Stranger Things 2 Behind the Scenes

I watched a Stranger Things behind the scenes video. There was no talking or voice overs in the video just clips of the actors and crew working. There are so many special effects in Stranger Things so it was so cool to see how they got everything to be perfect and viewer ready. My favorite part of the video is when they show Eleven using her powers and how they created those effects. For one scene, Eleven is using her powers to blast out the hole to the underground with fire, it is so powerful that she floats in the air. The fire shown in this scene would be much too dangerous to do in person so they turned to effects, plus she can't float in real life. The scene was created using a hanging cart from the ceiling that Eleven is standing in. She is held up by cables within the cart to create a sense of floating. To create the fire, it was all lighting. This was mainly to light up her face and the objects around her. The fire itself was created with animation. It was very interesting to see the giant green screen behind her as well as camera movement. They even placed dots on her face so the animators can work with her face to make the fire and lighting effects work. The camera was held on a dolly that was robotically moved inward and down for a smooth closeup shot. It's pretty impressive how good the actors are in this series because most of what they react to is made through the animation so in the meantime, they have to pretend that they are actually living in the moment with animation. The next part that was fascinating was places they did a majority of their scenes. The kids spend a ton of time at the arcade. In the video, they show an old dry cleaners that they bought just for the show; they renovated the entire building into a functioning arcade. Crazy to think the amount of work put in for only just a couple decent scenes. The next thing that I noticed was their effort into making every scene feel like you're living in the 80s. Every character is dressed accordingly, every car is of those years, and even the arcade games. It was super amazing to see the work put into the animated demogorgons, which are the evil monsters in the series. Every single one of them had to be thought about because the animators can't just place them in a shot. Another impressive part done by the actors. They have to look and act as if they are scared of the monsters, even though they don't exist. It was also funny to find out that one of the actors that is portrayed as a jock knew nothing about sports when he took up the role. Many outtakes are shown of him trying to make this one shot during a basketball scrimmage. It was so cool to watch this video not only to be informed, but to realize just how much work is put into every single second of a film.