Viewers of The Last of Us were astonished to learn that a real giraffe was utilised in the conclusion.
Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) grew to share a remarkable father-daughter connection in the successful series, which reached a dramatic end when he was faced with saying goodbye to her for the final time, and did everything he could to preserve his life in the process.
The couple stumble meet a friendly giraffe on their way to the Firefly facility, which they’d journeyed through the previous eight episodes to get Ellie there in the hopes she might assist manufacture a vaccine.
The moment stands out in the midst of the apocalyptic environment they’re in, as Ellie gets to be a child while she feeds and pets the giraffe.
And it was all true, which split viewers.
Several viewers who believed it was all CGI called out the giraffe for seeming too phoney, which made other viewers laugh knowing it was all real.
‘Love that there’s just a random and clearly fake giraffe in the Last of Us,’ someone commented, while another said: ‘I thought the last of us giraffe was fake and the horse was real but it turns out it’s the other way around are you literally kidding me.’
‘One of the best things to come out of the last of us finale is all the people who are saying the giraffe was bad CGI when they used a real giraffe. You guys just want to hate the show so bad it’s hilarious,’ one person wrote.
Another penned: ‘People thinking the Giraffe in The Last of Us was fake make me wonder if these people have never seen a giraffe in real life. They’re weird, incredible animals.’
‘I’m sure Alex Wang, visual effects supervisor, could have made a CGI giraffe if we had the time,’ production designer John Paino told Variety.
He continued: ‘We needed to see if we could acclimate the giraffe to strangers feeding it, with a very small film crew there.’
‘The trainers worked to get them to eat out of a stranger’s hand. So, when Ellie and Joel walk up at the enclosure, that’s the giraffe eating those branches of food,’ Paino added to the publication.
‘That’s Hollywood magic of Alex isolating the giraffes and putting them on our set. That was probably the most complicated piecing of VFX stage, scenery and location I’ve worked on.’
Bella recounted filming the giraffe sequence, which took over a month, last year.
‘They had to do it a little bit at a time so the giraffes would get used to it,’ she told GQ.
‘We’d done a rehearsal with the giraffes a week or so before, maybe longer than that, and that was really special.
‘Having to do it again when we were actually shooting it, it was a bittersweet moment.’
She added: ‘I realised, basically, whatever Ellie was feeling, I was feeling. The whole time.’
The Last of Us is available to watch on Sky and NOW.
Source My Celebrity Life.