- Every moment, every beat, is mapped out,
talking about a month-long process
just for that 15 seconds.
Hey, I'm Matt Duffer.
- I'm Ross Duffer.
We're the creators of Stranger Things.
And we're gonna talk
through what we call the Demo fight.
(fighting)
- So the Demogorgon, I mean, we conceived of him,
what, you know? Seven years ago.
It was a collaboration with an artist, Aaron Sims.
We looked at a million different designs
for what this monster could look like.
We talked about all the monsters who had scared us
over the years and we just explored.
We knew he was gonna come from this other dimension.
- [Ross] We knew he was gonna be humanoid
but that's roughly when we started designing him,
that's what we knew.
- [Matt] Why we wanted him to have a kind of
human look really is because in, in season one
in particular, we wanted to be able to shoot a man
in a suit.
We wanted to be able to do it practically.
- We were very limited in season one, in terms,
of how much we could show him.
Had keep him in shadow.
There were a few computer graphic shots.
Like when he burst out of the wall.
- We did try them practically.
- We attempted practically.
And it's, it's a good thing no one saw it.
It would be Mystery Science Theater kind of quality.
But what we really wanted to do
with this season is okay, he's always been in shadow.
We haven't really been able to show what
this creature can do, really in terms of movement,
in terms of how he attacks.
We wanted to go, okay,
let's let this thing loose and see what it can do.
(fighting)
There's no MoCap involved.
This is just pure animation.
Rodeo, the company that did this
is really creating a character
here through the animation.
- [Matt] The first animation pass,
that's when you're seeing what looks almost
like just a gray clay rendering.
When it's in that stage, we
and our visual effects supervisors are able to give notes.
I want him to roar longer,
I want him to swipe,
- [Ross] Yeah.
- [Matt] At the end of this
because that'll help with the cut to the next scene.
You give those kind of animation notes.
They're able to do it a lot easier when it's
in this rough stage.
And then once you've locked on that
then you move into the rendering stage.
And that's when things start to get really exciting.
So it's the same animation, but they get the scan
they get the snow.
- [Ross] The lighting.
That's where he really comes alive.
That it's like, oh wait,
there's the Demogorgon, there he is.
And it's really exciting when those shots finally
come together and all the elements just meld
and you get your, what you guys see as the, the final look.
(fighting)
- So when the Demogorgon first burst out,
we wanted to be a moment where the
audience just goes, holy moly.
So in order to do that, we were like
let's not do a lot of edits.
Can we do this basically as a oner?
- [Ross] Think it just feels more like he's
in the space as opposed to, oh, you know, here's our actor
he's a visual effects shot.
It just ties it all together.
- [Matt] Because of the amount of stunts involved,
because we didn't want to
be using CG people on top of a CG monster.
We wanted to use real stunt men.
So we weren't able to do it all in one shot.
So it's about three big stunt sequences that are
stitched together.
- [Ross] It really was to protect our stunt team
and make sure that we weren't doing those stunts often.
So each stunt is essentially its own little moment.
- You only have a few chances to get it right.
So it was important that everyone was
pretty dialed in when we got there.
- [Ross] Our stunt coordinator Hiro Koda
there were definitely a few days
of rehearsal where he was just working with this team.
Then we brought our camera operator in and he also worked
with our stunt coordinator to be like, I like this
but maybe what if we swing over here at this moment.
- [Matt] When the Demogorgon throws that guy
and the bar collapses, that's actually a mistake.
That bar was not supposed to come down like that
but we just thought it was cool.
The camera wasn't perfect.
But we were like A, if we try that again
we'll never be able to recreate it.
And we decided, you know what, let's stick with it.
I kind of like the messiness and the rawness of the camera.
It just makes it feel that much more real.
- It really was a coordination
of a lot of different departments just to get here.
(fighting)
- When we're working on a Demogorgon sequence
the way that we do it, is we just edit
the sequence with nothing.
We would shoot it or at least rehearse it with this,
a man in, in a green suit.
Sometimes he would have a-
- [Ross] a tennis ball,
- [Matt] tennis ball at the top of his head
to show us how tall the Demogorgon was.
It's important for both David, us,
and the camera operators to
know what height the actual monster was gonna be.
But eventually you also have to get it clean.
- [Ross] In the edit sometimes the takes
with the man in the green suit
were the best takes, and so we went
with those and sometimes it was clean pass
which is why, when you're looking behind the scenes
you're gonna see a little bit of both.
And what we try to do here,
and this is practical with the fire, is just
make sure every time we go to Hopper
there's a little less fire.
There's a little less fire.
The Demo's getting a little bit closer,
a little bit closer just building the tension.
(fighting)
- [Matt] I think originally he was just supposed
to jab the, the Demo
in the mouth, but then David,
- What if I throw like a javelin?
- Yeah, let me throw this sucker like a javelin.
And I'm really happy that David pitched that idea.
- It's pretty epic
(Demogorgon roar)
With visual effects shots,
the more that you can do practically, that is real
in your frame, the more it's gonna feel organic
and you're gonna trick the audience's eye.
- Let's take advantage
of the amazing technology that's now available to us today
but also learn from the past and plan, plan, plan.
- So anyways, that's a little
behind the scenes look of how we made this Demo fight
come to life.
Thanks for watching.
- Yeah. Thanks.