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EMMYS www.postmagazine.com 16 POST SEPT/OCT 2026 STRANGER THINGS Netflix's Stranger Things was honored with an Emmy for its Outstanding Special Visual Effects, much of which was created by Wētā FX, whose work on the series spanned all eight episodes of Season 5, amounting to 1,100 shots. The studio contributed to a number of important parts of Season 5, including a digital replacement for Will Byers in the opening sequence of Episode 1 to match actor Noah Schnapp's Season 1 age, and creating terrifying creatures, such as the slithery Vecna 2.0, the Mind Flayer and the Demogorgon that wounded Mrs. Wheeler and abducted Holly in the Episode 4. Another highlight included work on the final battle, referred to as the showdown with Vecna and the Mind Flayer in the abyss. "The Pain Tree, where Vecna is holding the captured kids, needed to disguise the Mind Flayer in plain sight, with the big reveal only happening when our he- roes, seemingly at the end of the journey, approach it," says Martin Hill, senior VFX supervisor at Wētā FX. "The creature's final form needed to be immense, with the tips of the legs scraping the sky. We covered it in the Stranger Things language of vines, broke up the silhouette, and deposited sand and dust over it to embed it into the environment and give the sense of age and rootedness that belied the moving creature. This gave us interactivity of the dust falling and the vines snapping as the Mind Flayer starts to animate." The VFX team referenced bone snapping in other parts of the series for shots with limbs hyper-extending, breaking and creating blood waterfalls. "The scale of the creature is unprecedented and needed to be more solid than the smoke or flesh Mind Flayers of earlier seasons," Hill shares. "The crea- ture's exoskeleton is spider/crab-inspired, but not fully rigid, so we can see the secondary motion and slow, heavy jiggle that help illustrate scale, whilst resid- ual vines swing from the body. The detailing of the model was essential for the scale: sculpting fine, layered, organic forms that feel like they've grown rather than been carved; making clear distinctions between the different materials of cartilage, bone, vines and shell." Hundreds of articulated teeth and thorns were added and animated to increase the threat when close to the creature. Animators controlled the breath of the Mind Flayer, which in turn drove the simulation of dust and drool of the creature. "The Mind Flayer has 22 legs that needed to work in sync and move naturally when the creature charges, without looking ungainly," notes Hill. "To achieve this, the animators needed to pay attention to the order of the legs' motion, with differing legs having differing gaits in differing orders. The rigging needed to work so there were no collisions of the legs, whilst maintaining full flexibility in each of the soft tissue-covered ball joints in the carapace." BEEF In Netflix's Beef, a young couple witnesses an alarming fight between their boss and his wife, triggering strategic moves of favors and coercion in an elite country-club world owned by a Korean billionaire. Newly-engaged Ashley Miller (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin Davis (Charles Melton) are both lower-level staff at the club, but become entangled in the unraveling marriage of their GM Joshua Martín (Oscar Isaac) and his wife, Lindsay Crane-Martín (Carey Mulligan). The club's billionaire owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), struggles to manage her own scandal involving her second husband, Doctor Kim (Song Kang-ho). Beef took home three Emmy Awards in September, two for its soundtrack. The episode "It Will Stay This Way And You Will Obey" was recognized for both Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. Christopher Gomez, MPSE, is the show's supervising sound editor, respon- sible for discussing the overall sonic vision of a project with the showrunner, director and picture editors. "We outline ideas and needs, such as sonic landscape, potential ADR and themes of a show," he explains. "I then work with a team of sound editors to pass along those discussions and oversee the sound elements all the way through to our final sound mix." In the case of Beef, one directive was to always make sure the show was grounded in reality. "We wanted the viewer to always feel immersed in the locations that we were in," Gomez explains. "We also needed to maintain a level of 'pristine and polished' sound that would reflect the look and feel of this season." The team relied on tools that included Avid Pro Tools Ultimate, Izotope RX 12 and EdiCue. Gomez points to a oner shot in Episode 208 as a sonic highlight in the series. In it, Austin, Ashley and Lindsey must fight their way through various Korean bodyguards in Trochos Clinic. "This entire shot — all the way through to Austin bursting through the glass door and onto the streets of Seoul — was such an intricate dance of sound and music," he recalls. "The idea was always that our three leads had to stumble their way to beating everyone up and escaping, so every punch, effort, scream and impact needed to be carefully woven together so that, even though every- thing looked really cool, we never lost sight of the comedy that none of them knew what they were doing, and it was one lucky turn of events after the other for them. And of course, it all culminates in the big gunshot to Dr. Kim, and the eventual 'exhale' when Austin goes crashing through the glass door and they finally escape onto the streets of Seoul."