PRODUCTION STRANGER THINGS
sense of everybody being sick and tired of this lockdown.” Eleven is hiding; Dustin, Steve and Jonathan are fighting; Karen Wheeler is drinking; Robin is hosting a radio show on WSQK, dubbed The Squawk . “Most of what we shot this season were new locations. There’s the MAC-Z, which is the militarised downtown Hawkins, and then The Squawk . There’s always so much new stuff that we don’t have to be overly beholden to what we did last season. There’s a constant evolution to it.” AN ODE TO THE EIGHTIES Stranger Things comes with both obvious and subtle references; Jonathan has a Jaws poster, while Mike has one for John Carpenter’s The Thing . Vecna resembles Freddy Kreuger, while Nancy Wheeler’s name was lifted directly from A Nightmare on Elm Street . “This season was less reference-heavy than Season 4,” Heymann says. “There were touchstone references for that season and how we wanted the horror to play out visually. This time around, Alien and Aliens served as inspiration for their boldness of lighting.” In episode 4, called The Sorceror , Vecna and the Demogorgons attack the MAC-Z while Eleven attempts to infiltrate headquarters in the Upside Down. Throughout the series, “there are a lot of flashing lights caused by the presence of evil,” Heymann explains. “When we get into all the mayhem in episode 4, I referenced Aliens when the emergency lights go off.” Whenever possible, Heymann and his crew prioritised achieving effects
SWITCHED UP Holly’s abduction (above) required intensive collaboration between departments; while in contrast to Season 4, Henry Creel’s world (below) has an almost Technicolor aesthetic
PRACTICAL MAGIC The Sorceror concludes Season 5, Volume 1 and features the series’ largest action sequence – as well as a major reveal – which takes place within the MAC-Z. “There were close to 100 stunt performers and an incredible amount of choreography and planning,” explains Heymann. “Every time you see a body flying through the air, that’s a stunt performer; and we’re timing that with a Demogorgon that’s going to get added in visual effects. “There’s an impressive commitment from all departments to pushing the boundaries of what we can do in camera,” he continues, “as long as we can do it safely. Everybody agrees it’s going to look better.” This includes the red lightning effect in the Upside Down,
in camera. “We have a lot of practical lights,” he shares. “The sources in the frame motivate everything else, whether those be lamps or rotating alarm lights. We do the same thing with special effects,” he adds. “I like to mix the two. We’re using real fire, and we supplement that with our lighting. We always try to have a base of the real thing. “It’s such a gratifying show to work on as a cinematographer because light is almost its own character,” he continues; whenever there’s a surge of energy in the Upside Down, the lights flicker in the ‘rightside up’. “When you have a story where so much of it takes place in the supernatural realm, it’s important that the physics feel real and the lighting feels grounded in the environment – not like some cheesy visual effect.”
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