- Welcome to "Sony: Creator to Creator." (Pedro grunts)
(all laughing) And done. - You gotta do that again.
- Amen. - Take number seven.
- Dude, you literally- - [Neil] He will love
it, he will love this. He loves it. - Do it again.
- Take seven. (tense music) (clicker screeching) (gentle guitar music) - Was it everything you hoped for? - Jury's still out. But man, you can't deny that view. - Neil, it's exciting because
this gave you an opportunity to direct one of the episodes. What did you learn from that? What was different from
directing on the game side? - The actors in the
video game are way nicer. (all laughing) - I was gonna say, I am never
working with actors again. - The biggest difference
is that, you know, when we we do the cinematic
part of a video game, which is the closest to
shooting a TV show or a film, in the volume, where where we
capture the video game stuff, we have all the coverage, every angle, because we're capturing
3D data of their face, of their body, their voice. We could change their clothing, we could change the set, we
could change the weather. All those things we could
change after the fact. Not so much in live action. - Man, that sounds good. - Amazing. - Well, it's a double-edged sword, 'cause it's good, but it's like you have
endless possibilities. On the TV show, that's pretty
much what it's gonna be. And then you say action, and then you hold your breath, and you're hoping all the
pieces will come together. And they usually don't on the first, or the second, or sometimes the seventh. - He's like, I think it
was fine on the first. (all laughing) - I was like, we got it on the first one. - Then when you do get it, it's this high. Here we go. Three, two, one, action. (truck thuds) - The amount of mental endurance
required to shoot a show, when it's cold on screen, it's cold. I mean there's this, I
just remember you walking. We were in deep snow, and the only thing we were missing that day
was just a lot of wind. Out comes the big fan
that's sort of blasting him in the face with this, like wah, this thing is blowing arctic
ice chips into his face, and he's struggling. - I mean, I think there
was wind, natural wind. We just added quite a bit of it. It wasn't a brutal blizzard. (Pedro laughs) - But I'm glad for all the suffering. - [Neil] All of that helped. - We had these physical locations. We had the real mountains, the real woods, the real river, the real snow. It was just like, very little
left to the imagination in terms of having to fake it. You dressed entire areas of the downtown- - [Neil] Yes, we did. - Calgary, and Edmonton, and- - Pissed off all the residents. (people laughing) - But, they're so polite about it. - They loved it. - They were really nice about it. - They said sorry to us. - A stretch of highway.
- Oh yeah, that was brutal. - [Bella] That was crazy. - [Craig] But it was important to give you guys a real world to be in. - I will say, it was such a cool feeling, 'cause I'm flying back
and forth to Naughty Dog, and then I come here, and whenever I show back up in Canada, Craig's like, you gotta
come check this out. Come check this out. And he walks me over, and it's like I'm standing in the game. I am standing in the
game, and it's authentic, and you could touch it, and you could walk around it, and then seeing all the extras. The crew just loved the material so much. They poured so much of themselves into it, and they studied the game, like every tiny details
of the posters from, the FEDRA posters were
exactly like the game. - It's actually useful to have
fans working on your show, because they're watching like hawks. One of the things that was
actually really encouraging was that the ones that
were really hardcore fans came to me and said, "Joel
and Ellie are perfect." They were, and I was like okay. - Light on the reading, but it's got some interesting photos. - No, no, no, put that back. That's not for kids. - How'd he even walk
around with that thing? - Please get rid of it. - Oh, why are these all stuck together? - Uh. - [Asad] Did you just try to bring, was there a certain part of yourself that you brought to these characters as part of your way into those characters? 'Cause there's something
that's very familiar, but I think there's a nuance
that you guys brought to it. - I think whenever I
approach a character, anyway, I'm not consciously trying to do anything. As soon as I consciously try and bring certain parts of myself to the character, it just feels conceited,
and unnatural to me. So I think it's just a
natural merging of two people. And it helps when like, I'm quite similar to
Ellie, so that was helpful. - I am exactly like Joel.
(all laughing) It's a no-brainer.
- And your knees hurt. - No-brainer. - Yeah, exactly. - My back is twerked. - In terms of the, twerk?
- You said twerk. - Yeah.
- Hold on. Tell us about the twerk. - Yeah, tell about the twerking. - The twerk. - What you just did was not a twerk. (Bella laughs) It looked more like a back spasm. - It's a twerk, we can go with that. - I think I just spasmed
my back doing the little. - How old are you again? - 36. - Gonna have to wear a diaper soon. - Who says I don't already? - Part of what our job is as casting is to find people that
don't have to work very hard to embody a character. So, when we were looking for Joel, we knew we wanted somebody that projected a certain kind of strength. That kind of paternal energy, but also then, underneath it, a pain. - [Ellie] Your watch is broken. - And something in the eyes
that was sort of undeniable, and that's an interesting combination of somebody that can do terrible violence, and can go into a red mist, but then also has just such a wellspring of emotion and humanity, still. Had you heard of it, or seen any of it? - I hadn't. - You got the script. - I just heard of you. It was a fascinating 24 hours. I don't know if you guys recall. - I do. - Where we met, talked, and then decided we would
be doing this together. And, I called my sister
within this short window to tell her about this job
that I wanted really badly, and she was in the car
driving my nephews to school, and I was on speaker, and I didn't even know
that they were in the car, and I was like, I'm having a conversation about this amazing job. It's based on a video game, actually, and it's called "The La-." (all laughing) - And that was it. - And then, Bruno and Pedro
were like, "The Last of Us?" You have to get this job! Mommy, pull over! You know, like. - Wow, their voices are so deep. - Yeah, they turned into demons. (all laughing) - That's good.
- And... - I also think that's why
fans are so protective of these characters, because
they've been those characters. - Yeah, exactly.
- Yes. - [Bella] They've not just
watched them, they've been them. - [Craig] And the replay
factor on those games is extraordinarily high. So, they have not just
experienced it once or twice, but many multiple times, and so, there is an intimacy that they have with these characters. It's why, I think, that a lot of fans were nervous about the
game being adapted at all. - Yeah.
- And I understand that. - Yeah. - [Craig] I get nervous when I- - We had the same nervousness. - Yeah, exactly. And that's a good nervousness. It's good to be nervous,
it means you care. - [Soldier] Don't move! - It's my daughter, I
think her leg is broken. - [Soldier] Stop right there! - Okay. Easy now. - We're not sick. - PlayStation, over the years, has given Naughty Dog so
much support, and trust. "The Last of Us" was
the first M-rated game Naughty Dog has ever made. We weren't known for
making these kind of games, and this kind of story. And from the initial pitch, you all were like, yes, let's do this. We support you 100%. These are big budget games, and to get this level of support, I think allowed us to
create something like this that hopefully resonates with
players, and with viewers, the way it's connected with us. - Do you remember how we, actually this would be a good
story for you guys to know. How we announced it? This is the first time we
announced the game to the world, it was 2011, and if you remember, you know, knowing Neil,
he wanted to announce it in a different, interesting way rather than just releasing a trailer. So we did this really cool sort of, remember that tease thing we did? - Oh, I've seen it. - With the tease-
- It's cool. - [Neil] We had this kind
of post-apocalyptic tease where you just hear Joel talking about what he's been through, and then we had another one
that just showed the cordyceps that are growing out of the ant. - Right.
- Whoa. - [Neil] And then no one knew
it was a Naughty Dog game. - [Asad] Yeah, there was
the sound of the clickers. We just released a
soundbite of the clickers, and then every day, as we got closer to the launch of the trailer, the website of PlayStation
just got more overgrown. And it just drove everyone crazy. - So there was just, they knew there was a PlayStation game called "The Last of Us." They didn't know who was making it, 'cause we had just put out "Uncharted 3," so they didn't expect it at all. - It was so good. - And then it had this huge
impact when that trailer hit. - But it was great, 'cause it just shows ever since this game first came out, we've just been very provocative with how we promote it, talk about it, so it's just so reflective of
what you guys are doing now. - [Ellie] This is our routine. Day and night, all we do is survive. It never lets up. (gun fires) (Joel grunts) Joel! - Did you have any idea
when you were doing that that it was going to be a thing that people would tattoo on their bodies, and turn into an almost semi-religion? - No, I actually, throughout
the entire production, I thought I was fumbling the whole thing. - [Craig] Yeah. - And they'll never let me do this again. - [Craig] Right. - This will be a one and done. - Huh, sounds really familiar. (all laughing) - [Bella] Yeah. - And I was like, so I
wanted to just be like, 'cause I was working on my dream game. I was like, I want it to be, I wanted to be satisfied by myself, but I thought it wouldn't be as big, and definitely wouldn't
be as big as "Uncharted," and then we'll just move
on to something else. - I learnt to trust people. I had to trust that if you said I did a good job, I did a good job, and trust that you knew
what you were doing when you cast me, because I had
frickin', it was terrifying. I'm like, why did you? We had these conversations,
right up until the very end. - I told you, 'cause I'm a genius. That's why.
- Right. You can't beat yourself
up all of those 200 days, so there has to be an element- - You tried.
- You can. - You really tried.
- I know. (all laughing) So I had to learn to trust,
'cause I trust you with my life. - Apparently. - Apparently. - Big mistake. (dramatic music) (chime dings)
Bella is adorable and crazy talented. Really glad this show turned out great. Just really impressive all around.
The fact that Bruce Straley has been completely excluded from all credits to do with the creation of the game is criminal.