When Danny Boyle premiered his fantastic ’28 Days Later’ in 2002, a joke began to become popular until it became a kind of meme that withstood the test of time like few others: “They’re not zombies, they’re infected!”. It has rained a lot since then, and the thing about speedy creatures devouring human flesh is nothing new, but the phrase of yore continues as valid as then.
the word with Z
The last example of this is found in the series of the moment; a ‘The Last of Us’ that, episode after episode, continues to break our hearts and offer us doses of top quality television. According to the director of photography Eben Bolter in an interesting interview with The Credits, responsible for episodes 3, 4 and 5, the use of the “Z word” was totally prohibited on the filming set.
“We weren’t allowed to say the Z word on set. It was kind of a forbidden word. They were infected. We’re not a zombie show. Of course, there’s tension and jump scares, but the show really revolves around our characters. The Infected are an obstacle they have to deal with. For example, in episode three, Ellie listens to an Infected trapped under some rubble. She’s scared at first, but then sees her confidence grow, cutting the Infected and looking at the fibers. Through that interest, you see what the infected mean to Ellie.”
Fortunately, this anecdote is not the highlight of the conversation with Bolter, who confessed to having pursued the job after learning that Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann were going to be in charge of adapting the video game, of which he declares himself a fan. Among other things, the DOP explained one of the keys that make the third chapter so close and specialwhich condenses the story of Bill and Frank into one hour brilliant in form and substance.
Undoubtedly, among its many high points, one of the episode’s most moving moments is the moment Bill and Frank share their first meal together in a sequence that moves from dining room to living room to living room. piano. A passage enriched by the unique aspect that makes possible the technique that he calls skip lighting.
“It starts at the dining room table. The way Nick sets up the plate, the bottle, where everyone sits and why…we wanted to play all of that out afterwards. And we wanted the scene to be beautiful without it looking too lit, so i used this technique called skip lighting.
It’s when the sun comes through the window and hits the tablecloth, so you get this ambient light by using props and the set instead of spotlights. Conrad Hall [DOP de American Beauty y Camino a la perdición] He’s one of my favorite cinematographers, and he lit so many scenes without shining the light directly on the actor’s face, but bouncing it off the environment.”