Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1474575
8 8 P E R S P E C T I V E | J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 no matter how deep we dive into genre-bending artfulness or period playfulness. I knew from the start that Stranger Things was a project I would want to see through to the end. So, I approached designing it with the intention of maintaining a visual continuity such that all the hundreds of sets across all the seasons feel of a piece, all the product of that initial inspiration. Grandiosity aside, I do like to think that any two random stills from any two random seasons can be juxtaposed comfortably together. It might be a working-class living room, festooned with Christmas lights, next to a decommissioned missile silo repurposed to house a scifi sensory deprivation tank, but, if I've done my job well, they exist in the same world. Any success I have had in achieving my long- term goal of a unified aesthetic across the seasons can be credited to a couple of crucial factors that have made this show a rare treat for a Production Designer. Firstly, the Duffer brothers have always been gracious collaborators with an incredible amount of creative control over their show, thanks in large part to Netflix's unfailing support and faith in them. This arrangement has spared us the soul-crushing, art-killing pains of a "corporate creative process." Secondly, I have been lucky enough to have a great deal of continuity in my core group of collaborators within the Art Department. Fittingly, the two most essential members of that core group, Jess Royal and Sean Brennan, have been making their bones with me since the good old days of no-budget passion projects. Jess Royal, the set decorator since season one, is my creative conscience. Her painstaking devotion to detail and her unwavering insistence that every set, no matter how minor, should get the same carefully layered life, has allowed us to maintain an impossibly high standard of period specificity, creative continuity and integrity. Sean Brennan, the Supervising Art Director, joined us season two. The exponential expansion was beginning then, and I needed a creative partner with both logistical genius and an intuitive sense for good design. Sean has ensured that the Art Department has stayed a bulletproof hub of interdepartmental information flow and a lean mean construction machine, cranking out carefully considered and beautifully crafted sets at every scale. To this day, every set our Art Department produces starts its life as an informal conversation between Jess, Sean and me. As alluded to earlier, the production team set out to create season one with a surprisingly long leash and not a lot of preexisting protocols in place. Perhaps that was because our show was comparatively small, and Netflix had very little riding on it. Perhaps it was because Netflix, not being an uptight conventional studio, truly did have faith in our instincts, but either way, I was never subjected to the tedious back- and-forth approval process of creating concept art, getting notes from above, addressing those notes and then being beholden to the "approved" concepts. My process of selecting locations, designing, presenting and building sets on Stranger Things has always been a series of conversations with the Duffers, the cinematographers, location manager, and the core crew, accompanied by lookbooks, napkin sketches and wild gesticulations. The shorthand we developed in those low-stake early days has carried us through even this most recent behemoth of a season. The exponential expansion from season to season was paced in a way that has allowed us to expand the crew slowly and eciently, preserving our informal intuitive approach while allowing us to continue delivering even the most minute details with great care. At points during the production of season four, the show had three separate crews working in three different parts of the world on dozens of sets simultaneously. Even so, Jess, Sean and I managed to oversee all of it directly, with the tireless help of just a few trusted Art Directors (John Snow, Chris Yoo, Eric Johnson) and Jess' intrepid assistant decorator Amy Darcey. It's necessary to note here that the crews in Lithuania and New Mexico were truly exceptional. It goes without saying that the crew in Atlanta is family. There is no Stranger Things without them. Stranger Things 1, 2, & 3 were undoubtedly the only possible preparation for Stranger Things 4, but nothing could have truly prepared us for what became nearly two full years prepping and shooting, not counting the COVID hiatus. It was, at times, a A. THE GANG PILES INTO ARGYLE'S PIZZA MOBILE OUTSIDE OF THE BYERS' NEW HOME. PRODUCTION STILL. B. JOYCE SELLS ENCYCLOPEDIAS FROM HER MAKESHIFT HOME OFFICE. (ON LOCATION IN NEW MEXICO). PRODUCTION STILL. C. JOYCE AND MURRAY HASH IT OUT IN THE BYERS' NEW LIVING ROOM. (ON LOCATION IN NEW MEXICO). PRODUCTION STILL. D. MIKE AND WILL RECONNECT IN JONATHAN'S NEW BEDROOM. (ON STAGE IN ATLANTA). PRODUCTION STILL.