Composers Gustavo Santaolalla and David Fleming provide the gorgeous score for HBO’s The Last of Us. The apocalyptic drama captivated audiences in its second season with a major characters’ death, leaving those unfamiliar with the video game on which its based in the dark as to the season’s trajectory. Santaolalla and Fleming both not only work on the show, but they are also huge fans of its deep, resonant characters. Plus, they love scoring the series’ intense emotional moments elicited from its close adherence to the popular video game. They admire what Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have accomplished but also have great appreciation of what the two of them bring to this project, separately and together.
The Contending: I read for the first season you two did not meet until you had finished your work. Was that how you worked for this season or was it different this time?
David Fleming: We may not have met until the end of the first season but I have known and been an admirer since the Motorcycle Diaries and of course I knew his amazing music from the original video game. So I felt like we had already met through his work. I think we were both really happy when we did meet and found that we shared similar feelings about music in general and our approach to this story. While there are always changes when you go from one medium to another, one of the really smart things that Craig and Neil did when adapting this story for television was keeping the soul of the game, including what Gustavo had done for it. Gustavo’s music has been a shining light through all of this. So for me it was really trying to build on that and not disrespect it, and trying to make a cousin of what he had already done.
Gustavo Santaolalla: The way I see it with the first season when I heard David’s music, I could feel that he was really working in the spirit and the realm of what the music of The Last of Us is about. For me the combination was great, and so for the second season there have been even more connections with the sound, and I foresee in the third season there will be even more. That’s why I was grateful for the opportunity we had to perform live together for the Deadline Sound and Screen Television program at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles a week or two ago. Because we have been getting progressively closer and so we are interested in exploring even more. I think that says a lot about David’s work and capacity to understand the emotional part of the music, which I care most about, and how we translate that into the character scenes or the more action and violent scenes. I think that’s why we work.
David Fleming: I think we’re going to be the opposite of most bands. The longer we go, the closer we’re going to get!
Both: [Laugh]
Gustavo Santaolalla: For me this has been an incredible project that is like a gift for this part of my life. With the personal things I’ve been through, and even after the Oscar wins, I had gotten to this high point in my career. Then I got this project, a chance to do something that I really connected with, as did the audience for the game and show who are mostly people who probably had no idea about my music as a film composer or a performer. But they have connected with the music from this in such a strong way. I have been blessed with being able to connect with people through my music since I started making records at 17 in Argentina. There were no alternative producers back then; in fact I don’t think the term alternative hadn’t even been coined at the time. But I had a band, and I started producing over a hundred albums of Latin alternative music. I had a following and people who loved my productions and the work in the movies, but with this game the way the fans have connected with the music is so intense it’s something really different. As I said, it is like a gift.
The Contending: Talking about the original theme for the game, which is now in the main credits of the show, it is music that still gives me chills no matter how many times I’ve heard it. What do you think it is about that original theme that has been so universally loved by so many people?
Gustavo Santaolalla: You will have to talk to my agent (points up to God and everyone laughs).
David Fleming: I have the same feeling, referencing what Gustavo was talking about when we did this Deadline concert. We were each playing on each other’s music, and getting to play guitar on that theme was so much fun. You could feel the whole audience just going, like, yes, as soon as that melody came on. It was hard not to play as loud as possible because it’s just so fun.
Gustavo Santaolalla: I think one of the things that has to do with it is melody. I think that is lacking in a lot of film and television music. Melody intimidates but melody is melody, and when it comes out people connect with it, it’s as simple as that. The weekend when David and I played somebody came to me and said, “When the melodies came out I was like, Oh man, the melody.” It is like a forgotten art form.
David Fleming: Melody is so powerful and, like you said, I think filmmakers sometimes can be afraid to access that power. Even on The Last of Us, especially on some of the scenes that I have done where you are supposed to feel inside of the characters, especially during the action scenes Craig has specifically said you can’t play melodies here because we don’t want it to be something that we’re hearing, it’s something we want to be feeling. But it really is about where you use it and when you access that power. I think Craig and Neil are both smart about using the power of those themes in the game in the right moments and spaces.
I think you’re right, Gustavo, when we played it live the melody is simple but it’s iconic and it doesn’t hide. That is what I think people respond to, that it’s right there and there’s no shield in things like that.
Gustavo Santaolalla: That theme just came out of me. I got out of bed, grabbed the ronroco and just, boom, like that, it was there.
The Contending: You just talked about the music and the emotions of the characters. With the most recent episodes I’ve seen–Feel Her Love, there is the scene at the end where Ellie is torturing Nora, and then with “The Price,” we see Ellie in the rain, after now knowing what she has gone through. Both scenes’ music really play up the darkness that’s going on within her. What was the inspiration behind those songs?
David Fleming: I can speak for the first one. There was an opportunity where Craig really wanted to explore Ellie’s darkness, aggression, and the anger that comes out of her. At the end of that episode she has almost become a different person; there’s a real dark side she has embraced. A lot of the music was mirroring the sounds we used for Abby earlier in the season–a lot of frayed electric sounds, a bit of guitar feedback and synth noise, and there’s this anger emerging from her that is unstoppable. I think that is one thing that they obviously explored in the game is about how Ellie can go from somebody we empathize with so much to somebody who embraces these darker qualities. I think in general it’s one of the most interesting things about this story that it is not black and white, and our protagonist has a dark side and our antagonist has things that we can empathize with.
Gustavo Santaolalla: The whole thing is about human relationships and these moral dilemmas. When Joel discovers that to get the cure for this disease they’re going to have to kill Ellie he decides to kill everybody, including obviously Abby’s father, who was the doctor who was going to potentially get the cure. But we, of course, feel relief that Ellie is safe. Which is the genius of Neil that, after you’ve invested a whole game and a half with Ellie, suddenly now you have to play as Abby, and now you’re on the other side where, from her perspective, her father was about to get a cure but is brutally murdered. The game and the show both tackle how much you can push somebody, and give us these contradictions of not so easily seeing who is good and bad. That is what makes the story so human.
David Fleming: I think that’s what makes that game so well suited to moving into the medium of television because it is so emotionally mature and grappling with moral relativity. Most video games in their early phases are you play as the good guy and you are fighting the bad guy. I think The Last of Us was groundbreaking in what Neil and Gustavo did. It really explored moral relativism in a way that’s very mature for the medium.
Gustavo Santaolalla: I love the risks that the series takes as well. For example, Joel’s death in the second episode, in the game it happens early as well, but for the show they could have waited and made it potentially easier on viewers but no, boom, they did it right away. I remember when the game came out the amount of people who were screaming and yelling about that. But it wasn’t like people dropped out after the second episode. They are still watching and the show is still putting value into Abby even after what she did. It is what makes this such a rich story.
David Fleming: It’s funny, you know, obviously the show has new fans that didn’t play the game and so, of course, didn’t expect Joel’s death. I don’t think I’ve gotten so many angry text messages on Monday morning saying why did you kill Joel?!
Gustavo Santaolalla: It is amazing how much they are sticking to the story, and one of the things for me that is amazing is that people who are really big fans of the game embrace the series as well. Joel in the show is not the same as Joel in the video game, but the nuances in the different personalities of the character still work. Hamlet is still Hamlet. That is why I always felt that I was writing music, not for the game or a series, but for a story. You could tell this in animation or a puppet show and it would still work.
The Contending: Gustavo, you have a cameo in the band performing during the celebration. So what was that like, and David, when is your cameo coming?
Gustavo Santaolalla: He should definitely be in season three!
David Fleming: It’s funny. I had an accident earlier this year and hurt my face and I texted a photo of myself to the crew and they said, “Well now you should be on the show. Now you look post-apocalyptic.” We saw that first episode in a big theater for the premiere and I told Gustavo, you look good on a big screen.
Gustavo Santaolalla: It’s so funny because I was in the game. They had scanned me and put me in there and then later some kids wrote to Neil saying they wanted me to be in the show too. It really was another gift, and it was a lot of fun to do. The band that was playing, Crooked Still, were really good, and the tracks we were playing are coming out on the album for this season with my and David’s music. Also I got a chance to do a new version of The Path with Tom Morello. He is a friend of Craig’s, and Craig wrote to me asking if you could do a theme with me, but only if I thought it would work. I am a fan of Rage Against the Machine, so of course we had a great time. There was a short version in the show but you’ll get a longer one on the album.
The Contending: As someone who is a fan of the game and the show, I’m curious what kind of inspiration you take from the game in your music, and where else do you find inspiration?
David Fleming: Coming off of what we were saying before, Neil created this whole world but Craig was such a fan of the game and embraced so much about what was great about the game that I don’t think you have to look far to see the obvious influences from the game. One of the things I think is great about the game and the show is that everything is really real world-based. I don’t think there’s a point in looking for inspiration from other genre movies, because in this they are not zombies, they are infected, it is a real thing and it has real stakes. When people die they are not coming back. So for me, it’s about embracing what feels real about the game, or thinking about my own family and where we would be in this world. It helps to treat it, at least in my own head, not as a piece of entertainment but something that feels visceral.
Gustavo Santaolalla: Absolutely! What you pointed out about Craig is totally true. As you said, Neil created the game, but Craig’s vision is very powerful as well. There were a lot of potential spin-offs from the game. They talked about making a movie but that didn’t quite work, and I think that’s because Neil is really good at protecting his creation. But when he met Craig he told me that he knows more about The Last of Us than I do, and he understood the language of the medium of television. It was very important to have the combination of those two.
David Fleming: I think they’ve been very smart about what to explore in a different way or further with the show. Like in the first season with the Bill and Frank episode, which was just a tangent in the game, and their love was not explored to that degree at all. It’s also my entrance point into the series about what we take from the game that we love and how we think about this for a new medium. In my case working on a lot of the action set pieces, in the game those are playable moments, and it is not a set piece of music. Yet in talking to Craig, he didn’t want to lose that visceral feeling that you are the character. When you’re playing a video game it is an active experience. Ellie is you and you are Ellie, and so he was saying now that we’re moving into this medium and now that we’re just watching this character, he still wanted it to feel like you are Ellie. So a lot of the approach to the action is with that in mind. How do we stay locked in where we are in this story? I think Craig and Neil together have been really smart about what we stay exactly true to from the game and how we use this medium to add a new dimension.
The Contending: I have really been appreciating seeing more from Dina in the show, and a deeper sense of her relationship with Ellie as well as the few scenes with Isaac that have given us a little more detail about him.
Gustavo Santaolalla: It has been really nice to see the extension of these characters. You want to know more about them.
The Contending: Final thoughts?
Gustavo Santaolalla: We are ready for the third season!
David Fleming: We are ready!
The Last of Us streams exclusively on HBO Max.
