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May/June 2020

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EDITING www.postmagazine.com 12 POST MAY/JUNE 2020 etflix's Stranger Things premiered in 2016, taking audiences to Indiana in the 1980s, where a young boy disappears amid a string of supernatural events. The show is now in its fourth sea- son and has more than 30 Emmy nomi- nations to its credit. Created by the Duffer Brothers (Matt and Ross), the series stars an ensemble cast that includes Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink and Natalia Dyer, among others. Editor Dean Zimmerman has worked with executive producer/director Shawn Levy on all of his movies for the past two decades and was intrigued with the opportunity to cut the series when it debuted. He edited Season 1, earn- ing an Emmy, and returned for Season 3. Recently, while cutting Season 4, Zimmerman took some time to speak with Post about the evolution of the se- ries and how it all comes together. Was it your long-term relationship with Shawn Levy that led to you working on this series? "I've been working with Shawn Levy for — I basically cut every single one of his movies for the past 19 years. So that's how I got involved with Stranger Things. I was actually working on a project that he was not involved with, and he had called me and said, 'Hey, would you be inter- ested in doing this Netflix series that I'm going to executive produce? And I'm go- ing to direct a couple of episodes.' And I said, 'I don't know if I necessarily want to do TV.' He was like, 'Well, why don't you take a read of the script?' And I did. We set up a meeting, and I met the two Duffer brothers, and it was a bromance from there." You were there from the beginning and even cut the pilot. Did you realize it would still be so popular four years later? "No, absolutely not. I mean, again, the script really hit me — the pilot. I only read the pilot script and it just was so nostal- gic. I literally was reading it going, 'Oh my God, this is my childhood!' Obviously, minus the supernatural. It just it really kind of struck a chord…[I said], 'You know what? I don't have anything going on right now. I have a little downtime. Why not? It seems like it would be fun.' And then when we got on it and the footage started coming in, the cuts started com- ing together. And we all kind of sat back and went, 'This is really interesting!' "I actually won an Emmy for the pilot. I was there from Day 1. I did not do Season 2 because I was actually doing another feature overseas, so I couldn't do Season 2, unfortunately. But I had moved up my assistant (Nat Fuller) from Season NETFLIX'S STRANGER THINGS BY MARC LOFTUS N EDITOR DEAN ZIMMERMAN ON THE SHOW'S EVOLUTION The first three seasons were shot using Red cameras. Dean Zimmerman 1 t o

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