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After working on this tirelessly for 18 months —including 240 main unit shooting days —cinematographer Caleb Heymann finally has a moment to breathe. “Crafting this monster of a final season was like making eight feature films all at once, and somehow managed to exceed the scale and scope of season 4,” he says.
Set in the fall of 1987, Stranger Things 5 picks
up after more than a year after the events of Season 4, which ended with the
series villain, Vecna, opening the gate to the Upside Down and the show’s core
cast reunited in Hawkins.
With the final chapters arriving just after Christmas, RedShark
down with Heymann to talk about the visual strategy behind Stranger
Things’ most ambitious season yet.
Unifying a World of 361 Sets
From the show’s earliest episodes to the present, Stranger
Things has distinguished itself through its vast geography — basements,
forests, labs, attics, small-town homes, and other-dimensional nightmares.
“One of the unique aspects this season was the sheer scope
of locations,” says Heymann, who joined the show’s second unit on S3 and shot
the majority of S4, returns to the acclaimed series as Director of Photography
for Episodes 1, 2, 4, 7, and 8 of the final season. “We had a
balance of stage builds and real locations, with 361 sets across Volume 1 and
2. As you can imagine, that’s a lot to manage.”
To keep it cohesive there are certain lighting approaches
and aesthetic choices that creators Matt and Ross Duffer and Heymann
gravitate toward. “Specific lenses, tight eyelines, intentional camera
movement, and a consistent sense of contrast.
“The show uses very bold camera movement, but always with
intentionality. Those choices become part of the visual signature of the show
from season to season, and also from location to location.
“As a DP, there are also colour temperatures I prefer, often
incorporating warmed tungsten tones. Within each location, I try to find the
colour palette that complements what the art team has created, while still
feeling realistic and grounded.”
For example, the Squawk basement — which was a new set —
incorporated a mix of uncorrected fluorescent light, daylight from the window
(which changes colour temperature depending on time of day or emotional tone),
and tungsten projectors. “We used those motivated light sources as a base, and
then built colour contrast and mood around them. Location scouting follows a
similar logic. We look at what the sun is doing, whether a scene could work as
a sunset or a blue-hour moment, and how those natural cues can help define the
tone.”
RedShark: Am I right in saying that Skip Kimball has been
the colourist throughout?
Caleb Heymann: Yes — and that consistency has been
invaluable. And yes, we use a single show LUT. We had one main LUT for the
season, with a high-contrast and low-contrast version because we often operated
without a DIT, which is pretty wild for a show of this scale. We also had a
separate LUT for the mindscape/memory-world scenes, which we wanted to feel
more poppy, colourful, and Technicolor-inspired.
Using a single LUT keeps the number of variables limited —
it’s a bit like working with one film stock and learning its characteristics,
including how it handles under- or over-exposure. Most of the colour choices
are done in-camera through the lighting.
The camera package has evolved season to season beginning
with RED Dragon (S1) and Leitz Summilux-C lenses, moving to Helium (S2), large
format Monstro in RED’s DSMC2 8K VV (S3) and then transitioning to ARRI Alexa
LF on S4. What were your decisions this time?
We tested cameras at the start of the season and chose the
Alexa 35 for its exceptional ability to handle highlights without unpleasant
clipping. You can go nine or ten stops over and still retain naturalistic
roll-off, very much like the human eye. It allowed us to be bolder with
lighting — for example, blasting hard light through windows without worrying
about harsh digital clipping.
On the low-exposure end, the 3200 Enhanced Sensitivity mode
opened creative options as well — not for lack of light, but because in some
action sequences we wanted greater depth of field. With the amount of camera
movement in the show, depth of field becomes a practical concern for focus
pullers.
The Alexa 35 also aligns better with the aesthetic period
the show references — the 1980s — when Super 35 was the standard. The sensor
size felt right for the homage.
For lenses, we primarily used Cooke S4s. We also carried
Optimo zooms to match, and MasterBuilt Classics for shots requiring T1.4 or
when we wanted more dramatic flares from flashlights. The S4s render faces
beautifully and have a subtle character without overly aggressive flares, which
was important since we had many bright practical lights in-frame, plus heavy
VFX integration.
Season 4 used rehoused vintage Canon FD lenses, which look
great but can be challenging for focus pulling — something we didn’t want to
battle with during the big action sequences this year.
How did you use Unreal Engine for designing the lighting
for the Military Access Zone (Max-Z) and why?
We mainly used Unreal Engine as a planning tool — to
communicate with art department, grip and electric, and production. The Max-Z
was a huge set, and Unreal helped us determine how many lifts we needed, how
tall they needed to be, how many blue screens were required, and where they
should go.
We could drop into the virtual set with a 21mm or 24mm lens
and see our expected angles, then assess how many actors might drift off blue,
or whether an 80-foot or 120-foot Condor was needed. It was extremely helpful
for early logistical planning.
Lighting was mostly handled via pre-lighting and the
advanced 3D lighting models generated by gaffer Stephen Grum and his team. The fixtures team led by Joshua
Earles-Bennet built us custom flashlights and outfitted dozens of vehicles with
headlights that we could remotely dim and flicker. The Max-Z also had hundreds
of custom practical fixtures — all flickering, all individually controlled —
including headlights, brake lights, gun-mounted lights, and base lighting. It
was an enormous undertaking.
This season is essentially eight feature-length episodes.
You’ve described only a fraction of the complexity — it seems like a scale that
very few DPs ever encounter. Was managing that scale the primary challenge, and
how did you handle it?
Thankfully, we’d had a similar challenge with Season 4,
which was also supersized — over 12 hours of runtime — and shot under COVID
restrictions. So we knew what we were stepping into.
As a DP, you learn to switch modes depending on what’s
immediately in front of you. It’s a kind of triage: detailed planning for
what’s shooting soon, simultaneous long-term planning for the big sequences
further out, and early conceptual planning for sets even further away.
I use mood boards extensively for each location, and
spreadsheets to track every scene — including camera notes, lighting notes, and
specialty gear. Each episode has its own stills gallery from dailies, which
allows us to maintain visual continuity even if we haven’t revisited a location
for months. This also helps the second unit and the alternating DP (Brett
Jutkiewicz) stay aligned.
Did you reference any 1980s films when developing the
look of this season?
Yes, many smaller references — individual stills or frames
that contribute to a larger mood board for each location. But in terms of major
influences: Alien and Aliens were big ones. The sequences in the
upside-down military base drew heavily on the lighting texture and bold, alive
quality of the lighting in those films. The Duffers are huge fans — the day I
pitched “going full Aliens” for the end of Ep. 4, Matt happened to be
wearing an Alien T-shirt, so that sealed the deal.
Without revealing plot, can you tease what we can expect
visually and emotionally in the final episodes?
Each episode has its own visual arc — something that builds
toward a crescendo. The entire four-episode volume also has an arc, with
Episode 4 reaching one of the boldest visual peaks of the season. We’ve
attempted to do something similar for Volume 2.
There’s a lot of action, but we also worked hard to balance
the epic scale with intimate, emotional moments for the cast — to give them
space to shine. We shaped the lighting and atmosphere on set to support those
performances. I’m excited for people to see it.
Arriving on Netflix soon: Volume 2 (Episodes 5-7):
December 25, 2025 and Series Finale on New Year’s Eve.
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