'Stranger Things': The Duffer Bros. on the FX challenges in Season 2
Matt and Ross Duffer, the twin brothers/ Stranger Things’ showrunners and series creators, sat down with Yahoo Entertainment and discussed the second season of their celebrated Netflix show with us. We covered quite a bit of Season 2, so if you’re not up to date, consider this your fair warning — spoilers ahead.
Season two of Stranger Things featured not just one but several monsters aka demogorgons aka demodogs (shoutout to Dustin). Of course, that meant that the show had to adjust from the first season which featured more hints than actual shots of the monster.
“Last year, it was a little bit more minimalist in terms of the creature and we actually had a guy in a suit, some of which worked and some of which didn’t,” shared Matt Duffer. “Season one, we did a lot more computer graphics than we thought [we would do] and fell in love with the tools.”
“This year we really wanted to learn more about visual effects and then also we knew the [demodog] was going to start small and grow. It can’t be a guy in a suit portraying these dogs, so you have to go the computer graphic route.”
“You can shoot a guy in a monster suit in a way that makes him look really scary and cool [but also] in a way that makes him look really dorky and not scary at all,” he continued. “We figured out you have to use visual effects in a very specific way or it’s not going to work. There was a lot of trial and error but we had a really great, super-passionate visual effects team and everyone was really excited by the challenge of it, which was trying to take some of these blockbuster movie visuals and try to do it on a TV show. It’s challenging in the sense that we don’t have nearly as much prep time or post time as these big movies do. So just figuring that out was tricky, but it was fun.”
Stranger Things is streaming now on Netflix.
The Duffer Bros. told us that they included a nod to their critics with one scene in episode 5:
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