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“The game is the vision,” production designer John Paino<\/strong> told E! News, referring to the 2013 PlayStation title<\/a> that\u00a0HBO’s\u00a0<\/a>The Last of Us<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>is adapted from.\u00a0“The concept art for the game always looked cinematic.\u00a0It had a sense of place and lighting and realism to it.”<\/p>\n But, as movie-like as it looked, it was still a game.\u00a0The job of Paino, set decorator Paul Healy<\/strong> and\u00a0hundreds of other craftspeople\u00a0was to build tangible versions of the game’s dueling worlds: The not-so-distant-but-subtly-retro 2003, and the frozen-in-time version of that same year, two decades after life as people knew it imploded.<\/p>\n “The\u00a0biggest challenge was just working in a real-life situation,” Paino explained.\u00a0“We’re doing a period piece on top of a desiccated apocalyptic piece, that is also a drama about the people. So there were these multi-layers.”<\/p>\n Production kicked off in Calgary in July 2021, and the Canadian city “worked for certain things,” he said, but\u00a0“I don’t think there was ever a location that didn’t get some love from the art department or rebuilding. Also, everything has been neglected for 20 years,” so even if an area\u00a0had the right look for filming, they’d have to change anything too recognizably modern, such as computerized parking meters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n