"The irony of it is, I hate mushrooms." The Last of Us makeup designer and visual effects artist Barrie Gower breaks down the extensive work that went into bringing the terrifying fungi-controlled monsters to the screen. From gathering inspiration from the original video game created by Neil Druckmann to taking a full body scan of stunt performer Adam Basil for the Bloater suit, Barrie explains the whole process that went into creating every type of Infected.
Director: Anna O'Donohue
Director of Photography: Steve Montgomery
Editor: Evan Allen
Producer: Funmi Sunmonu
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Rafael Vasquez
Production Manager: Natasha Soto-Albors, James Pipitone
Director, Talent : Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Jess Averback
Production Assistant: Anne Schmitz
Post Production Supervisor: Edward Taylor
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Supervising Editor: Kameron Key
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Director: Anna O'Donohue
Director of Photography: Steve Montgomery
Editor: Evan Allen
Producer: Funmi Sunmonu
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Rafael Vasquez
Production Manager: Natasha Soto-Albors, James Pipitone
Director, Talent : Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Jess Averback
Production Assistant: Anne Schmitz
Post Production Supervisor: Edward Taylor
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Supervising Editor: Kameron Key
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 The irony of it is I hate mushrooms.
00:02 I can't stand mushrooms.
00:04 I won't eat mushrooms.
00:05 I can't stand the smell, the texture of them.
00:06 So it's typical that we land a project
00:08 which is all centered around mushrooms and fungus.
00:11 Hi, my name is Barry Gower,
00:12 and I'm gonna break down how we designed
00:14 and created the infected for "The Last of Us."
00:17 Cordyceps is an actual parasite
00:19 that is a real thing in the real world.
00:20 So the idea and the science behind "The Last of Us"
00:23 is that what happens if this infected the human world?
00:27 (growling)
00:30 We were incredibly inspired by the original video game
00:34 created by Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dog.
00:37 We went back to Neil and said,
00:38 "Do you have in theory what's like a greatest hits
00:40 "of your favorite art from the original video game?"
00:43 So he sent us a folder of about 10 to 15 images,
00:46 and we used that with a combination of our own artwork
00:49 and of real funguses, real mushrooms, real mold slimes.
00:53 When we looked at a lot of this fungus,
00:55 there's a very repetitive pattern.
00:57 There's lots of holes, lots of clusters of shapes and forms,
01:00 and it's something my daughter and I suffer from,
01:02 phobia against lots of holes or lots of parallel patterns.
01:07 Very interesting to the eye,
01:08 but I think it's also something
01:09 which would trigger that phobia.
01:10 And if we did that,
01:11 I feel we're probably quite successful.
01:13 With the infected characters,
01:18 we used the leaf miner shapes
01:20 to create all this beautiful organic network of veins,
01:23 raised veins.
01:24 We also used a lot of reference of shelf mushrooms,
01:26 which are mushrooms which grow very parallel trees
01:29 and environments.
01:30 For the clickers,
01:31 we used a lot of reference for chicken of the woods,
01:34 which is a large mushroom which grows
01:36 with these soft, rounded petals,
01:38 which are usually vibrant oranges and yellows.
01:41 We also reversed the colors as well.
01:43 In episode two,
01:47 we have a sequence where Ellie, Joel, and Tess
01:50 enter a Bostonian museum set.
01:53 And as they come through the doorway,
01:54 they're met with a plethora of cordyceps
01:57 and fungus and mushrooms,
01:59 and eventually get to a staircase,
02:01 which all our cast walk up through
02:02 all these kind of decomposing infected bodies,
02:06 which have become part of the environment.
02:08 To do that,
02:09 we worked again with John in the art department
02:12 and with visual effects as well
02:13 to decide what we would need to create practically
02:16 and what wouldn't necessarily be extended digitally
02:18 to go up the walls and onto the ceilings.
02:20 And actually what we ended up filming
02:22 was pretty much, pretty close to about 80 to 100% practical
02:26 that our team created.
02:27 It's almost like vinyl.
02:28 It's like a retro effect we've had
02:30 where productions have started leaning more
02:32 towards practical effects again.
02:34 So we've been very fortunate with our last so many projects,
02:37 especially something like The Last of Us
02:38 or something like Strange Things or Chernobyl
02:41 or Game of Thrones,
02:42 where we work very heavily with visual effects.
02:44 And we've been asked to provide as much as we can in camera.
02:51 Having worked with Craig Mazin before on Chernobyl for HBO,
02:55 we worked very closely with him in developing
02:57 a series of stages for radiation burn victims.
03:01 And we had about four or five different stages
03:03 over that show.
03:03 With The Last of Us,
03:04 it was very similar that we wanted to establish a series
03:07 of different stages going from recently infected human
03:11 up to the clicker and then the bloaters.
03:13 We spent probably the best part of about three
03:15 or four months developing all the different stages
03:18 for the infected.
03:18 And we would start initially
03:20 with what was two-dimensional straight makeup
03:23 to adding products around the eyes and the nostrils
03:25 and the mouth to almost suggest conjunctivitis
03:28 and some kind of infection to the eyes and orifices.
03:31 To our first prosthetic stage as such was a very shallow
03:35 but raised network of veins on the face,
03:38 which gave the suggestion that this parasite,
03:41 the cordyceps inside the human body,
03:43 was actually making a race and a channel for the brain
03:46 to infect the host.
03:47 From there, we would start getting
03:49 a little bit more extensive.
03:50 We'd have our stage two, stage three.
03:52 We would start introducing silicone appliances,
03:55 which would have little shelf mushrooms
03:57 and little sprouts of things coming out of the skin.
03:58 As we started to get to stages four and five,
04:01 there would be more and more extensive appliances,
04:04 more extensive coverage,
04:05 be it further over the head, going into the scalp.
04:08 They glue so well to the outer skin
04:10 that if we would just try and tear them off the skin,
04:12 we'd probably take a layer of skin with them.
04:14 We had an infected character played by Stumpformer
04:16 who was pretty much fused to a wall.
04:18 We had him sitting there for several hours
04:20 whilst we got him in place.
04:22 We have to remember we're dealing with a human
04:24 at the end of the day,
04:24 and it's always important that we're keeping them hydrated.
04:28 We're making sure they're comfortable.
04:29 It's always taking that into consideration.
04:31 We then jump into our clickers.
04:34 Their anatomy and the design of the character
04:36 has this huge kind of floral petals,
04:40 organic shapes which are breaking out the cranium.
04:43 [crowd cheering]
04:46 One of our biggest sequences for the first season
04:50 was in episode five, which we coined the cul-de-sac sequence.
04:53 And that's when we have all of our main cast
04:56 who are spread over this cul-de-sac set
04:58 with cars and various bits of rubble between them.
05:00 And we have this truck which sort of breaks
05:03 into this building and there's a huge explosion.
05:05 It creates this crater in the ground.
05:06 And from this crater erupts this absolute flood
05:10 of infected characters and clickers.
05:12 And we have two actors, two Canadian incredible actors,
05:15 one called Samuel, one called Olivia,
05:17 who played those clickers.
05:18 They wore fully practical foam latex crowns
05:21 on the top of the head.
05:22 And because we had very low light source,
05:24 we could actually Velcro that out of the appliance
05:27 and all their eye area would be free
05:29 so they'd have complete vision.
05:31 So for an awful lot of the cul-de-sac sequence,
05:34 the stunt performers were running past frame,
05:36 climbing over cars and jumping onto each other.
05:38 And there's a lot of combat as well.
05:39 They had their eye areas removed.
05:41 So anything that you catch in camera or close up,
05:44 they would have that area augmented
05:46 and replaced in post-production.
05:48 The bloater is potentially the most extensive
05:51 infected character that we have in the first season.
05:54 We had the task to create a full body suit
05:56 for a UK stunt performer called Adam Basil,
05:58 who I think Adam's about six foot eight.
06:00 And we took a complete body scan of Adam
06:03 and a live cast of his head and hands
06:05 and assembled it here in the workshop.
06:06 So we had a duplicate copy of Adam
06:08 and we sculpted the entire bloater suit
06:11 over his body former in a modeling clay.
06:13 It's basically like Adam wearing a sofa
06:15 and walking around in this huge, massive rubber sofa.
06:18 The weight is pretty extensive, but it's very elastic.
06:22 It's very stretchy.
06:23 It gives him a lot of freedom of movement.
06:24 The build in total from start to finish
06:26 creating the bloater suit
06:27 was probably the best part of about nine to 10 weeks.
06:30 They scanned Adam fully and had a three-dimensional file
06:34 and as an asset that they were able to work
06:36 with a digital company, Weta Digital,
06:38 who created a fully digital bloater for the final sequence.
06:42 (roaring)
06:43 (gunshot)
06:45 Throughout my career, I've drawn inspiration
06:47 from a lot of makeup effects artists.
06:48 I mean, most notably, probably I'd say Dick Smith
06:51 and Rick Baker are the two.
06:52 I was very lucky a few years ago to work for Rick Baker
06:55 on the remake of "The Wolfman."
06:56 And it was just incredible to have firsthand experience
06:59 with somebody like Rick Baker showing me how to do
07:02 all the direction of this fur, how to dress it,
07:04 how to comb it, how to trim it.
07:05 It's been great being able to work
07:07 for a lot of my peers as well
07:08 and try and nurture a lot of their experiences
07:11 and then try and hone that into a lot of the work
07:13 that we do here at BGFX.
07:15 I think every project we do, I always learn something new.
07:18 I mean, one thing we always say
07:20 that is the next project you go on,
07:22 nine times out of 10, it's something we've never made before
07:25 and that's definitely the case with "The Last of Us."
07:27 We've never made an army of people
07:29 covered in mushrooms before.
07:30 (roaring)
07:33 (gentle music)
07:35 you