![]() In a shot reminiscent of Jurassic Park's stressful kitchen sequence, the camera gets close to Ellie's face as she crawls along the ground, desperate to escape the creatures. Ellie and Tess try to get away from another clicker but take a tumble. The shaky cam goes from a slight wobble to a constant jostle as Joel wrestles with a ravenous clicker. The sound of the gunfire alerts another clicker, and the main characters scatter, trying desperately to avoid being torn to shreds. Joel fires his gun at the clicker, and it grapples him. The proximity of the camera to the clicker and its sudden jerky look toward camera makes the viewer feel as though they are the direct target of its attack. It screeches at them in a shocking shot that gives viewers their first clear look at the fungus-infested revenant. Ellie sharply inhales after first sighting the creature, which makes it aware of their presence. Shaky cam is used to exacerbate the discomfort and make the situation feel unstable. This begins the trio's descent into hell, as they attempt to evade the stalking clickers silently, knowing that a direct interaction with one could mean death.Īgain, the camera hangs close to the characters as the fungal beast shambles by them. Joel and the gang hide behind a museum display case, and Joel urges Ellie to stay silent through a series of gestures. The creature has fungal growths over its eyes and scalp, blinding it, but it still has the ability to echolocate its prey with horrifying shrieks. The viewer is part of the convoy, as close to the threat of death as the characters, and it is all thanks to the skillful cinematography.Īfter falling debris wrecks their escape route, Joel, Ellie, and Tess hear the first telltale screeches and clicks of a clicker, which lurches and gurgles toward them. Much in the same way that the video game places the camera just over Joel's shoulder, this stairway shot places the camera so close to Joel that it feels like there is no escape from whatever is about to happen. Whenever Joel swings the light around to inspect the area, this creates an inherent worry that the viewer is about to see something horrifying hiding in the dark. The museum is mostly dark, only lit by Joel's flashlight, meaning the viewers are restricted to seeing what Joel sees. His forceful whispers are enough to get the viewer's blood pumping, and the terror only escalates when the camera hugs Joel's back as he slowly ascends the stairs. Things become even eerier when the camera is this close to the characters because it creates the illusion that the viewer is experiencing the events firsthand rather than being tucked away safely at home.Īfter the trio finds a clawed-up corpse, Joel demands that the group stay completely silent so as not to alert any of the building's monstrous inhabitants. Rather than making the viewer feel remote and isolated from the action, Druckmann borrows from the video game experience he helped create and places the viewer directly in the center of the action. The camera hangs close behind Ellie as the characters travel through the halls, making the viewer feel like they are third in line in this procession through an ersatz haunted house. It is a quick but chilling reminder that Joel, Ellie, and Tess are entering an unsafe place, and the sound of dust falling like beads in a rain stick adds to the sensation that they are outsiders in occupied territory. There is a fantastic high-contrast shot that occurs when the show's heroes enter the museum, a great moment of framing where darkness surrounds a small box of light on screen. Though the place seems relatively quiet at first, hideous velociraptor-like clicking and screeching indicate that the infected known as clickers are on the hunt for human prey. ![]() Rather than try their luck against the horde of runners (fast-moving, sighted infected who have not yet mutated enough to become clickers), the protagonists choose to take a more direct route through an old museum. The stage is set when a trip through a destroyed hotel provides a vantage over the trio's proposed route through the city, one that is covered with writhing, prone infected in staggering numbers. ![]() But the most memorable and jaw-dropping camerawork in the episode occurs when Joel, Tess ( Anna Torv), and Ellie attempt to evade the murderous and disturbing clicker creatures in the museum. "Infected" features numerous moments of skillful camerawork and shot composition: the wobbly shaky cam in the laboratory hallway during the cold open, which amplifies the stress-inducing uncertainty of the situation as Professor Ratna ( Christine Hakim) is brought by military police to inspect a cordyceps sample the beautiful high contrast framing of the first bonding moment between Joel ( Pedro Pascal) and Ellie ( Bella Ramsey), which creates a safe bright spot for them amid the surrounding darkness. ![]()
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