Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1474575
grueling ordeal flying directly from a former G interrogation room in the bowels of a Lithuanian prison, to a sprawling American missile silo complex built in a warehouse in Atlanta, and then straight onto New Mexico to artfully place fifty or sixty junk cars in a sunbaked arroyo to create a Southern California car graveyard. Endless iterations of that sort of Production Design pinball were the hallmark of season four. It was exhausting. It was incredible! The sets we produced are the finest, funest, most fully realized of my career. I've never watched my work on screen without consistent cringing until now. Not necessarily because these sets are objectively the best I've ever designed, though I think they might be, but, rather, because I know we gave it everything we had and were performing at the height of our hard-earned collaborative powers. My greatest affection has always been for the seemingly most mundane sets. Domestic interiors are where the storytelling starts for me. The greatest strength of Stranger Things lies in its cast of indelible oddballs, and creating their personal spaces is how I am able to contribute most directly to the story telling. The Byers' home has always been a standout example of setting as an extension of story, and this season was no exception, despite it being an entirely new house in a different part of the country. Though this kind of character home interior is normally one the show would build on stage, I felt that in this instance, we might be better served by a fully practical location that would allow continuous interior/exterior action. So, we scoured the suburban foothills around Albuquerque in search of a period-perfect suburban home in a neighborhood that read as Southern California with an interior that would accommodate our characteristic camera work. We found exactly what we were looking for, a split- level time capsule, unchanged since the early '80s with even the original lighting fixtures and door and window hardware still intact. We improved the interior geography by opening a few archways and passthroughs, painted and papered the walls, dressed it with what the Beyers brought with them from Indiana, supplemented with whatever Joyce and the kids would have shopped in the local A B C D