout my career, I've drawn inspiration
6:47from a lot of makeup effects artists.
6:49I mean, most notably, probably I'd say
6:51Dick Smith and Rick Baker are the two.
6:53I was very lucky a few years ago
6:54to work for Rick Baker on the remake of "The Wolfman,"
6:56and it was just incredible to have firsthand experience
6:59with somebody like Rick Baker showing me
7:01how to do all the direction of this fur,
7:03how to dress it, how to comb it, how to trim it.
7:05It's been great being able to work for a lot
7:07of my peers as well,
7:08and try and nurture a lot of their experiences,
7:11and then try and hone that into a lot of the work
7:13that we do here at BGFX.
7:15I think every project we do, I always learn something new.
7:18I mean, one thing we als always say
7:20that is the next project you go on,
7:22nine times out of 10,
7:23it's something we've never made before.
7:25And that's definitely the case with "The Last of Us."
7:27We've never made an army of people
7:29covered in mushrooms before.
7:30[creatures screeching]
7:33[gentle music]