Pyramid International Stranger Things 10" Wall Clock with The Upside Down in Gift Box - Official Merchandise

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A key example of this Stranger Things sound evolution, he says, is how the source of the Demogorgon’s sound is actually recordings of seals. “We’ve morphed him so many ways now after three or four seasons that there’s a whole other language to what the Demogorgon sounds like now,” he says. “But the advantage of sound and storytelling is to use silence and quietness. So we haven’t forgotten our roots, but definitely things have gotten bigger and when it gets big like that cinematically, sound tends to follow and that’s where we end up in season four.” In terms of finding their screeches, Palazzo stumbled upon the answer in his own recording studio, which is home to a rather noisy closet door.

Henighan initially put the most pressure around creating Vecna’s voice. “I want it to go down in a historical context of bad guys,” he says of Bower’s monster living among cinema villain royalty. While the show’s jumbo-sized fourth outing is the scariest one yet, horror is not its only defining genre characteristic. As it has from the very start, Stranger Things maintains a general sense of wonder and mystery that evokes classic Spielberg. The reintroduction of Dr. Sam Owens (Paul Reiser) in Episode 3, for instance, was intentionally crafted as an homage to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As a creative starting point each year, the Duffer Brothers provide Henighan with adjectives to describe the season. If season three was “gore,” season four is “psychological.” From those early conversations, Henighan says he and his sound team took the descriptor and ran with it. For all of the time that Stranger Things has spent there, the Upside Down is still largely unexplained. One theory holds that the terrifying realm is not just a parallel dimension, but rather a future version of Earth spliced together with the era of the show through the portals. The theory claims that the planet experiences some sort of apocalyptic event in the future – possibly nuclear, given the radiation of the Upside Down – and that the ensuing wasteland breeds the deadly monsters seen in Stranger Things. It’s got] this super annoying sound I never thought to do anything with until Stranger Things,” he admits. “When you slide it, it's really stuttery and chittery ... But it's not so unusual for people in the sound world because a lot of creature sounds come from non-animal sources like woods creaking, threshing.”

Several major storylines were wrapped up at the end of Stranger Things season 3, but others had just begun. The Hawkins portal to the Upside Down was closed, a powerless Eleven left Hawkins with Joyce and Will Byers, and Jim Hopper – presumed dead – was imprisoned in Siberia. It would make sense for Stranger Things season 4 to focus on the discovery and rescue of Hopper and Eleven’s quest to regain her powers, but the teaser trailers have also pointed to some new mysterious and horrors lying in wait in Hawkins itself. That was really just sourcing together a lot of different planes. We were going for these old World War I and World War II planes,” says the lead sound effects editor. The biggest element to its success was the noise of a failing Intertia Starter, which audiences most likely associate with the Millennium Falcon in the Star Wars films. Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) is the member of the show’s core group who is hunted by Vecna. Courtesy of Netflix

Set in 1986, the hit Netflix mystery adventure series brings the 1980s to life — the perfect partner for the ever-popular, iconic Casio models that debuted in that iconic era. Palazzo also played a major role in building the sound of the Demobats inhabiting the Upside Down. These pesky creatures can often be found congregating above the corrupted version of the Creel House where Vecna has set up shop. It's all out on the table,” Palazzo explains of the cinematic inspirations. “That's what's so much fun about this show, especially for someone like me, because I was 15-years-old in 1986. I'm just the same age as those kids and I was like, ‘This is Uber nostalgic for me.’ Part of the fun is these references and the nostalgia.” Palazzo’s proudest achievement on Season 4 came in the form of the beat-up propellor plane flown by Yuri (Nikola Đuričko), an eccentric Russian smuggler who takes Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Murray (Brett Gelman) deep behind the Iron Curtain as part of a mission to rescue Hopper (David Harbour) from a Soviet prison.Bower put hours into crafting the right voice, which the sound team then took over in editing. “This voice has to hit a certain way coming out of speakers that makes everyone think: I know this bad guy. He’s going to be relentless and in my brain any time he speaks or is around.” Netflix series "Stranger Things" is a global hit series a mystery adventure set in the 1980s small town of Hawkins, Indiana. In 1983, a young boy vanishes into thin air from a sleepy midwest town. As friends, family, and local police search for answers, they are drawn into an extraordinary mystery involving top secret experiments, terrifying supernatural forces, and one very strange little girl. This iconic series by The Duffer Brothers is a love letter to the 80s classics that captivated a generation, all four seasons are now streaming on Netflix.