Everyone is probably throwing cash at their TVs for a second season of Netflix's hot new original series "Stranger Things," but the series' creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, had a pretty strict budget for their first go-around.
In a conference call Friday, the Duffer Brothers answered several questions about the making of the show, but one theme kept cropping up over and over. Because of their limited budget, the duo had to change many of their original ideas. But in nearly every case, it was for the best.
The show was originally set in a different town.
The Duffers originally wanted to set the show in a coastal town, as an homage to one of their favorite movies, "Jaws."
"It was originally set in Montauk," said Matt Duffer. "'Jaws' was our favorite movie of all time, so we liked the sort of coastal setting that that allowed, and for production reasons it started to look more and more unfeasible. So we started to talk a lot about Castle Rock, you know, Stephen King’s fictional town [in which several of his stories take place] and we thought 'How cool would it be to create our own fictional town?' And then, we're not bound by anything in the real world, we can do kind of whatever we want."
Spurred by the production issues associated with filming in Montauk, they were forced to come up with an alternate location.
"We wanted a place that was very sort of quintessentially American," said Matt. "A setting and a town where we can have these characters that everybody can relate to ... [and] Indiana felt like a better, cleaner fit for us."
It probably helps that it was a lot cheaper, too.
They had to get creative to film Eleven's visions into the Void.
When it came to figuring out how to film the Void, the name of the dark empty world we see when Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is mentally connecting with someone, the Duffers had to get creative.
"What we were trying to do was come up with a visual represention for being in Eleven's head," said Ross. "And [the emptiness of the Void] is just a way to sort of get that across in a very simple way that obviously is not going to be involving heavy [visual effects] like in the 'X-Men' movies with Professor X. And again, you know, I think it’s one of those things where the limitations of [having] a TV schedule and budget made us be more creative."
So how did they film the Void sequences so cheaply?
"It's just an inch of water on the ground, and then we just hung up black curtains, and suddenly we’re in Eleven’s head," said Ross. "It's cool how you can achieve something that we think is such a big idea so simply."
The title sequence was designed minimalistic and it's brilliant.
This idea carried over to the show's minimalist title sequence, too, with its slowly swelling synth beat over some simple opening credits.
"We wanted to go back to the idea that simple can be better," said Ross. "As opposed to trying to one-up these huge shows or these big movies with these elaborate sequences, what if we just go back to the simplicity of something that you couldn't do before you had all these effects?"
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