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LMGI COMPASS
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Summer 2023
entire neighborhood in order to portray the community.
They ended up finding it in the town of Okotoks, south
of Calgary.
"Prep started at the main house in January," says
Palmer. "The owner of the home had lived there since the
early 1970s and we had to basically take it apart so that it
looked like no one had lived there for 20 years and it had
completely degraded inside."
As they got closer to filming the art, greens and SPFX
teams had to take over the streets, dress snow everywhere
and age and degrade yards, backyards and the local park.
"We moved 18 families out for 10 days to allow for the
final dressing and a week of filming," says Matt.
When you need weather, you often don't get it and,
unlike what Nolan and the team ended up with in
Canmore, Mother Nature didn't cooperate in Okotoks.
"When we started working, there was a lot of snow
which is what the scenes required, but a warm spell
melted almost all of it," Palmer says, "so the SPFX team
ended up having to bring in over 300 truckloads of the
stuff!"
LOOKING BACK
Altogether, The Last of Us collected more than 1,000 signed
agreements and shot at 180 locations over the course of
the season, including shutting down the airport tunnel in
Calgary, closing the Fourth Avenue Flyover in Calgary for
a week, building a town in High River, Alberta, using the
Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton to double as
Boston, the Northland Village Mall in Northwest Calgary
and building another entire street on an empty lot outside
the Calgary Film Centre.
Nolan and his team are currently working on a new
Netflix series, but when he looks back on the experience
of making The Last of Us, he's proud of what they were
able to accomplish.
Photos courtesy of HBO/Liane Hentscher
