00:00The Siege of Jackson is not something that happens in the game.
00:12We thought we had an opportunity to create even more of a sense of vulnerability.
00:20It wasn't simply Joel or Ellie who was in trouble.
00:25Everyone was in trouble.
00:27The Cordyceps were going to rise up and take their revenge on Jackson
00:33for thinking that it could protect itself.
00:51This has been circled on my calendar since I read the script
00:54and I was very, very excited for this.
00:57It's going to be legendary televisions, you know?
01:00It's Battle of the Bastards level.
01:02I'm a Game of Thrones fan and just marveled at how they did those things.
01:07And of course, then, in my competitive way, thought,
01:10how do we make something even bigger?
01:12Hire one of the great directors from Game of Thrones
01:14and also from Succession, Mark Mylod.
01:16This episode, even though it's one of the best scripts I've ever read,
01:22it only works if I root for every one of you for your survival.
01:26So make me care, please.
01:27Fight for your lives and fight for your families.
01:29You're freezing cold, but you're fighting for your lives.
01:32Please give me passion every time.
01:34I want you to go home exhausted.
01:35Thank you.
01:36Thank you.
01:36Thank you very well.
01:37The Battle of Jackson took place over a number of weeks,
01:41and every day was this challenge where I'd wake up before the alarm
01:46just in fear of messing something up or under, achieving.
01:50And action, James.
01:51Jackson Hole!
01:53Jackson Hole!
01:54You run!
01:55Creating a battle sequence is like going into war.
02:03What you're seeing is the representation of 5,000 really long meetings
02:09where we have to coordinate what we build physically,
02:14what we're going to create with visual effects,
02:17how we're going to do the snow and the weather,
02:20how we use stun people,
02:22and then how are we going to edit this all together so it feels seamless?
02:30Real flamethrowers.
02:32Dozens of stun people falling off rooftops,
02:36being lit on fire, jumping around, fighting each other.
02:39It was the set piece to end all set pieces for our show.
02:47Cutting there, guys. Cutting, cutting.
02:52I knew that they'd used a small town in Alberta for Jackson Hole in season one.
03:04I didn't actually get the memo that they were building an entire town for season two.
03:11Jackson has expanded in five years' time.
03:14It's kind of crazy, but it's, like, it's beautiful to think that, you know,
03:19if the world, Dardenneer, comes to an end,
03:22like, people are going to survive and they're going to make things work.
03:28So I had this magnificent and huge town as a playground
03:31and all these toys to play with,
03:33and then they are on the page of terrifyingly huge battle,
03:37which I suppose as a kind of crass generalization broke down into three main sections.
03:47Number one, the Horde arrive outside the incredibly well-fortified town of Jackson Hole,
03:54where the townsfolk, over endless planning and use of resources,
03:59have constructed a quite ingenious defense plan,
04:02and they're actually incredibly well-equipped to deal with even an attack of this mammoth scale.
04:09Initially, the plan of rolling, you know, petroleum bombs down ramps to them,
04:15therefore effectively creating this kind of fish-in-a-barrel situation
04:18where they're either burning or they're being shot, is incredibly effective.
04:22What they didn't bank on was a bloater turning up,
04:26and that's a game-changer,
04:27and Tommy is canny enough and worldly enough to know that the fence will be breached.
04:31That's part one.
04:34Part two.
04:36And now we're into a street battle.
04:40So we have this kill zone, this gauntlet set up with snipers up on the rooftops
04:45on either side of Main Street,
04:46with another kill zone and a band of flamethrowers also to kettle the infected in.
04:51So that's all going pretty well.
04:53But the sheer numbers are just overwhelming,
04:58and that takes us into part three,
05:01where Tommy basically lures this agitating bloater down a back alleyway,
05:06and it becomes a duel between the two of them,
05:08bloater versus flamethrower.
05:10The intensity of it was just one of the highlights of my career.
05:14Coming up of the wind in the snow, here we go.
05:33Ready, and three, two, one, action hord.
05:37Wenn die Horde zuerst umgekehrt in Main Street kam,
05:46und in diesem Moment kam,
05:50mit den Kameras hinter diesen vier Mann,
05:53mit diesen kleinen Flamethrowers,
05:55mit hunderte und hunderte Horde,
05:58umgekehrt durch die Straße zu ihnen,
06:00und keine Säfete-Netz.
06:02Das war wirklich schrecklich in der besten Weise für mich.
06:07Our extraordinary team of visual effects magicians,
06:11they will magnify the scope and scale of that core ten-fold.
06:22Digital humans are always a difficult thing for visual effects
06:26to create a photoreal digital human.
06:29Creating hundreds of them is also very tricky.
06:34The best effects I think now in film and television
06:36are usually a marriage of the two, practical and digital.
06:39Alex was always very keen for us to deliver as much as we could practically.
06:45For the Jackson sequence,
06:48we did about 20 to 30 performers each day in close-up prosthetics.
06:53We knew that we were going to have a lot of bodies in a scene running,
06:59and we would only have so many coming close to camera,
07:02and that would determine what we would spend our time and energy on.
07:07In season one, we had a lot of people in the most extreme infected stages
07:12with all these huge cordyceps all over them.
07:15I think now, with sort of the frozen environment
07:18and all these infected erupting out of the ground,
07:21we wanted to show a lot of them in lesser stages, mid-stages,
07:25than the extensive stages.
07:27Three, and three, two, one, action!
07:32Come on!
07:33Right here!
07:35It's really rewarding to see the shots come to life.
07:40Just infected, running into fire, explosions,
07:43there's a lot to pack in.
07:45There we go.
07:55To have a one-on-one fight with the bloater and Tommy,
08:00with a flamethrower, I mean, those are just epic things,
08:03things that we dream of.
08:06I was really proud that I'm the one that's bearing this weapon.
08:11Kudos to all of our effects guys
08:13for getting me trained up.
08:16It was amazing.
08:19We had a really fun day playing with flamethrowers.
08:24Joel and the special effects department had constructed this
08:27almost like a, I suppose, a fireproof rickshaw,
08:30but with a fireproof front,
08:32with a fireproof piece of glass,
08:34so that Robin, our head camera operator,
08:36could sit in there with a fire suit,
08:39with a handheld camera that was also protected.
08:42and basically charge along right next to our bloater,
08:46flamethrower there, and camera right there,
08:48with often the flame coming right across the lens
08:51in such an immersive way.
08:54And the result is an extraordinary sequence.
08:56The expectations with this kind of scope is that it's seamless,
09:02and we are immersed in a way where our visual effects is invisible.
09:08For the burning bloater, it starts with the script.
09:13And we start that process with painting style frames.
09:18So we sort of get on the same page with how the bloater is burning.
09:23I have to find a lot of references of things burning.
09:28And it's a lot of rather grotesque references that I have to find,
09:33just because we're trying to be realistic.
09:35We're not a fantasy kind of show.
09:37We're so where everything has to feel grounded.
09:41This is the city that they built with their hands,
09:43and it's almost all gone.
09:44And I think she sort of get emotional.
09:48Oh, my God.
10:14Oh, mein Gott.
10:16Wenn sie diese Gäste öffnen,
10:19das ist sie letzte Karte, und sie wird es spielen.
10:26Ich fühle mich so glücklich, dass wir es.
10:29You know what I mean?
10:30Even though, at what cost?
10:34This episode ist wirklich über Loss.
10:38Es ist natürlich die Loss von Joel,
10:39das bedeutet so viel für die Charaktere,
10:41und die Zuschauer, und uns als die MAKERS dieser Sache.
10:47Aber es ist auch die Loss von einem großen Teil von Jackson.
10:50Many andere Menschen sterben,
10:51und es geht einfach um die fragilität
10:54der Gemeinschaft in diesem Weltraum.
11:11Ich bin einer Tat.
11:12Ich von einer Tat.
11:15Ich bin einer Töne.
11:17Und da ist eine Töne.
11:19Ich weiß es nicht, dass wir uns mit
11:20Töne anschauen.
11:22Was sich das ist,
11:23das kann lidid pensar machen.
11:24Sánchez der muscle,
11:25das ist klar.
11:26Was sich das zur Bekan interested in?
11:28Da ist genau Ann een viel restart.
11:29Es ist bekannt,
11:29was ich bin ein bisschen
11:30hacerse front канzogen?
11:32Ich kann sich das mit einer Unrecht
11:33direkte rausfinden,
11:35was ich bin,
11:35wenn meine beiden Onavian 모습
11:36die Tatlü in ihr mal
11:36die Entscheidung.
11:37Es gibt uns benenks,
11:38inrs Everyday Coach.
11:38Dasしく ne perché,
11:39ichf Flightacioigos habe.
Kommentare