In 2013, Sony & Naughty Dog released “The Last of Us” on PlayStation 3. At the time, and still to this day, it was a revelation in gaming - a perfect marriage of storytelling, gameplay, and cinematic immersion. It was 7 long years until “The Last of Us: Part II” came out on PlayStation 4, and it took the franchise & story to drastic new levels. When talking with people interested in playing Part II, I’d often joke “Part II is an experiment in how much emotional abuse are you willing to endure for the sake of an amazing story.”

When HBO & Naughty Dog released a TV series for “The Last of Us” in 2023, I was delighted at how faithful the adaptation was to the story already established by the game. I was so happy that millions of people around the world were now getting to experience a story I had loved for a decade at that point! People who wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to experience it, because they hadn’t played the game. But then the first season ended, and we’re now all faced with a long drought until the second season debuts sometime in the future.

However, we don’t need to wait that long to find out what happens in the story - it has already been told! Still noting that there are many people who will never pick up a controller and play the game, I thought it would be fun to do a full, cinematic play through of the game live on my Twitch channel. I ran the stream at the same time the HBO show had been airing, and then saved the replay for people to watch later on YouTube. But, despite being targeted as a cinematic play through (meaning, I minimized how much unnecessary exploration I did, how many “secrets” I’d go and find, how much looting I did - really, it was to focus on the story beats and nothing else) there are still plenty of gameplay moments…as would be expected, in a video game. I thought it might be interesting to go back and further edit those recordings later.

Then, Apple announced Final Cut Pro coming to the iPad Pro! I haven’t used Final Cut Pro for several years, and I’ve missed it greatly. I just simply haven’t had a project that needed it. I was excited for the possibility of doing that kind of video editing on an iPad, using an application that I was familiar with on the Mac and adapting my workflows for a new interface. I just needed a project!

It hit me: I could go back and edit my play through of Part II into a proper movie! That’d be a huge project, and I could really put Final Cut Pro on iPadOS through its paces, while also delivering an even better viewing experience for “The Last of Us: Part II” ahead of a proper HBO release.

So what am I going to do? I’m going to create an episodic series of fan-edits, trimming and curating the content of the “The Last of Us: Part II” video game into a fully cinematic experience. When I’m done, I hope there to be no indications that you’re watching anything other than a computer animated movie. Here’s a rough outline of what I intend to work on:

Finish recording the last two episodes of the Twitch stream and complete the game
Create a script based off of the story content seen in the Twitch recordings and organize it into episodes and scenes
Create a trailer for the series
- I plan to begin working on this when Final Cut Pro for iPadOS releases on May 23rd, ahead of finishing the entire play through on Twitch
Organize the existing Twitch recordings into episodes and scenes
Identify necessary “reshoots” of portions of the game that were sloppy during the Twitch stream
Start releasing episodes weekly once the project is complete!

I thought starting this blog might be a fun add-in bonus, to chronicle the process of not only creating this series, but to dive into a hands-on review of Final Cut Pro for iPadOS. As I go through that outline, I’ll make additional posts about how I accomplished the tasks, what my setup was like, what seems to be working well, and what needs improvement. I hope it’ll be a fun experience for fans of gaming, Apple, video editing, storytelling, or The Last of Us itself. Please check back often, and I’ll look forward to sharing more details of this journey with you!