Was the giraffe CGI in The Last of Us?

The season finale of The Last of Us, “Look for the Light,” adapted an iconic scene from the game: the moment in Salt Lake City when Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) survey a group of wild giraffes long since escaped from the zoo. It was a lovely moment, and didn’t use as much CGI as you might think.

That’s all to say that there actually was a real giraffe on the set of The Last of Us! We’ve actually known that for a while, since we got very early screeners where not all of the CGI was done yet. But now we have behind-the-scenes footage from the making-of feature that aired after the season finale.

“Giraffes are pretty massive!” Ramsey said during the special. “It’s like a spiritual experience, almost, being so close to such a magnificent animal.”

There was a real giraffe on the set of The Last of Us

As production designer John Paino explained, the production team built their set around a giraffe enclosure in Alberta, Canada:

"Fortunately the one thing Alberta does have is a zoo with giraffes, and we spent quite a while putting things in the enclosure so that we could shoot it, and getting the giraffes acclimated to panels with blue screen, so that we could just go in there and shoot the giraffe and have Ellie feed the giraffe."

So there really was a giraffe, but if you still thought it looked kind of artificial, you’re not alone. Even though the giraffe was there, the team still layered CGI elements over it to make sure it looked consistent with the environment, a pretty common practice in the business.

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h/t SlashFilm