Maxance Vincent
The sixth episode of the second season of The Last of Us pulls back the curtain on Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) relationship, as it tracks five years of birthdays. Their relationship further gets fractured as the years progress, leading to some of the most staggering cinematography of the entire season, and series as a whole.
Awards Radar had a chance to discuss the episode in detail with the cinematographer who brought it to life, Ksenia Sereda, as she teams up once again with co-showrunner/director Neil Druckmann to deliver the season’s most heartbreaking and visually stunning episode.
Read the full conversation below, which has been edited for length and clarity:
What I was really fascinated by in the episode was that it begins with a flashback of Joel’s childhood. He has a difficult conversation with his father, and it visually strikes our attention, because we’ve never seen that part of his life before on screen. Did you want that opening scene to distinguish itself visually from what was established in the rest of the series?
I think it is still very much in the language of what we’ve already seen. However, this episode feels more like a standalone piece because it contains so many different things outside of the regular visual language of the show. It has many elements of magical realism sprinkled throughout, and this beautiful feeling of memory of somebody you know you loved, and you haven’t been together with in a very long time. In the opening scene, we get to see more about Joel, because what do we truly know about him? It’s an excellent question. I think this is the only scene that explains to us the dynamic in their family. We see what toughened Joel, but at the same time, it also shows the sensitivity of the men in their family, which is very sad and quite traumatizing, while also developing his relationship with Tommy. Neil wanted this sequence to have some warmth, but it’s a very unsettling warmth given the circumstances. We tried to isolate them composition-wise, so that their relationship also feels slightly isolated.
Did Neil Druckmann want this episode to stand apart visually from what was shown in the rest of the season?
He wanted it to be very different. Just by reading the script, you know this is something different from what we’ve seen before. While I was prepping with Neil, it was very important to develop the visual structure of the episode, as we see different birthdays. When you move through Ellie’s birthdays, you want to feel like each one has its own visual signature, which supports the fact that Joel and Ellie’s relationship is growing apart and becoming more distant.
At the beginning, we wanted to establish a vibe that was close to what the viewer had seen before and loved so much, to represent a father-daughter relationship between Joel and Ellie. But it also has a lot of these moments of magical realism to preserve this feeling of memory as we deepen through different moments of Ellie’s life over the course of five years. This is illustrated in the museum sequence with this very beautiful space capsule moment, which is a wonderful take on childhood imagination, and such a fantastic scene in the game. I love this episode, especially working with Neil on it, who knows this material like no one else.
Yeah, it’s interesting to see how you represent the passage of time, because visually, it feels like it all changes as Joel and Ellie’s relationship gets a bit more fractured as the years go by. Was there also a desire for this episode to be more in close proximity with the characters of the show, because it, I think, really further develops the relationship between Joel and Ellie over the course of many years?
There are a lot of details spread throughout the season where you wonder why Ellie reacts this way or behaves like that. Episode six tells us so many new things and explains so much about Ellie’s character overall. Even the small things, like in episode five, where she is in the theater, gets on stage, and sings a small line from the song. It’s the song Joel is singing in the kitchen in the sixth episode. You don’t know it’s that when you watch the scene, but after the sixth episode, you realize that she was thinking of him in that moment. As you’re moving through the show, all the beautiful and warm moments you’re having with the characters are explained in episode six, which makes them even sadder. You can look back and understand why they were like this. Again, in episode five, when Ellie says that she knows Joel killed everybody, this episode helps resolve that plot thread in a heartbreaking way.
I really love the moment you mentioned when Joel and Ellie visit the museum, they board the spaceship, and for a second, she pretends that she’s going off to outer space, and we see that part of her imagination visually. Can you discuss how that was achieved?
Absolutely. I was so excited to learn that I was going to do this sequence, because, in the game, it’s such a beautiful moment too. It’s very hard to do justice to that scene, because it’s based on such an amazing game, which is already a visual masterpiece. You’re competing with something that has already set such a high bar. In the show, we need to hit it at the same level at least, and try to push it even further with this particular sequence in the game.
It’s an amazing scene. You have this frontal close-up on Ellie, and you’re sitting with it as the lighting changes. The whole sequence happens while you’re watching the close-up. There’s this continuous presence of her imagination, as she smiles, and it’s so beautiful to watch. We took that from the game as a base, and wanted to push it even further. We tried different camera movements and angles, but we found that the simpler the sequence was, the better. However, we did add a profile shot, which works so beautifully in a way that you can see her smile. You can see a small sliver of the window in the background. When the sequence comes to that, as she turns to Joel, her smile is so sweet and so warm. This was a new shot that we put in for this sequence, compared to the game. However, it was a very long process to shoot that scene, because the challenge of being in the small space together with interactive lighting, plus hydraulics underneath the capsule, needed to be choreographed to work for that scene. We may have done three major rehearsals before shooting day, in different models of the space capsule.
It took a few days in different locations, outside and inside, because we were using different space capsules for the exterior and interior It was a very exciting sequence to work on, for sure, and I was very happy that I got a chance to do that, because you don’t get to do something like this on the show very often.
You’ve mentioned the use of close-ups. I’ve noticed that a lot in the season where there’s a lot of close-ups on a character’s face during very pivotal emotional moments, like in the first episode with Gail and Joel, and this episode with Eugene, when Joel tells him, “If you love someone, you can always see their face.” At that point, we cut to a close-up of Eugene’s face, and his expression shifts when he actually sees her in his head. It’s a very it’s a very striking image. Did you want to use close-ups as a way to support the characters and peer through their emotions during some of these emotionally difficult scenes?
Overall, it is a very big part of the show, even with many exciting action sequences. It’s still very much character-focused. The handheld look also helps us stay pretty close to the characters and be very engaged with them. We want to be right in their eyeline, and we really leaned into that this season. It was very exciting for me because there are so many intense, dramatic scenes throughout the show. Every episode you get to work on has many iconic scenes from the game, so you want the viewer to be connected to these characters, follow their journey, and have an opportunity to sympathize. It is a very big part of the language, for sure, to be as close to their eyeline as possible.
I’ve also noticed that many different light sources are used in the episode. I think there’s one scene where Joel is bathed in sunlight, or a flashlight fills the frame and gives an interesting sort of lighting cue to a scene. Can you talk about how different light sources were used in this episode, especially during some of its most pivotal moments?
As I mentioned before, Neil and I were talking that each sequence, or each birthday year, would have its signature look. The first one is warmer and sunnier. It reminds us of season one, and of Joel and Ellie’s relationship. On the second birthday, it’s raining, so it has a very different vibe, which is foreshadowing what’s happening next. I really like the scene when he’s in bed and we see the rain projected on his face, which is as if tears are rolling down his face.
Each sequence would have its own look. After that, we would go to this foggy forest, which has a magical feel to it. But what is probably my favorite scene, lighting-wise, is the scene when they bring Eugene’s dead body back to Jackson. The sun was very harsh, so we tried to block it to replicate the blue hour. We also added a small glimpse of pink throughout the sequence, which works so well when we get to Ellie’s close-up, and she’s almost in tears, and she says, “You swore.” It adds such beauty and sadness to this moment.
And when she walks away and stays with him, it’s just so traumatic. So yeah, each sequence would have its own atmosphere and lighting cue.
Theobviously harkens back to some of the scenes in the first episode, like the New Year’s dance and even, you know, Joel opening himself up to Ellie as they talk about what happened in Salt Lake on the porch. In the first episode, those scenes are filmed through Ellie’s perspective, whereas we now see those same moments through Joel’s eyes, this time around. Was that always the intent?
Absolutely, that was the whole point. We wanted to return to those scenes with an entirely different perspective, especially the scene on the porch. This is the last conversation that Joel and Ellie have. Returning to that scene has a wholly different meaning now, which is very interesting, and watching what happened through Joel’s eyes gives another point of view on things, especially as we dive deeper into the character.
Is it also important to highlight through its visuals some of the silences or the unspoken words by the characters, more than the dialogues themselves, so that we, as the audience, get to examine how the characters truly feel by how they’re framed in the scene?
Absolutely. Small things like that, which you can see in so many scenes of this season, are very important, and are what cinematography is about. We must support the story visually, the character development, and the writing. That is the first thing you do when you read the script. You’re trying to figure out how to tell the story visually, and what would your tools be to help the story and the characters as they go through this journey.
Now that you’ve worked on two seasons of The Last of Us, as a cinematographer, what was most rewarding for you in having contributed to a show like this one?
Oh, good question. I think the fact that so many people are watching the show and falling in love with the characters is a good thing. I am very deeply attached to the characters. I love Ellie and the fact that the show boasts very strong female characters. It’s great to be able to develop these characters visually. To see how people get attached to the characters, too, is very special for me. I really appreciate that they can appreciate them and get upset when bad things happen to them, because they’re so attached to them.
It also feels rewarding to work on this show because the team is amazing, and it feels like a family. Coming back to this season felt like coming back to your family. I can’t say enough good words about my crew and how grateful I am to work with them, and how supportive they are. The whole experience is such a pleasure.
From coming every day to set and having a chance to work on such great material was a true gift. Not like every show is like this. It is a very special experience.
All episodes of The Last of Us are now streaming on HBO Max.
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