[MUSIC PLAYING]
Where'd it go?
Where is it?
Will!
OK, so now that you have, you know, some of your characters
roughed out or some ideas for the characters,
I think it is worth thinking about the world
that these characters are going to inhabit.
So this setting-- we had talked about this a little bit
in terms of we didn't do a lot of research
when it came to Montauk and ultimately Hawkins.
It was small town by the beach, whatever.
But I think something that's worth doing
is start talking about sort out the mini settings
within your bigger setting, the locations
that your characters can exist in.
So for "Stranger Things," for instance,
you got Mike's basement is a major one.
You got the core--
ROSS DUFFER: The, gym the junkyard.
MATT DUFFER: The gym, yeah, junkyard,
and you don't have to do a "Lord of the Rings"
style or George RR Martin map.
Just write down some of these locations
that really could offer a really good setting
for certain scenes.
It's just nice to start--
again, you're not going to have a super in focus
picture of your world at this point,
but it's gonna start coming a little bit more in focus.
So you have some characters now.
Start to think about that setting
that they're gonna inhabit.
And I remember, like, early on season three, we came in--
we had a writers room at this point, and we came in
and the writers had done this exact exercise,
enlisted a bunch of possible locations
that would be fun to explore in season three.
And one of them was a mall.
And we went, well, that's interesting.
That would be a fun place for our characters to inhabit.
So it's possible that one of these locations
ends up becoming more important to your plot.
So it's always a good exercise.
Season two-- season two was tunnels.
I remember we're just like tunnels are cool.
Like--
ROSS DUFFER: It's our very thing.
MATT DUFFER: Yeah, we all like tunnels,
and then that does sort of become
a major part of the season.
And one of my favorite things in the season
are all those sort of underground tunnels
that the kids have to navigate in the finale.
ROSS DUFFER: So, again, you don't
need to know how it's going to play a role in your script.
It can just be a good exercise to start filling out this world
and going, OK, well, in their journey maybe
they could go here.
Maybe they could go to the mall.
Maybe they could go here.
You're just filling it out, more detail.
You don't have to use any of this,
but it's going to be it's going to be good to have.
Yeah.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
There's another version in terms of your setting
or your world where it's not based in reality at all, which
is what we had with this other dimension in "Stranger Things."
Now it wasn't super developed initially
when we were first coming up with the idea in the pilot.
You saw some of this rough idea we had of, like, a mouth
leading to the other world and all of this,
but one thing that we had talked about early on is--
and some of this was for budgetary reasons and also
we were very much inspired by "Poltergeist."
We didn't see that world where the little girl was taken.
So it was in-- for us, it was like, well,
that might be scary if we never actually see it.
We never see it.
We never go into the upside down.
We're only hearing it over--
that was-- right?
It was the initial idea.
We're only hearing it over walkies.
We're only hearing it over radios or whatnot.
So it was like it would all be left up
to the imagination of the viewer.
Yes.
And ultimately that went away pretty quickly
as we started to write the show because we
realized this is a show.
This is not a movie.
I'm starting to get antsy.
I want to go in there.
I want to see what's--
I want to see what.
We still limited how often we went in there,
but we did go in there.
And then that forced us to evolve it more
and actually explain what this world would look like,
but when we wrote the pilot--
and you'll see in our outline and when we actually go
into more detail in the pilot--
we didn't know a whole lot.
It didn't even have a name in terms of the upside
down wasn't even what we were calling it.
In the beginning it was called the nether,
which is more of a placeholder.
The upside down name came about later
in the writing of episode five when
Mike is trying to explain where Will is,
and he flips a D&D board over and says upside down.
What if this is Hawkins, and this is where Will is,
the upside down?
And that just sort of stuck, and that just
became the terminology to which we've
referred to this other world.
And then practically, we had to do something very simple
because we kind of do a huge visual effects extravaganza.
And so that started to effect what this world would actually
look like.
But, again, you know, so you can start--
you can start to-- you can be pretty vague at the beginning
here, and you don't have to have it all figured out.
If you're telling a show this is an eight-hour process,
you're not gonna have all eight hours
fully mapped out at this point.
Well, I think it's important.
So it just-- to reemphasize something
my brother's saying there, when we're going in
and we're pitching to Netflix, we're pitching the show,
and we have the pilot, it's not called the upside down.
There's no-- there's--
the spores and the vines, I mean, none of that none of that
is figured out, and we didn't get
hammered by Netflix about that.
It was like could you describe the mythology
of this other world.
Like, they don't-- whatever.
They get it is a scary other dimension.
You're going to figure--
you're going to give it-- figure it out.
I think something that is intimidating to a lot of people
and it was certainly intimidating us
when we started is you see these products
and they're fully done, fully formed,
and you just get overwhelmed.
It's like how am I going to figure all this out.
And the answer is one step at a time.
Like, so a lot of this stuff wasn't even figured out
when we sold it to Netflix.
So that should relieve a lot of pressure
from you to not get overwhelmed and it's just a little bit
at a time.
And even as you're writing your script
it's not going to all be figured out.
So allow--
It's going to be a process.
Even after we had written the pilot script
and we were meeting with people, we
did start to get asked questions about the world,
and that forced us to sit down--
And think about it.
And think about it and talk about it more and whatnot.
And it'll evolve.
It'll start to evolve, and then eventually when
we decided we have to go in there once we started
moving into writing later scripts for Netflix,
we went, OK, what could this world look like.
We talked about "Silent Hill."
We talked about "Alien."
We talked about the aesthetics of it.
Again, that wasn't figured out on the pilot stage,
and that was-- in our instance, that was OK.
Again, it's going to be baby steps.
All of this is to say it's good
actually to say simple and vague and you're fine.
It's not-- don't expect it to be fully formed at this stage.
Don't try to make it fully formed.
Just stay-- continue to stay zoomed out.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Similar to the aesthetic or whatever
of the upside down of this alternate dimension, we have
this sort of psychic space that 11 exists in, which was we
called the black void where she's
in just completely black space.
And, again, you know, that came about, we realized as we were
writing it, I mean, we had--
we needed a way to visualize how 11 was
using these psionic abilities.
We wanted to be kind of in her head
as she was doing these things and she
was making psychic contact.
It was like, well, how in the world do we visualize this.
We don't have a bajillion dollars to do this all CG,
and we didn't want to do it that way.
We wanted to keep it simple.
And practical.
And we wanted to do it practical.
There was a movie that came out "Under the Skin."
Now-- that Jonathan Glazer made with Scarlett Johansson
where he had this really cool effect.
It's like a really simple effect where Scarlett Johansson was
in this strange--
just surrounded completely by black.
And I think did maybe he did have--
Some reflection.
Some reflective [INAUDIBLE] it's been a while.
But what's interesting-- you know,
it's worth pointing out a couple of things.
A, that's an idea that came much later that evolved as you're
working on the script.
It wasn't there when we sold the script just like the upside
down wasn't really figured out.
It was something that came to us and also that it was very much
inspired by another film that we had seen
and a film that is completely unlike "Stranger Things."
I mean, it's kind of almost an experimental film.
"Under the Skin" is.
It's a weird film.
So it's good to watch all sorts of types of movies, not just--
don't just watch-- if you love Marvel movies,
don't just watch Marvel movies.
Try watch everything because even if it doesn't--
the tone of "Under the Skin" is so different than the tone
of "Stranger Things," but it still had an element in there
that was really helpful for us.
And inspiring and I think and again it could be a painting.
It could be a photograph that you love.
It could be in the case of the spore-like aspect of the upside
down.
It could be a video game.
MATT DUFFER: Yeah, that came from--
that was inspired by "Silent Hill."
ROSS DUFFER: Again, you're going to be looking
at things love and things that inspire you,
and that's a perfectly valid thing to do.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
For this assignment, just start making
a simple list of locations where your characters can exist.
MATT DUFFER: It can be as basic as a bedroom a gym or tunnels.
Start simple and have fun.