How ‘Fallout’ Brought the Game’s Deathclaw Monster Into Live Action in Season 2

Note: This story contains spoilers for Fallout Season 2, Episode 4

After teasing a Deathclaw at the end of “Fallout” Season 1, the Prime Video series saw Lucy and The Ghoul finally come face-to-face with the iconic video game creature in New Vegas at the end of Season 2’s fourth episode on Wednesday.

Executive producer Jonathan Nolan told TheWrap that the iconic video game monster was brought to life for live-action through a mix of visual effects and a practical puppet.

“We knew from the beginning that to build a full Deathclaw and have a puppeteer would be too heavy and too slow. So we partnered with Legacy Effects, our incredible studio who built Power Amor for the first season and built the new, revamped Power Armor for the second season, to come up with a hybrid approach, where you’d have a beautifully crafted puppet on set, and then the incredible artists under our visual effects supervisor working with ILM animating the rest of the Deathclaw,” he explained. “Our goal is always to get to as much reality in front of the camera as possible so that the audience not just sees it, but feels it.”

Showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet added that the decision to shoot as much practically as possible offers a “much more tactile experience” to the audience.

“You can tell what’s real and what’s not when you watch something and it’s such a bummer as a sci-fi fan. For me, when I watch some other sci-fi shows that are full of great ideas and great acting that you’re just like, ‘Oh my god, that looks so fake,’ ” she explained. “When we do a creature, we go all out, we build these incredibly expensive puppets.”

“The interesting tradeoff for that creatively is we can’t build every creature in the game. If we always use just pure CG, we could do more of the creatures, but we would do them, I think, less well, and the audience would be able to feel that they weren’t real,” she continued. “I hope, when you watch our show, that you can tell ‘Hey, there was actually something there attacking Ella [Purnell] and Walton [Goggins], and that it was very scary for them.’ “

When asked about her experience working with the Deathclaw on set, Purnell told TheWrap that she wasn’t scared at all.

“Listen, people are going to think I’m crazy: He was a little bit cute. I said it. He had a cute little nose, and my friend Cary [Gunnar Lee] was one of the puppeteers making him move. I just couldn’t get over Cary and the green leotard. I was not intimidated by this creature at all,” she said. “But that being said, I was very impressed by just the artistry of how they made this thing. It’s incredible.”

“They had the face piece, which they can control the facial expressions with like a little remote control, which they did let me use, very difficult. And then the arms and the mouth opens and smoke. And obviously the rest of it, they do in post,” she continued. “But being able to act opposite something that is moving and breathing and looking around, and it’s slow and creepy and eerie and reptilian, that is enough to freak you the hell out. But he was also a bit cute and I’m going to die on that hill.”

While she wasn’t intimidated by the Deathclaw, both Purnell and Robertson-Dworet admitted that the Radscorpion in Season 2’s second episode was “truly terrifying.”

“When it came forward at us, like full steam, I genuinely stepped out of the way. It it was crazy,” Robertson-Dworet recalled.

“Those weren’t cute at all. I didn’t like them,” Purnell said. “And I didn’t like the … well you’ll see, there’s a lot [of monsters] I didn’t like. Some of them not so cute and I’ll let you figure that out.”

“Fallout” Season 2 releases new episodes Wednesdays on Prime Video.

The post How ‘Fallout’ Brought the Game’s Deathclaw Monster Into Live Action in Season 2 appeared first on TheWrap.