Ksenia Sereda shoots 'The Last of Us' with Cooke lenses

The S4/i spherical lenses Cooke Optics were the tool chosen by director of photography Ksenia Sereda to shoot 'The Last of Us', the new series of HBO based on the acclaimed video game of the same name developed by Naughty Dog for PlayStation.

The story of The Last Of Us It takes place twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle 14-year-old Ellie out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon turns into a brutal and harrowing journey, in which both must cross the United States and depend on each other to survive.

“I played the game for the first time almost four years ago, and I was fascinated by the cinematic look of it: I wasn't prepared for how beautiful it was, the lighting was beautiful. And the most surprising thing was how deeply I connected with the characters in the game,” says Sereda. “So of course it was a lot of pressure to translate the language from the video game to the TV series, because it's already beautiful and everyone, including almost the entire team, loved the game.”

Although three other cinematographers, Just Bolter, Nadim Carlsen and Christine A. Maier joined the production to work on several episodes, early in the process Sereda worked closely with Neil Druckmann, writer of the original game and co-creator and writer/director for television, and Craig Mazin, co-creator and writer/director for television, to capture the visual language of the series. Starting from an incredible cinematic reference in the game itself, one of the most important things was to recreate the atmosphere of this dystopian world.

“Some will say that The Last of Us It's a post-apocalyptic 'fight for survival' story, but for me, the real story is about people building new lives in new circumstances. It's about friendship and love, and the most important thing is the journey of the characters. Part of the fun of the game is the interactivity with the characters, seeing the action from their perspective, so for the television series we wanted to be as close to them as possible, and that influenced our choice of camera and lenses,” explains Sereda. .

Spherical lenses

After a brief period of testing, Ksenia decided to combine the Cooke S4/i spherical lenses with the camera ARRI Alexa Mini. “I'm obsessed with spherical lenses,” she said.

“I wanted to keep the close-ups on the normal side and not resort to long or wide lenses because, when working from the perspective of the characters in the story, we needed to be able to stay close but at the same time preserve the depth of the background. I also wanted to work within the range of 25mm-50mm lenses, so the challenge was: what lens won't distort faces at 25mm?; Where can I go with the wide angle in the close-ups without it being too poppy? Cooke S4/i was an excellent choice for this.”

“They are beautiful, and are one of my favorite series of lenses. They have a very characteristic focus plane, but then the fall between the plane of focus and the out-of-focus area is very smooth. I also love working without filters, and in the close-ups I couldn't take my eyes off the portraits we could create with the light. The light, lens and camera system gave a very specific, textured and warm image.”

In a post-apocalyptic world, the poor lighting and flares were a challenge that the Cooke lenses met well. “Some of the scenes went into areas where people didn't have electricity, so the scenes were literally built with just flashlights. With the Cooke S4/i, you know that when you work with flares, they are nice, they are never too overwhelming or over-tinted,” said Sereda.

“Shooting in low light with the S4/I and the ARRI Alexa Mini produces beautiful work with very high intensity areas and underexposed areas. In general I love working at the bottom of the exposure curve, I love packing the image from 60% and down, always having the whites in a very low range to give us the opportunity for more shadows and textures in the blacks .”

He organic and soft look Cooke's work was also important, but not to the detriment of the fresher images. “I wanted to stay on the warmer side, we didn't want to anticipate the sad scenes being blue and the happy ones being warm. I've heard a lot about Cooks being warm, but I've never had a problem getting a cooler look; that's what I think they really support, the neutral aspect of the light. And what I like most is that they help me keep all the colors where I want them to be.”

The series features numerous visual effects, many of which were achieved practically. “Alex Wang, the visual effects supervisor, was wonderful to work with. John Paino, the production designer, created some fantastic sets and Barrie Gower did an incredible job with the prosthetics, so

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