Warning: spoilers ahead for The Last of Us episode 3.
Since its premiere, The Last of Us has astounded people all around the world, with the TV programme hitting a high point of passion, sadness, heartbreak, and tenderness in episode 3.
The third instalment of the video game adaptation follows Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett), two people who may have never met before apocalypse, but fall in love and remain with each other till the end of their lives in a post-apocalyptic world.
One of the many wonderful moments they share has captured audiences: when Frank discloses to Bill that he has grown strawberries after swapping one of his partner’s pistols with Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Tess (Anna Torv) for some seeds.
Bill is taken aback by the sight of the strawberry patch, break into cute laughs as he takes his first taste in years, before sharing a love hug with Frank and uttering the already memorable line: ‘I was never terrified until you showed up.’
During a recent chat, Eben Bolter BSC, the episode’s director of photography, recounted how the image was cobbled together, saying that they had a very limited timeline to guarantee that the natural light from the sun was preserved.
‘It’s a beautiful moment. It’s written beautifully, and we talked a lot about how, where, when, how to make that magical. What it came down to is we wanted to lean into low sun, magic hour,’ he said.
He and the crew had to work out which area of the town they’d constructed for the show would give the ideal background for the strawberries while showcasing a backlit sun, which required ‘blocking out the scene depending on the real sun in that scenario’.
There was a lot of pressure to capture the enchantment that had been expressed in the screenplay because they only had around 15 minutes to shoot it with perhaps just three takes and a rapid reset.
‘We had a whole day of shooting, 20 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to shoot,’ Eben recalled.
‘So you’re really taking a gamble, particularly in television, even with HBO. You don’t want to be saying, “We didn’t get it, we lost the sun, we need another day.” You don’t want any of those things.’
With that in mind, they needed to ensure that everyone engaged in putting up the scenario was ‘on board’ with the speed required to make it happen.
‘There was a lot of planning, a lot of courage. The actors were incredible. The blocking worked. Things like the pollen in the air was something that I’d requested because I just wanted to give it that extra little bit of naturalism and magic,’ explained the cinematographer.
He described how the SFX crew used large Ritter fans to launch ‘small little feathers’ – genuine feathers that had been crushed up – into the air, allowing them to gently trickle down to mimic pollen.
‘They only had one shot at that. It’d be very easy for it to just look silly and like a clump of feathers that fall to the ground quickly or the wind’s in the wrong direction. But they’re experts at what they do and a lot of what you see there is take one. It just worked really nicely,’ he recollected.
Fortunately, their efforts paid off so well that they had additional time while the sun was still shining, allowing them to capture some more close-up images of the strawberries in natural light.
‘It felt like an independent movie where everyone was on the same page creatively and we shot it in quite a lo-fi way. That’s arguably risky but out of that you get something more interesting,’ Eben added.
Reactions to The Last of Us’ third episode, and notably the strawberries sequence, have been emotional to say the least, with one user tweeting: ‘I can’t stop sobbing long enough to wash my teeth because I keep thinking about two men eating strawberries during the apocalypse.’
Nick wonderfully summarised Bill and Frank’s connection and the way they love each other over their 16-year partnership in a behind-the-scenes video about the show, stating: ‘Frank is the flowers, and Bill is the dirt.’
The Last of Us is available to watch on Sky and NOW, with new episodes released on Mondays.