Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/889023
www.postmagazine.com 19 POST OCTOBER 2017 DIRECTOR'S CHAIR After we shoot in Atlanta, we come back here to our offices and do all the post and VFX work right here, and then we do all the sound mix at a stage, and all the color timing, at Technicolor down the road." What were the big technical leaps forward in post this time around? RD: "We had a lot more VFX than last year — about 1,300 to 1,400 shots, which is a huge amount, like a big movie. Last season it wasn't a big deal." I'm sure your approach took into account that often, TV VFX end up looking pretty cheesy. MD: "Absolutely, which is why we brought in people who, like us, wanted to get it all exactly right. We were both very inexpe- rienced last year, and you learn a lot very quickly, and we're still learning so much every day. The trick with TV — and it's good and bad — is that you have to move really fast. There's just no time to really think about it all too much — either for us or executives. You've gotta go! And that's good. The downside is at that speed, it's sometimes hard to get things where you want them technically, while you'd probably have that time on a movie. But we have a great schedule, although it's not what you'd get on a movie, and it's the same for the VFX. It's all a bit more compact, and the schedule's different for each episode." RD: "Some are 12 days, but then we'll be doing action with children, which is not a wise thing to do. That takes a lot longer." How early on do you integrate post and VFX with the production? RD: "Very early on, and we had con- cept artists and VFX guys with us the whole time on set, and they were all super-involved." MD: "Especially for the script with the shadow monster. We were always trying to get ahead of things, and just being aggressive in hiring people and all the VFX crew. Last year, we didn't have anyone. We didn't even have an in-house VFX editor, so it was crazy. But then we went into this whole thing thinking we'd do it all practically, like back in the day. But then what we discovered on Season 1 is that you have just two weeks to prep it all, including what a portal to another dimension might look like, and it's easier said than done. You show up on set and go, 'This just looks like Mystery Science Fair or whatever. It looks stupid!' So we'd either throw it out, or try and enhance the practical. It certainly gives me more admiration for the guys back in the day, and we learned very quickly just how difficult it is to create VFX that really hold up for today's audiences. I found that the best approach is to mix both VFX and practical." Do you like post? RD: "We love it, because the problem is that there's never enough time on the set, and if you go again for a shot or scene, there's all this pressure, while in post, if a scene isn't working, no one has a gun to our heads. We can figure it out, come back to it next day, and keep work- ing on it. There's a lot more freedom." Tell us about the editing? MD: "We have two main editors this season, and we're right there with them, as we love editing. We don't just give notes and walk away. We basically taught ourselves to edit as kids, and we started off just editing in camera, stopping and starting, and playing the music from a tape recorder. They weren't very good, but we got better, and then iMovie came out and we learned how to put scenes together, and then in college the transi- tion to Avid wasn't that hard, and we fell in love with editing and just how much you can elevate your material in post. It's magical what you can do with the pace, performances, music and sound design, and make it all come alive in post." The show has a very distinct, eerie, synth-heavy score by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, the Grammy-winning duo and half of the hip Austin electronic band Survive. How important is that and all the sound design? RD: "It's huge for the show, and they really know now exactly what it needs, and we also have a couple of great sound designers, Brad North and Craig Henighan, and we sit through all the initial sessions with them and then let them go and do their thing." MD: "Craig works a lot with Darren Aronofsky and he does all the really fancy, unique sounds in the show. He's always cooking stuff up at the weekends for us." The DI must have been vital? MD: "Yes, and we work very closely with colorist Skip Kimball at Technicolor, and he was very influential in terms of how the show ended up looking. We'd discussed the kind of aesthetic we wanted, and things we wanted to reference, and then he played around with the look and pal- ette. We shoot with Red [cameras], and anything we don't like about it, he gets rid of it, and adds a bit of film grain and so on, which softens it a bit." Do you feel your timing's perfect for this show? RD: "I feel we're very lucky, given it's this golden age of TV. Yes, we wanted to be movie directors, but we didn't come into this industry at the right time, and Netflix has been so great and given us so much creative freedom." The Duffer siblings on the set of their hit series, which has a lot more VFX shots this new season.