[thunder rumbles]

[Eleven groans]

[Hopper grunts]

[men scream] Everybody loves Hopper and Eleven. He's missing a daughter, and she's missing a father.

[man 1 and 2] Camera! 

Their relationship is a very complex one. That's where the strength in the show is. The one thing I suggested to David was, even if Eleven doesn't see it, I wanted to see Hopper's pride in her.

[David] You're like, "Yeah. **** it."

[laughs] Like… "Destroy those bad guys."

[theme music playing] In this billboard battle scene in Episode 3, we have Hopper and Eleven showing up at this very mysterious wall.

[ominous music playing]

[man] We went through a lot of different looks on the wall. At its earliest conception, there was thoughts: “Should the wall have a look of, like, the gates? So, like, an orangey, emissive light? Or should it just be really mucusy and liquid-like?” We ended up on something that had sort of like this meaty kind of bulbous texture. So, just toeing that line in between is thing a creature, or is it actually something that's inane?

[Eleven and Hopper grunt]

[woman] It's huge. It goes as far as the eye can see. And our characters have to interact with it. So we gave a model to the art department so that they could sculpt a big enough piece for the actors to be able to walk on and touch.

[man] It was our first outing, showing off a really big, beautifully finished piece of sculpture.

[David] That wall is like, what? Forty feet high. I mean, it was insane. On our side, we took over all of the pulsating life and the slime and the slithering vines. It just had to be disgusting, right? Something you didn't want to touch. Let alone hack through.

[Hopper grunting]

[mechanical clanging]

[rumbling]

[man] For the billboard battle, what we wanted to do, when we were talking to our writers is to make Eleven not be able to save the day.

[man 2 and 3] Camera.

[low pulsating droning] When Eleven is feeling the effects of this sonic weapon, we go into kind of this shaking camera mode. We were looking for a way to get into El's head and visually communicate the kind of intensity of what she's going through.

[pulsating droning intensifies]

[Ross] She can't hold out her hands. And we really wanted it to look like this is a situation they're not gonna be able to get out of. Yeah. Struggle number one was, how are they gonna hide? How are they gonna be able to survive this when Eleven is down for the count? That was when we came up with this idea for using a billboard, which was cool because we set up Turnbows. That was our production designer Chris's idea. which we ended up loving. They were introducing Derek Turnbow. And we wanted to subtly hint at the backstory of his family. We knew that there was gonna be some gunfire through the billboard. Frank was like, "Oh, maybe Hopper's shooting out of the mouth of this character." We were like, "Great." It ended up being fun.

[Hopper cries out]

Hey!

[Brett] Dark brown billboard in a dark environment. If we didn't have a light coming through, you'd barely see the holes. So we used the headlights on the Humvees. And the addition of smoke also helps you see that ray of light. All and all, I think we were right around 2,000 hits. How do you make that many hits go off so they don't do anything to the actors?

[gunfire] We played with different things. And we eventually ended up using bulletin board material. The billboard was plywood. Just looked like the whole thing was being shredded.

[man 1] Camera!

[man 2] Action!

[gunfire]

[Hopper yells]

[gunfire stops] Fantastic! Cut it! Thank you! Beautiful.

[David] It was the first scene we had with Frank. I had never met him before this series. But I loved his movies. He was just so generous to me. I think it was just that he loves Hopper so much. It's one of the reasons why he wanted to direct it, to see what this character would do.

[man] Come on!

Base to Alpha One. We're taking on fire. I need backup and air cover.

[Frank] What's really fun about Alex is that he and David Harbour had a history in New York as actors. So they were reunited on this set. Their chemistry is great, ’cause the characters are alpha dogs. And that's something that I really wanted to tune into. Look at how enormous I am. Look at that beard. [laughs] That costume's cool, though, isn't it? Harbour looks likes out of a John Carpenter movie. He looks like Escape from New York meets The Thing meets something else. But in typical Stranger Things fashion, it looks wildly original just on its own terms anyway.

[man] Move! 

The inspiration was truly, like, function over fashion. We're following these actors into these roles that we know they've done at least 37 times. At this point, David would have found something that works for him, treated like armor, without being in military clothing. He has gloves. A beanie that could have maybe been taken from the military when he was in the Upside Down.

[Matt] We wrote out the rough beats, but then we let Frank and our stunt coordinators figure out the details behind it. Frank added the grenade moment with Hopper. That was not actually in the initial script.

[Frank] I wanted to give Hopper a moment of thinking that he's completely out of options and he's lost and that this is the end now. I wanted to give him those grenades as a Hail Mary pass. You come to the scene, you have ideas. And then you have this moment that the director makes a meal of. Which you didn't really expect. I didn't expect that to be a meal when I read it. Then he's like, "We're gonna push in." "There's gonna be a big thing." And you're like, "OK, I haven't prepared for this." And you just sit there, and you have… They're setting up the shot. You've got 25 minutes. And it's just so fun. It's like that, to me, is the most fun part of the job. That's where you feel like an actual baseball player. Like a tennis player. But this is what I'm built to do. Craft this second-long moment as I know that camera's coming in. Enough decision-making. Enough deep feeling around her. And really, it takes a good director to know that you can do that. To give you that space to do it. And to make that thing a meal. Especially when it comes to things like gun battles and grenade explosions, SFX and stunts really do a lot of the base-level work. Taking all of those pieces that are laid practically and then building on them is one of the best things that we can do in the collaborative process.

[Richard] We have the same flash powder they used back in the Wild West when you see the guy do the poof with his little frame camera. Visual effects comes in and takes that little core of a flash and expands it, makes it into something more visually interesting. A lot of our stuff is hand pulls, and our core team are standing at the top of 12-foot ladders, jumping. Timing is crucial.

Timing is everything.

Everything has to hit. Making sure everybody is on the same page. Make sure camera knows what the count is. Make sure your performers know. Make sure my guys on wires know. So that everybody knows, "OK, we're going on 'go.' "

[grunts]

[explosion echoes]

[men scream]

[Hopper grunts]

[droning peaks, fades]

[gasps]

[man breathing shakily]

[indistinct chatter]

[laughs] Yeah, we were discussing Eleven gestures here. And I thought it was really sweet that Millie came to me and was asking me what I thought they should be. I said, "Hey, you've been doing this since you were 10. You tell me."

[grunts] You know, there's not that much you need to tell an actor about their character if they've been playing it for 10 years. You know, they know these characters inside and out. The one thing I suggested to David at the end of this scene was, even if Eleven doesn't see it, I wanted to see Hopper's pride in her. Hopper's had an interesting relationship with Eleven and her powers throughout the series.

He's tried to get her to stop them.

[screams]

[David] In Season 2, it was all about like, "You can't have a little girl running around, crushing heads." So it's fun to have moments where you're like…

[laughs] "Yeah, **** it." Like… "Destroy those bad guys."

[Eleven grunts]

[man groans]

[Eleven panting]

[David] Everybody loves Hopper and Eleven. He's missing a daughter, and she's missing a father. And I think it's been a dynamic that, in this series, has been so important and so vital. Ever since the first season, when Hopper left Eggos in the box for her.

[tender music playing] We're very close, Millie and I. We've been through a lot together. We've been doing this show for 10 years. I can't even parse out what's me and what's Hopper's overprotectiveness around her. They start to blend in and meld together. Hopper and Eleven's relationship is a very complex one. And just finding those levels of this, that, and the other in their scenes is such a pleasure. I want to get into Hopper's head, and I want to get into Eleven's head, and I really want to experience hanging out with these characters and going through those emotional ups and downs with them. That's where the real strength in the show is.

[tender music fades out]