[snarling]

[theme music playing] For us, Will really is the heart and soul of Season 5. We cast this young boy, Luke. He's a great little actor, and he bore a resemblance to a young Noah Schnapp. Noah really took Luke under his wing. 

When I was younger, I would widen my eyes so big and, like, the way that I would tremble in my mouth.

[loud creak]

[man] I didn't speak to the kid at all.

Really?

Yeah. Like, "I'm not gonna say anything. I'm gonna try and make sure that he's as freaked out as possible."

[Noah] Was he freaked out?

I hope so. I really do.

[Vecna grunts] When I initially read the script for this, I was blown away by how vivid it was. We open on Castle Byers, in a shot that's now become pretty iconic. My little childhood home. I filmed in that same exact setup when I was 10 years old, so then revisiting it as a 20 year old is fun and very nostalgic.

[roar]

[Will yelps]

[snarling]

[man] We basically are thrown right into the action, picking up where the memory left off in Season 1. We wanted it to feel like a continuation of that experience with a young Will Byers. That's where Wētā comes in. Wētā is one of the greatest visual effects companies in the world. They're behind the Lord of the Rings, so if there was any company that could pull this off, we thought it would be Wētā. One of the most important things is making sure we can track the work we have to do onto the young actor. For Young Will, we did motion capture dots on his face. We had to have a lot of extra what we call witness cams. We had two that were actually attached to the main camera. And we had an additional four kind of hidden in the forest so that on every shot, we had as many angles as possible on his face.

[roars]

[Ross] We also had Noah around for all of these scenes to essentially direct Luke and be like, "This is how I was acting when I was a kid." "And how I would react to this situation." Noah really took Luke under his wing.

[Noah] It was really cool, working with him. There was such little technical things, like when I was younger, I would widen my eyes so big and, like, the way I would tremble in my mouth and in my fingers.

[Ross] We had Noah act out all the moments in the scenes in a little tent, and we had a bunch of cameras there, sort of capturing his facial reactions, which was an odd experience for us and Noah. Being like, "You're climbing a tree" and "the Demogorgon's coming for you." And it was strange.

[Ross] Do it with a little more, "Ah."

Like a little more survival mode.

[Noah] Right.

[Ross] Less fear.

OK.

[Ross] And it bursts through!

[gasps] Wētā can take the motion from Luke and apply it to the model of Noah's face so we feel like this is Noah at 11, running through that forest. So right here, for example, on his temple he has a little bit of wetness and goo on him. And then there's even single strands of hair that are disrupted just to make it a little more chaotic. That's not the stand-in. That is something that Wētā created from scratch.

[distant growling]

[lightning rumbles] One of the best things about Stranger Things is the commitment that the brothers have to shooting as much as they can in camera as possible. And that extends to sets like the Upside Down woods, where our set dec and SFX teams put out Upside Down nether over a football field-sized section of woods. It's miles and miles of this stuff. I believe it was three semi-trailers full. It took about 20 people three weeks to do that. I think we bought up about every pool noodle in the United States in order to create the vines in the Upside Down this year.

[Caleb] For red lightning, you'll see Matt or Ross. They're like a conductor at a symphony. Every time they want red lightning, they'll go … so that it's sort of in sync with where they imagined those beats happening.

[thunder rumbling]

[Chris] I don't think the average person realizes how many pieces are required to put together this seamless, high-intensity sequence of climbing a high tree, and jumping from one to another, whilst being pursued by a Demogorgon.

[Demogorgon growls]

[yelps]

[Chris] For me and my department, the biggest trick is the dance of figuring out all of the individual physical pieces we need to provide, and in what order, and in what environment. A blue-screen environment, or are we providing it on location in the forest? It ends up being a feat of very complex coordination. We had those trees at the stages, and so we had rehearsed and preset what the climbing was gonna be.

Ready.

[woman] Set.

[man] And action!

[Hiro] We had to measure each little step and movement. The performer has to jump from this tree to that tree, so we kinda of dialed that in, right? Let's just get her from here to there.

[gasps, groans]

[Jahnel] And once we have that worked out, now let's start putting some performance into it. Now let's start making it a little bit messy so it doesn't look so perfect and it looks more like a kid flailing through the air, not quite sure if he's gonna make it.

[groaning] Kelli Barksdale, our young Will stunt double, she was climbing trees and running through the forest. As a double, she has to be that person, so it's their responsibility to watch that actor and figure out how they move, what their quirky moves are, all of that to incorporate into what they're doing with the stunt. There are no CG digi-doubles in this, full body. That is Kelli hitting branches herself, and that is impressive.

[tense music rises]

[music subsides]

[eerie music playing]

[Ross] That was a big moment this year. When we got to see Vecna again. It had been several years. There was this weird, excited silence as we stepped on set. It was just an overwhelming feeling of doing something really special again. It's rare you get the opportunity to revisit something. It was really great, 'cause we fell back into it again. Everybody knew exactly what it was that we were doing. That excitement was there.

[Barrie] Vecna is the most extensive makeup I've ever done in my career. There's not a centimeter of Jamie on the show, apart from his eyelids. But he's covered in some form of rubber.

[man] On a typical Vecna day, I'll apply the makeup, which takes close to six and a half hours. Then you shoot a full day, which can be up to 12 hours. You have to take him out of makeup, which is another hour.

[Will gasping]

[Matt] Season 1, we actually shot in the library basement of a real library, which was very difficult to get equipment down there to light it properly. So we recreated the basement onstage, which made it easier for art department to create that look with the vines. It was a little tricky to light because there weren't that many windows and everything was so dark in there. We kind of leaned into those window wells to create some very hard shadows, but then you also have these more specular hard lights that give you that creepy glisten off of his skin and off the vines as they move around. It was just amazing how quickly Jamie just snapped back into it.

[Jamie] I just remember doing that catwalk, and all of a sudden, it just felt like I was onstage. I was like, "I love this feeling." Again, dead quiet. Pin dropping.

[Matt] It was an awesome moment and also a haunting moment to watch on screen and to see him interacting with young Will.

[Vecna grunts]

You and I.

[Will groaning] We are going to do such beautiful things together, William.

[Jamie] I didn't speak to the kid at all.

[laughs] Really?

Yeah. Like, "I'm not gonna say anything. I'm gonna try and make sure that he's as freaked out as possible."

[Noah] Was he?

I hope so. I hope so. I really do.

Okay. As an opening sequence, I think it is perfect for this season because it reveals to us a moment that we had never seen before in Season 1.

[loud creak]

[Ross] Seeing Vecna with Will and revealing that they do have a connection… It's hopefully satisfying and chilling, but also raise a lot of questions that we're going to answer over the course of the season.

[Will groaning]