Making Of: The Last Of Us Announcement Trailer

In December we announced The Last of Us during the 2011 Spike VGA Awards. The Last of Us is a genre-defining experience that blends survival and action elements to tell a character driven tale about a modern plague decimating mankind. Well prior to our announcement we had been hard at work on a trailer perfectly crafted to set the tone and (hopefully) get your blood pumping with excitement when we made our announcement. If you haven’t seen that trailer yet be sure to check it out here:

Today we’re sharing a deeper look into that trailer. We were hard at work on the announcement trailer for quite awhile and a lot of design went into making certain every frame contained some nugget of information you could take away about the game itself. Taken more than a year ago and over the course of a few days of planning, prep, and acting what you see here is a nice glimpse into some of the behind the screens work that went into making that trailer possible. Comprised of shots we decided to keep in the trailer, here’s the motion capture footage of our two main The Last of Us protagonists doing their thing in our Culver City, CA motion capture studio:

As you can see, actor performances are intergal to the way our trailers and our games get made. The nuances in their performances are taken into our Naughty Dog game engine then built into our game and it’s what truly brings our characters to life. Introducing the character of Joel, played by Troy Baker, and Ellie, played by Ashley Johnson, wouldn’t have been possible without the well wrought, lively, and often acrobatic performances by our lead actor and actress. You’ll definitely be hearing more about and from Troy and Ashley in the near future. Be sure on the lookout for more information and news about The Last of Us online and in print very soon.