Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey thereon
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the tech
Speaker 1: are you?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: Yesterday we published an episode called Lighting Up the Holidays
Speaker 1: that originally published back in twenty nineteen. Today, I'm going
Speaker 1: to do one from twenty seventeen. This is a rerun
Speaker 1: of an episode called The Tech of Stranger Things. It's
Speaker 1: still somewhat thematic because we have a discussion about holiday
Speaker 1: lights in this episode as well. Jess Royle and John
Speaker 1: Hilton were guests on this episode. Both of them had
Speaker 1: worked on the set of Stranger Things, and yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a great discussion about the technical issues that go
Speaker 1: on to making a show like Stranger Things work, particularly
Speaker 1: a show that's set in an earlier era, that being
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, and trying to make sure that everything
Speaker 1: feels genuine. It's actually tricky because, as you are aware,
Speaker 1: most of us don't hold on to our technology for
Speaker 1: that long. Making sure we have the right tech is tricky. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this episode The Tech of Stranger Things,
Speaker 1: which originally published October twenty fifth, twenty seventeen. I have
Speaker 1: to thank my two special guests who have joined me
Speaker 1: for this episode of Tech Stuff, Jess and John, who
Speaker 1: both have worked on multiple projects, but the one we're
Speaker 1: talking about specifically today is the Netflix series Stranger Things,
Speaker 1: a show that I binged immediately when the first season
Speaker 1: came out and fell in love with it, not just
Speaker 1: because I recognized some of the people in it, but
Speaker 1: because it really felt to me like it didn't feel
Speaker 1: like a show set in the nineteen eighties. It felt
Speaker 1: like a show that was made in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: and somehow disappeared and then resurfaced twenty years later, and
Speaker 1: it's it's so evocative, and I wanted to have both
Speaker 1: of you on to talk about your roles in making
Speaker 1: this show what it was. So we're gonna talk today
Speaker 1: about sort of the tech side, the behind the scenes
Speaker 1: side of making a show and the work that you
Speaker 1: do and how that ends up contributing to this overall
Speaker 1: effect whatever the show may be or the movie, whatever
Speaker 1: the project is. In this case, we're talking about something
Speaker 1: that is a period piece. But you know, obviously there
Speaker 1: are other ones where you have a very different feel
Speaker 1: for whatever the project is. So I'm going to start
Speaker 1: with you, John, John, you are rigging gaffer.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 1: Tell listeners who have seen I'm sure the term gaffer
Speaker 1: in the credits what that means, because I think I
Speaker 1: think a lot of folks just don't know.
Speaker 3: The gaffer is just a department head that's in charge
Speaker 3: of the electrical so electrical distribution and lighting. I think
Speaker 3: the term comes from old man. Yeah, he was the
Speaker 3: old man on the crew. He's in charge of the lighting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They have a the term gaffer in and lord
Speaker 1: of the rings. Actually, Sam Wise Gamgee's father is called
Speaker 1: the old gaffer. I say that because of my Lord
Speaker 1: of the rings geek. So what are your responsibilities.
Speaker 2: Typically on a shoot as a ring gaffer?
Speaker 3: I provide the power to the set and any any
Speaker 3: lighting that we can get up before beforehand before photography,
Speaker 3: We'll get that done as well.
Speaker 1: Cool, So you are making sure that all the stuff
Speaker 1: that needs to work is actually going to work. Yes,
Speaker 1: an important role on any production. And how did you
Speaker 1: get your start in the business known as show I was.
Speaker 3: A nanny for a director of photography in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: eight the summer of ninety eight, and I watched his
Speaker 3: kids during a summer and after at the end of summer,
Speaker 3: he had me tag along with him to go work
Speaker 3: on a film. And after the film, he was.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, you'd be great at this. You should move
Speaker 2: to LA I got my friends.
Speaker 3: They can hook you up at a camera rental house
Speaker 3: and you can do that for a little while. And
Speaker 3: I was like, I don't want to do that. I
Speaker 3: want to move to New York City and be a bum.
Speaker 3: So I didn't get into it right away. I was
Speaker 3: a maintenance man in an apartment complex and all my
Speaker 3: tools were stolen.
Speaker 2: Oh why, And I was like, I'll go work on
Speaker 2: movies now.
Speaker 1: A secure circuitus rude to get there. So did you
Speaker 1: have a background in electrical work before you even got
Speaker 1: into the movie?
Speaker 2: A little bit?
Speaker 3: And I've done like my dad does HVAC, So I
Speaker 3: kind of dabbled on that and doing the whole and
Speaker 3: it's for apartment complex thing. I kind of understood electrical systems, right.
Speaker 1: So you then take that understanding and you start pouring
Speaker 1: it over to the production side, where I imagine it's.
Speaker 2: A a fairly.
Speaker 1: Strenuous process to make sure everything is how it needs
Speaker 1: to be because Obviously, any time on any set is money,
Speaker 1: So anything that takes extra time is going to cost
Speaker 1: the whole production extra amounts of money. So I mentioned
Speaker 1: this a fairly high stress environment.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't get a lot of sleep. I always
Speaker 3: called Jesse workaholic, but really it's me. I do it
Speaker 3: all at home. She doesn't see it.
Speaker 1: It's fair now, Jess, you you were a set decorator.
Speaker 1: Are still our sex decorator for Stranger Things. Also, congratulations
Speaker 1: on getting an Emmy nomination for that work.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. This first time I think I've ever sat
Speaker 1: down onto the table with an Emmy nominee.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's It's a big moment for me. It's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So let's talk about what that means. What
Speaker 1: does what is actually set decorator on a set?
Speaker 5: So I work under the production designer, and the production
Speaker 5: designer kind of sets the look like, helps pick locations
Speaker 5: and then you know, has a lot of references and
Speaker 5: different things as far as the minutia of how a
Speaker 5: set comes together. There's an art director who kind of
Speaker 5: oversees more of the construction end of things, and then
Speaker 5: everything from like those four walls. For the most part,
Speaker 5: I kind of deal with so light fixtures and you know,
Speaker 5: carpet and sofas and electronics and all the garbage and
Speaker 5: some sets and piles up in the clutter.
Speaker 4: That's my specialty.
Speaker 1: So when a when the art department has said, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we've got this idea for what the the feel for
Speaker 1: this particular set needs to be. Uh, it's your job
Speaker 1: to go and actually procure all that, put it all together,
Speaker 1: make sure that it's matching the vision for whatever that
Speaker 1: idea was. Right, Yes, And on a production that's a
Speaker 1: period piece, I imagine that also involves lots of hunting
Speaker 1: around for really obscure and obsolete stuff.
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 5: I spend a lot of time and I always tell
Speaker 5: everyone dead ladies, basements of state sales. I'm always like
Speaker 5: emptying out the leftovers of houses, you know, after a
Speaker 5: state sales over and you know, and Stranger Things is
Speaker 5: one of those weird shows, especially where everything's a little
Speaker 5: bit interactive kind of which is why that's why I
Speaker 5: wanted John to be here, because he's I think he
Speaker 5: sold himself short a little bit as far as like
Speaker 5: just preparing or providing power to a set because we
Speaker 5: had so many interactive elements, you know, lights and otherwise
Speaker 5: that kind of had to be period and had to
Speaker 5: be functional and do a bunch of different things.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a good example that would be, of course,
Speaker 1: the Christmas lights make play a huge role in that
Speaker 1: season of Stranger Things. I mean, it's a communications device,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how many of my listeners know this.
Speaker 1: Christmas lights don't work that way. Typically, you have them
Speaker 1: all rigged up so that if one goes out, they
Speaker 1: all tend to go out, especially the period ones. So
Speaker 1: getting them so that they very they light up in
Speaker 1: very specific ways probably meant a little bit of rewiring
Speaker 1: work and a little bit of rigging things in an
Speaker 1: interesting way so that you could get to do it
Speaker 1: on command. That was such an important integral part of
Speaker 1: the storyline. I remember.
Speaker 3: I remember when they came and asked me. They were
Speaker 3: walking through the buyer's house set. It was Chris and
Speaker 3: Jess and Todd, and they were like, we want to
Speaker 3: make each light go off and individually. Is it possible?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: And I turned around and I walked back in my
Speaker 3: little office and I was like, oh no, how am
Speaker 3: I going to make this?
Speaker 1: For like technically yes, it's possible. Practical not really, So
Speaker 1: how did you go about solving that problem?
Speaker 2: I just started scribbling a lot and locked my door.
Speaker 3: And just trying to figure out how to get lights
Speaker 3: to go on and off individually, which means the way
Speaker 3: had to build individual strands of lights. So I ended up,
Speaker 3: I guess it's kind of low tech. We're kind of
Speaker 3: getting a low tech as possible. So I ended up
Speaker 3: using Cat five cable and taking all the different strands
Speaker 3: and making them individual and soldering them into old Christmas
Speaker 3: lights that Jess would bring us Wow.
Speaker 1: So you were actually hand designing something so that you
Speaker 1: could achieve this effect in a practical approach. It's one
Speaker 1: of the other things, by the way, that I love
Speaker 1: about Stranger Things being I was born in the seventies,
Speaker 1: So seeing not just something that is set and appears
Speaker 1: to have been made in the eighties, but to rely
Speaker 1: so heavily upon practical effects that warms my heart because
Speaker 1: I grew up watching films that relied heavily on practical effects,
Speaker 1: and I think it is very important to get across
Speaker 1: that same feel in order to get the effect that
Speaker 1: you want and not rely too heavily on anything. That's
Speaker 1: computer generated. Not to dismiss computer generator, it certainly has
Speaker 1: a place in storytelling, but to me at least, and
Speaker 1: maybe this is my own bias, has it just has
Speaker 1: a different look in a different feel, you know, there's
Speaker 1: something genuine about practical effects.
Speaker 5: And not all of ours went. We had different test
Speaker 5: runs that the Duffers forward they kill if any of
Speaker 5: those videos ever got out. Some of the ones that
Speaker 5: didn't work as well, with like the monster coming through
Speaker 5: our latex we have you know, printed the wallpaper and
Speaker 5: stuff in the buyer's house onto latex. We had all
Speaker 5: these different tests we did with various you know, slimy
Speaker 5: substances and things on. Anyway, they didn't all It took
Speaker 5: a while to kind of get that just tweaked, you know,
Speaker 5: just right right the face.
Speaker 1: Like kind of pushing through the surface of the wall.
Speaker 5: And originally they had him breaking through the wall entirely.
Speaker 5: They're trying to do it all practical, and I think
Speaker 5: it's nice to have technology options where VFX could just
Speaker 5: take what we did and really enhance it.
Speaker 1: And you know, right yeah, eventually you get to a
Speaker 1: point where you just say, you know, physics just doesn't
Speaker 1: work that way. Yeah, I like, I appreciate where you're
Speaker 1: trying to go with this. Yeah, I love that there
Speaker 1: was a latex approach a practical approach with that too,
Speaker 1: because I mean I also, full disclosure, my sister's a puppeteer,
Speaker 1: so I see the puppeteer side of sort of this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff all the time. And to appreciate practical
Speaker 1: effects where you're using something like a latex sheet and
Speaker 1: you're using some form of whether it's an actor, a mask,
Speaker 1: a puppet, or whatever, to create that effect. I mean,
Speaker 1: there is something really visceral and the textures are really impressive.
Speaker 1: It's something that goes again beyond just that, Oh, that's
Speaker 1: a very clever animation, and also that just shows a
Speaker 1: level of care that you know, you have to have
Speaker 1: all of that work back behind the scenes to get
Speaker 1: that effect to happen on screen. That is happening in
Speaker 1: real time somewhere. It's not a bunch of people staring
Speaker 1: at a green wall pretending that they see something that
Speaker 1: is really effective and then having to react to nothing
Speaker 1: at all. They actually have stuff to react to in
Speaker 1: those practical effects. I am not an actor that's good
Speaker 1: enough to react to a green screen and make that
Speaker 1: at all convincing. I need to have some sort of
Speaker 1: monster thing coming at me so that I can really,
Speaker 1: you know, be somewhat convincing in my response.
Speaker 5: And The Christmas Lives is the same thing, because we
Speaker 5: you know, I think it looked a lot more authentic
Speaker 5: and better to have it practical. But even there's like
Speaker 5: the scene where Holly the young Wheeler daughters like following
Speaker 5: the Christmas lights down the hallway, and I think if
Speaker 5: we didn't have all of those actually lighting up in
Speaker 5: her having that direction and sort of all the interaction
Speaker 5: you know with the lights and actors, it wouldn't have
Speaker 5: been the same.
Speaker 1: No, you wouldn't be able to get that tension. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great moment, So tell me also, I mean
Speaker 1: the Christmas lights. I think that's one of those that
Speaker 1: I that I definitely wanted to hit upon because it's
Speaker 1: a deceptively simple technology that ends up actually requiring thinking
Speaker 1: outside the box in order to get the effect they wanted,
Speaker 1: so requiring you to actually solder things.
Speaker 2: Weeks weeks weeks of soldering.
Speaker 1: Wow, So if you had to estimate, like how many
Speaker 1: weeks are you talking about for that, just to make
Speaker 1: sure you could get that effect to work properly.
Speaker 2: It was two two weeks.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's a lot of work to get
Speaker 1: Christmas lights the light up.
Speaker 3: I think we only built out of the twenty that
Speaker 3: we were going to build, we only built seventeen because
Speaker 3: that's all we had time to do on top of
Speaker 3: everything else that we had to do.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 5: Because then they would so they would solder these little strands,
Speaker 5: you know, onto the sockets, and then we had it
Speaker 5: involved me going back to props the lights that Joyce
Speaker 5: originally buys at Melvald's Props. I guess it just sort
Speaker 5: of had newer lights in the box and wasn't really
Speaker 5: thinking about the bigger picture. So we had to go
Speaker 5: back and have switched those out for the older strands
Speaker 5: that have like the green and red twisted.
Speaker 4: Sort of look right so that we could.
Speaker 5: That that was the easiest thing for us to copy.
Speaker 5: So they would finish soldering and then we would paint
Speaker 5: them green and red and twist them all together.
Speaker 4: You know. So there's like a whole there's a whole
Speaker 4: collaborative effort.
Speaker 1: Serious continuity right there making sure that like because I mean,
Speaker 1: I see a lot of movies where clearly that that
Speaker 1: level of care was not quite take and you'll look
Speaker 1: at something and think like, that's not even the same
Speaker 1: prop as what he was holding a second ago. So
Speaker 1: having that kind of level of detail is really cool.
Speaker 1: So I assumed there was someone just like actually just
Speaker 1: manually operating those lights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for all those sequences, we had our dimmer board
Speaker 2: operator Jim and doornoman uh huh. He programmed all that.
Speaker 1: And operate in real Tumbrad in real time. Wow.
Speaker 5: He's another one of my heroes too, because these guys,
Speaker 5: because it wasn't because the Christmas lights were one thing.
Speaker 5: And then there's also like the scene with the lamps
Speaker 5: in the bedroom and Winona having to you know, bring
Speaker 5: I guess we never had a scene. At first they
Speaker 5: were going to show her like bringing all the lamps
Speaker 5: in and setting them up.
Speaker 4: And that was going to be like a whole other nightmare.
Speaker 5: But once they were sort of you know, they are
Speaker 5: just getting those programmed right to do that effect. Jim
Speaker 5: stayed late with me one night and just like we did,
Speaker 5: you know, kept practicing and getting all that down.
Speaker 1: So see, to me, that's really cool because it's not
Speaker 1: just technical. It's it's a level of performance. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're playing effectively another character in the scene, and so
Speaker 1: you know, there's all the timing that's required in that
Speaker 1: to and again to get what the director wants in
Speaker 1: order for that to have the emotional and psychological impact
Speaker 1: on the viewer, which, by the way, credibly effective.
Speaker 2: Because I loved it.
Speaker 1: So you know, my hat's off to you, because I
Speaker 1: occasionally am a performer, but I couldn't do any of
Speaker 1: the rest of it, whereas you guys are doing all
Speaker 1: of that. So I'm really I'm really impressed. I assume
Speaker 1: that it's is pretty tricky outfitting entire sets with nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties era carbeting, furniture, the technology in particular, because we're
Speaker 1: not so far removed from the nineteen eighties that we
Speaker 1: think of those things as antiques. So therefore there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of work and preserve preserving them, but we're
Speaker 1: far enough out where nobody wants to hold onto them anymore.
Speaker 1: So was was that a challenge to you to find
Speaker 1: things that could incorporate that could live in that early
Speaker 1: eighties setting?
Speaker 5: Not as hard as you would think, I think, mostly
Speaker 5: just because thank God for State sales and Atlanta being
Speaker 5: a good a state sales city. I've worked in other
Speaker 5: cities where you just don't you know, they just don't
Speaker 5: operate like that, you know. I don't know how people
Speaker 5: get rid of their stuff after they've passed. I don't know,
Speaker 5: but Atlanta is good about it. There are other like
Speaker 5: I've done other movies. I did a movie that it
Speaker 5: was a news station set in the seventies, and that's
Speaker 5: one of those like there's already not a ton of
Speaker 5: like news broadcast station equipment out there, not like you know,
Speaker 5: old Nintendos and things, but and then it.
Speaker 4: Was so fragile.
Speaker 5: It was sort of that like just that first wave
Speaker 5: of like electronic technology and the old analog stuff from
Speaker 5: like the fifties was you can get that kind of stuff,
Speaker 5: but that's but getting stuff that worked that was That's
Speaker 5: sort of that. That first generation plastic electronic disposable almost
Speaker 5: like technologies was harder. But fortunately for you know, Sears
Speaker 5: catalog days, a lot of Americans all had the same stuff,
Speaker 5: and enough people held onto it her pack rats that
Speaker 5: we could kind of curate and go through and find
Speaker 5: everything we needed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I went to a panel with the art director
Speaker 1: from Stranger Things, and he talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: the process of identifying the different the different types of
Speaker 1: fabrics and the different color schemes that were going to
Speaker 1: be important, and how you know, certain certain houses were
Speaker 1: going to look like they were more of a holdover
Speaker 1: from maybe the mid to late seventies and some were
Speaker 1: a little bit more modern in the sense of the
Speaker 1: early eighties. And and that also was really interesting to me,
Speaker 1: this idea of you know, you're not just you're not
Speaker 1: just creating creating a huge pile of stuff from a
Speaker 1: general era. You actually have to give each of these
Speaker 1: places its own personality.
Speaker 5: Well that's yeah, there is a I tell people the
Speaker 5: story that one of our accountants came to me after
Speaker 5: we were like up and filming the first week or
Speaker 5: so on stage, and she said, you know, Jess, I
Speaker 5: saw your sets. They look really great, but gosh, like
Speaker 5: is this this is the eighties and they look very
Speaker 5: seventies to me? And I was, you know, and it's
Speaker 5: one of those like not every socioeconomic group is going
Speaker 5: to just instantly have you know, the late eighties. Yeah,
Speaker 5: from like that series catalog that year. It's all it's
Speaker 5: more of a you know, when did they build the house,
Speaker 5: When would they have you know, renovated or what's there?
Speaker 5: You know, did they have the means to update the carpet, wallpaper, whatever,
Speaker 5: And kind of have to just think it through each
Speaker 5: character having its own sort of storyline with their home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, keeping everything consistent. I mean that is clearly very
Speaker 1: important if you want to establish things, like, you know,
Speaker 1: a believable character. It would be weird to go into
Speaker 1: a home of a person who was presumably just scraping
Speaker 1: by and you see what appears to be a brand
Speaker 1: new Apple two gs in the background. You're like, that's
Speaker 1: a couple of grand Where did they get that money
Speaker 1: for that?
Speaker 2: They?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So was there anything in particular that you either of
Speaker 1: you that you think was really interesting or really cool? Uh,
Speaker 1: something that you had not anticipated? Uh that you know,
Speaker 1: that's like your go to, Like, you know, if people
Speaker 1: were asking you, what was it, like, You're like, well,
Speaker 1: let me tell you this particular thing that I was
Speaker 1: really excited about, whether it was something that turned out
Speaker 1: the way you expected at the beginning or something that
Speaker 1: completely went a different direction.
Speaker 3: Getting getting invited back to season two, that was that's good.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 1: I think if you were able to take all of
Speaker 1: those Christmas lights and make them light up individually, that's
Speaker 1: a really good start.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I don't.
Speaker 5: I mean that's what I was thrilled to be here
Speaker 5: today and asked John to come too, because for me,
Speaker 5: that sort of like collaborative overlap my thing. And he
Speaker 5: knows as well. Is it like today in film, Like
Speaker 5: everyone loves led lights lighting, even if they're trying to
Speaker 5: make even if it is like period or they want
Speaker 5: it to look you know, period, they still kind of
Speaker 5: fall back on LEDs because they're easier to control and sure,
Speaker 5: and I kind of hate them, so I mean, I'm
Speaker 5: coming around to some of them, but anyway to have them,
Speaker 5: to have our electrical department have the patients to kind
Speaker 5: of like really do it right and work with the
Speaker 5: older technology, and you know that that was a it
Speaker 5: was a long process.
Speaker 2: But the fluorescent fixtures lots.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's another.
Speaker 3: Fluorescence because they're period of course, and hardly anyone stocks
Speaker 3: fluorescent ballast. We had to replace hundreds of ballasts well
Speaker 3: in high schools and Melvolves and all over Georgia we
Speaker 3: replaced ballast.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a big undertaking that was awful. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it pays off on screen because it does give you
Speaker 1: that like like that's why it feels like it was
Speaker 1: made in the eighties, is because it has all of
Speaker 1: this love and care behind it, and you can see
Speaker 1: that rolling out through other projects that are clearly following
Speaker 1: that same philosophy. I mean, Stephen King's it coming out, like,
Speaker 1: I think the look of it owes an awful lot
Speaker 1: to Stranger Things. It has a very similar kind of
Speaker 1: feel to it for that Segod. I mean, it's amazing
Speaker 1: to me that they went ahead and decided to set
Speaker 1: the adult story in modern day, which conveniently made the
Speaker 1: children's story set in the eighties, and so there are
Speaker 1: a lot of parallels there. But it's funny because of
Speaker 1: course Stranger Things also, you could tell has a little
Speaker 1: bit of the influence of Stephen King is certainly in
Speaker 1: the Stranger Things universe as well, So it's all kind
Speaker 1: of feeding in on itself. It's a collaborative and cooperative
Speaker 1: as well as competitive process. I'm sure. So were there
Speaker 1: any particular sets that you really liked working on or
Speaker 1: any that you really did not like working on?
Speaker 5: I don't, John, I probably will have different responses. But
Speaker 5: I mean the buyer's house is one of the I
Speaker 5: tell everyone, it's like its own sort of character that
Speaker 5: we had. You know, it's at least we shot it
Speaker 5: in a for the most part, chronological order, because we
Speaker 5: really literally destroyed it completely as we went and you know,
Speaker 5: Joyce ripping things apart and monsters smashing things. And I
Speaker 5: will say it was it was towards the end of
Speaker 5: it when all the Christmas lights were up and like
Speaker 5: half pulled down, and it was an absolute nightmare for
Speaker 5: the shooting crew. I mean for a boom operator to
Speaker 5: operate in that setting was just like it's uh, you know,
Speaker 5: it's everyone was getting like tangled and it was. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it was truly like a it was a it was
Speaker 5: kind of fun to watch it progress, but it was
Speaker 5: a it took a lot of patience. They're not not
Speaker 5: every shooting crew be cut out to kind of handle
Speaker 5: that that setting.
Speaker 3: My least favorite was the high school because we had
Speaker 3: again we had to go in and replace every fluorescent,
Speaker 3: most of the ballast in there. And then towards the
Speaker 3: end of it, when they had the scene with Eleven
Speaker 3: and the monster, everything starts to go crazy and flickers
Speaker 3: we had to take everything out and we reinstalled our
Speaker 3: own LED strips throughout the school so it could make
Speaker 3: everything flicker on and off.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of work, a lot of work.
Speaker 5: And it wasn't even just led twobs. It was like
Speaker 5: they were soldering again. I just would see that, you know,
Speaker 5: you guys were.
Speaker 3: On location soldering in some old classroom.
Speaker 5: Putting LED strips in like twobs or whatever you were doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was well, what was what was it like
Speaker 1: working in Uh? Did they the facility? Wasn't that set
Speaker 1: in an old building in the emery?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Hawkins Lab.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how was that experience?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 4: I'm you know, there are a lot of shows that
Speaker 4: film there.
Speaker 5: I feel like we were still in the early wave
Speaker 5: of like some of the shows that were like really
Speaker 5: working on all the different floors and stuff. So like
Speaker 5: especially John and having to go up and put you know,
Speaker 5: move ceiling tiles out of the way to run cable
Speaker 5: and stuff. Is like you're for the first time in
Speaker 5: forty years, you know, you.
Speaker 1: Were you were you were the explorer that everyone else
Speaker 1: got the.
Speaker 2: Benefit we found.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, for people who don't know, can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the building itself? Where the Hawkins
Speaker 1: Lab was because I think, you know, again, everyone sees
Speaker 1: it in the show, but they don't know what the
Speaker 1: actual space was. They might just think, oh, was that
Speaker 1: just a set on a studio, and in fact that
Speaker 1: parts of it at least were very much in a
Speaker 1: real building here in Atlanta.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I will say, like when we were first when
Speaker 5: the Duffers were first here and we were going to
Speaker 5: you know, film Stranger Things in Atlanta, and full disclosure,
Speaker 5: I sometimes location scout when I'm not decorating.
Speaker 4: It's like my secret job.
Speaker 5: So so I was doing a lot of the like
Speaker 5: early scouting, trying to figure out what Hawkins Lab was
Speaker 5: going to be and how undercover and small it was
Speaker 5: going to be or how big and you know.
Speaker 4: Just what the look was going to be. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: I did. We didn't all agree.
Speaker 5: I felt like that building a memory with its metal
Speaker 5: facade and kind of craziness on the outside, was a
Speaker 5: little like ostentatious for a secret sort of government facility.
Speaker 5: But anyway, but they loved. I mean, it is a
Speaker 5: pretty impressive building and it's very distinct, and what they
Speaker 5: did with it in posts like putting the satellites and
Speaker 5: stuff on top it made it all kind of work.
Speaker 5: But yeah, it's a it's on Briarcliff here in Atlanta,
Speaker 5: and it's an old mental hospital and uh yeah, so
Speaker 5: it's truly creepy. It's not everything works in there anymore.
Speaker 5: Powers like kind of like hit or miss in some areas,
Speaker 5: and a lot of leaks and things, lots of leaks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it must have been a tough one to
Speaker 1: work in as well, John, did you do you have
Speaker 1: a lot of challenges going through all that.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just like that place they just stopped
Speaker 3: one day and everyone left and then people came in
Speaker 3: behind them and trashed the place. So there's broken glass everywhere,
Speaker 3: there were needles everywhere, and just trying to figure out what,
Speaker 3: like how to power how does this light come on?
Speaker 3: Where you have to trace it all the way down
Speaker 3: sometimes in the floor underneath you or the sub floor
Speaker 3: underneath you.
Speaker 2: It was definitely a challenge.
Speaker 1: Wow, So I'm sure that was one of the more
Speaker 1: difficult ones to actually to power make sure that everything
Speaker 1: was working properly. Yeah. I saw the pictures of sort
Speaker 1: of the before and after during one of those presentations, and.
Speaker 2: It was really.
Speaker 1: Really alarming. Actually, there was a shot that was just
Speaker 1: down a hallway and it was possibly the most creepy
Speaker 1: looking photograph I had seen in a really long time.
Speaker 5: Well, the one thing I will say is that we'd
Speaker 5: every intention when we first started of shooting like the
Speaker 5: the sort of rift lab in Hawkins, like where the
Speaker 5: tank and everything is. That was the tunnels leading up
Speaker 5: to that and the opening scene where he's like getting
Speaker 5: off the elevator and everything. We were going to do
Speaker 5: that at Emory, which is they actually have these like
Speaker 5: underground tunnels that are that are.
Speaker 4: It's pretty bad. I don't even know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like asbestos and all these like crazy you know,
Speaker 5: it's just it's dark there hasn't empowered down there forever.
Speaker 5: And so at the last minute, I think they'd done
Speaker 5: these like air quality tests and stuff, and they finally
Speaker 5: said there's okay, this is great. The texture is great,
Speaker 5: it's authentic, but we like, really we cannot film down here.
Speaker 5: So we ended up copying the general look of it
Speaker 5: on our stage, and we built a series of tunnels
Speaker 5: that were a lot more easy to control from a
Speaker 5: lighting standpoint and every other aspects, right.
Speaker 1: And you don't have to worry about breathing in Carcinogenic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we do that.
Speaker 5: I feel like the like John and I and our
Speaker 5: crews that are there you know beforehand, so early working
Speaker 5: on places, especially those guys with like the ceiling tiles
Speaker 5: are the hidden that's what is above those is uh
Speaker 5: the real you know, there's yeah.
Speaker 1: There's there's a whole treasure trove of exactly. Yeah, exciting.
Speaker 5: So we deal with the worst of it and then
Speaker 5: I think shooting crew has a little better time.
Speaker 4: By the time they get in there, it's all been
Speaker 4: cleaned up a little bit.
Speaker 1: And then of course then you have you know, the
Speaker 1: very pampered people to actors, that's fantastic that they complain
Speaker 1: a little bit about it being a little chilly outside.
Speaker 2: Like listen, when we came here.
Speaker 1: There was no power, water was coming in, and there
Speaker 1: were rats everywhere.
Speaker 5: So there's some sets like in season two which you know,
Speaker 5: who can kind of leave everyone to sort of experience
Speaker 5: later this month, but it's there is an arcade and
Speaker 5: just know, like when we finish all this, I'll show
Speaker 5: you the photos. But the before was like an old laundromat,
Speaker 5: dry cleaner place that had been sold, closed down, leaky roof,
Speaker 5: all the same stuff the hoarder had taken it over
Speaker 5: and it was like to the ceiling with like mattresses
Speaker 5: and diapers and like whatever garbage. And so that process
Speaker 5: was another good one. We've had a lot stranger things.
Speaker 5: Is like people who hear about our production. I feel
Speaker 5: like who also shoot in Atlanta are like who he
Speaker 5: see and kind of know what we started out with
Speaker 5: and then what the final product is are like why
Speaker 5: you know your show is like does the craziest Like
Speaker 5: we're willing to put up with a lot more, I
Speaker 5: think than a lot of other like productions, Hollywood productions
Speaker 5: that you know, would never touch some of the places
Speaker 5: that we go into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well again it pays off though, So I look
Speaker 1: forward to seeing those photos because of course, again growing
Speaker 1: up in the seventies and eighties, I have a lot
Speaker 1: of fond memories of arcades that you just you know,
Speaker 1: you very rarely encounter those kind of places these days.
Speaker 5: It's going to be another one of those like why
Speaker 5: would you put the effort into it? Like it's but
Speaker 5: it was just little architectural things about the building that
Speaker 5: we thought were kind of great and I don't know, well,
Speaker 5: every now.
Speaker 1: And then you run into one of those places where
Speaker 1: you're just like, well, everything inside here is is trashed,
Speaker 1: but it's so evocative of that particular thing you're trying
Speaker 1: to do that you know, I'm sure it becomes one
Speaker 1: of those debates that rages in your mind, like is
Speaker 1: it going to be worth the amount of effort it's
Speaker 1: going to take to get this place into shape? And
Speaker 1: if the answer is yes, then you just have to
Speaker 1: grit your teeth and go for it and and you know,
Speaker 1: get the work done.
Speaker 5: The library we had the Hawkins Library. Yeah, we another
Speaker 5: one of my really good ideas. There's a library in
Speaker 5: downtown East Point, Georgia that was it was like on
Speaker 5: the Places in Peril like Historic Preservation List.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 5: It was leaky roof same thing, you know, asbestos mold,
Speaker 5: tons of tons of mold. They had standing water in
Speaker 5: the basement for like two years. And we had the
Speaker 5: big idea to spend I don't know how much we
Speaker 5: spent there with like a full like mold remediation and
Speaker 5: abatement process. And then you know, John went in and
Speaker 5: fixed all the light fixtures, and we went in and
Speaker 5: put in you know, the bookcases, and I bought like
Speaker 5: twenty thousand books and library card catalogs, all that stuff
Speaker 5: just to you know, for really not at all much
Speaker 5: screen time, but you know, but you need a period
Speaker 5: library and you got to start somewhere. So we ended
Speaker 5: up actually donating I donated like the books and everything
Speaker 5: to the city eas point to stay intact there so
Speaker 5: it can. It kind of gets now rented out as
Speaker 5: a location for other productions, and that money kind of
Speaker 5: goes into keeping the building up and they fixed the
Speaker 5: roof and everything, so so it's cool.
Speaker 4: We saved it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's a little nice little by product of
Speaker 1: the production. It's not just not just that you're making
Speaker 1: amazing entertainment, but that you can actually benefit well. And
Speaker 1: again this gets outside of tech, but we hear it
Speaker 1: all the time. I mean, there's always the discussion about
Speaker 1: the benefits of the film and television business moving into
Speaker 1: any place. When you can hear about stories like that,
Speaker 1: you're like, that's something that I wouldn't necessarily have thought of,
Speaker 1: just from the fact that we're getting this influx of
Speaker 1: productions coming into Atlanta. For those who do not know,
Speaker 1: Atlanta is one of the cities in the United States
Speaker 1: that's really taking off when it comes to film and
Speaker 1: television and music video production.
Speaker 2: And you know.
Speaker 1: There's certain to a certain extent. Music video had been
Speaker 1: fairly big here for a while. Television some TV productions
Speaker 1: were shot in here. But we're seeing more and more
Speaker 1: film projects as well, largely because of the construction of
Speaker 1: the Pinewood Studio that's south of the city, and they're
Speaker 1: especially like just around the area that we're in right now.
Speaker 1: We're at Pont City Market in Atlanta. Around this general area,
Speaker 1: you can't go maybe a couple of miles in any
Speaker 1: direction before you start seeing signs for various productions. They're everywhere,
Speaker 1: and so we're actually seeing some of that benefit now
Speaker 1: where we're seeing, you know, communities potentially get the reuse
Speaker 1: of buildings that otherwise would have been remaining vacant. From
Speaker 1: a similar perspective, although this wasn't from a film production,
Speaker 1: the building we're in right now was largely vacant for decades.
Speaker 1: It was a Sears distribution center. Then for a while
Speaker 1: the city of Atlanta had about ten percent of this
Speaker 1: building and the other ninety percent was empty.
Speaker 4: I picked up many police reports and things here, yeah, on.
Speaker 3: The program, and you could get like art supplies and
Speaker 3: I used to come here and get art supplies.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to the point where if you were to walk
Speaker 1: around all the different offices here, first of all, they'd
Speaker 1: ask you to leave, but if you were to do that,
Speaker 1: you would probably see a lot of old equipment, Like
Speaker 1: we have an old turbine in our lobby, And it's
Speaker 1: because every office was given some of the pieces of
Speaker 1: equipment that had been used when this was a big
Speaker 1: distribution center for sears. I mean it was built right
Speaker 1: on the railroad. They would actually bring railroad cars into
Speaker 1: this place. So every office has some element of that
Speaker 1: worked into it. And it's again just one of those
Speaker 1: reminders of the history of the place that for decades
Speaker 1: went just completely unused. And this was literally just stuff
Speaker 1: that was piled up. So I guess it's kind of
Speaker 1: similar to what you do just where you have to
Speaker 1: you have to go into interesting places and just kind
Speaker 1: of search around. I mean, there used to be a
Speaker 1: really great place very close to here that had crazy
Speaker 1: stuff for lots of antiques and a lot of old
Speaker 1: fixtures and things, and now it's a restaurant. And I'm
Speaker 1: always sad when I go by the Wrecking Bar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sad that that place is gone, because I would
Speaker 1: find really interesting stuff there. Yeah, but that was just
Speaker 1: for me. I don't decorate sets at all. So what
Speaker 1: do you think out of it? Maybe not just stranger things,
Speaker 1: but anything any production you've worked on, was the the
Speaker 1: most interesting piece that you have ever found for a production?
Speaker 4: Well, this.
Speaker 5: The movie I was talking about that was took place
Speaker 5: in a television station. It was set in nineteen seventy
Speaker 5: four in Sarasota, Florida. And the director, I don't know
Speaker 5: if he completely understood. He's a little bit of a
Speaker 5: savante and wanted to have like a full working broadcast
Speaker 5: studio from that era.
Speaker 1: They not just look like one, but actually.
Speaker 5: Literally working, which yeah, exactly, monitors in a control room
Speaker 5: and cameras and all of it, and all the editing
Speaker 5: and and and this is all still like film and stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And there was this one piece, a quadruplex machine. And
Speaker 5: this is like right when news gathering was like going
Speaker 5: electronic and so a lot of that technology was changing
Speaker 5: like in the moment. But this quadruplex machine that looks
Speaker 5: like a giant kind of real to real thing that
Speaker 5: there were not that many of them, and there are
Speaker 5: really not that many of them left now, especially working,
Speaker 5: which is like a you know, they're so finicky, right.
Speaker 5: There was like a place in the Rhode Island that
Speaker 5: had some museum and a couple other places even like
Speaker 5: in La what i'd call the regular prop houses to
Speaker 5: ship it out here, that they didn't have any So
Speaker 5: I just was calling old TV stations. Not that anyone
Speaker 5: has phones or answers their phone anymore anywhere. It's like
Speaker 5: an annoying another annoying landline thing.
Speaker 4: But so I was just driving around.
Speaker 5: We were filming in Savannah, and I was just driving
Speaker 5: like on the weekends to smaller towns that used to
Speaker 5: have news stations, just like looking for like that one
Speaker 5: place that has an attic or a basement that just
Speaker 5: dashed all the stuff.
Speaker 4: And never threw it away.
Speaker 5: And there was a guy in Macon at a TV
Speaker 5: station and he was like literally the only guy like
Speaker 5: manning like reruns of the Simpsons or whatever they're you know,
Speaker 5: like I don't even think they did news anymore. But
Speaker 5: he came to the door and I was asking him
Speaker 5: about like old equipment, and you know, he's like, well,
Speaker 5: we do have this old site out in the swamp
Speaker 5: that we used to use like as a studio, and
Speaker 5: I was like, do you think you have a quadruplex machine?
Speaker 5: And he's like, oh, yeah, I got that. I got
Speaker 5: like two of those out there. And I was just
Speaker 5: like literally, yeah, that was like the best moment. And
Speaker 5: then so we get in this guy's truck when we
Speaker 5: ride out to the swamp and leaky roof, no power,
Speaker 5: you know, same thing we always are dealing with, but yeah,
Speaker 5: they're in the corner in like a dry corner.
Speaker 4: Was like this quadruplex and a.
Speaker 5: Bunch of other stuff that was really useful to have
Speaker 5: to we were able to kind of tinker and get
Speaker 5: it to work. And that was my that's by far
Speaker 5: my my like prize possession of all the things I've
Speaker 5: ever found.
Speaker 4: Ye, I love it.
Speaker 1: It's sort of the sort of challenges you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: anticipate until you encounter one of those A tour directors
Speaker 1: who has that that strong dependence upon authenticity.
Speaker 5: I'm sick of control panels, Jess No, that's another yeah,
Speaker 5: Like season two is a yeah, you guys will see
Speaker 5: when that comes out, but there's a we did a
Speaker 5: whole control panel in the riff lab this time that
Speaker 5: we needed to be able to really control rather than
Speaker 5: like getting prop ones, which is kind of what we
Speaker 5: had the first season and something I was never really
Speaker 5: that happy with. I had probably the bad idea of
Speaker 5: designing my very own control panel with all these separate
Speaker 5: like old boat led lights and indicator lights and all
Speaker 5: these different things that I was trying to get John
Speaker 5: in like really early last season to help start like
Speaker 5: figuring out how we were going to power each one
Speaker 5: and have each one on a separate control I was.
Speaker 3: Told there would be no flickering season two because that
Speaker 3: was a big, a big expense for production.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: And then then you'll see.
Speaker 4: The whole board is a flickering mess of like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it was.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like I feel like a little bit
Speaker 1: of it has been spoiled for me. But I will
Speaker 1: go into it just knowing there may be a flicker
Speaker 1: or two in season two.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I haven't seen any of the footage,
Speaker 2: so I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe that all got cut.
Speaker 2: I wasn't even there when it happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was kind of a nightmare.
Speaker 5: And we've done all kinds of like even season one
Speaker 5: in the Quarry, which you would think like that's you know,
Speaker 5: probably not even that much from a set deck standpoint
Speaker 5: and there and there wasn't except they wanted to light
Speaker 5: some of that scene with search and rescue where they
Speaker 5: find Will's body or not real body, but you know,
Speaker 5: they wanted to light that practically, and so we needed
Speaker 5: a peer red whacker lights and just like the logistics
Speaker 5: of like me me finding the lights that were there,
Speaker 5: right government auctions and show their go to and so
Speaker 5: we found something like Tennessee since sent transpot guys up
Speaker 5: there to go pick them up and bring them back.
Speaker 5: And then just John assessing that for the first time
Speaker 5: is a you know, this like archaic mess of wires
Speaker 5: and different things, and but he rewired those and they
Speaker 5: looked great on camera. Wow.
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of funny. I did an interview
Speaker 1: it's actually going to be the episode that follows this one, uh,
Speaker 1: with a guy who was hired to to write a
Speaker 1: full kind of like a workshop manual of the Ghostbusters technology.
Speaker 1: And he was given full access to all the different
Speaker 1: props and stuff. But it was his job to figure
Speaker 1: out not just what the stuff was, but what it
Speaker 1: used to be and how it actually works in real life,
Speaker 1: and then how was it in the mythology of Ghostbusters
Speaker 1: altered so that it works for that? And he started
Speaker 1: looking at all the different pieces, like just imagine the
Speaker 1: top of Ecto one, like the top of that car
Speaker 1: and all the different accoutrement that were on top of it,
Speaker 1: and he had to source all of that, and he says, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they went to a junk yard that outside of a
Speaker 1: NASA site and they got all of that and I
Speaker 1: had to figure out what they were. And then how
Speaker 1: does that help you catch ghosts?
Speaker 5: Is there really a junk yard outside of NASA? Said,
Speaker 5: Because that sounds amazing and I would kill.
Speaker 1: I'll put you in touch with him, Yeah, because he
Speaker 1: can tell you where they went to get all the
Speaker 1: different pieces, because they had like various pieces of sonart
Speaker 1: they had They had an old h I think it
Speaker 1: was like an old ground to air missile launch case.
Speaker 1: There was nothing in it because apparently that would be
Speaker 1: bad to get out there. But yeah, so there's the Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll get you in touch with him because he can
Speaker 1: certainly tell you more about where they sourced all that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that was it was somewhere out west, I know.
Speaker 1: But and keep in mind Ghostbusters were made back in
Speaker 1: the early eighties, so maybe they've tightened up since then,
Speaker 1: but it was pretty it was pretty incredible, And yeah,
Speaker 1: learning about that like that, that experience of having to
Speaker 1: to really find out the way sources sometimes is fascinating
Speaker 1: to me because you know, I hold on to stuff
Speaker 1: fairly for a fairly long time. But I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just technology is just one of those things that goes
Speaker 1: obsolete so quickly. And also there's just so many different
Speaker 1: parts that if any one part fails, the average person
Speaker 1: is more likely to either go out and buy a
Speaker 1: new one and just throw the old one away or
Speaker 1: just do without, because a repair tends to be about
Speaker 1: the same amount of money as it would cost to
Speaker 1: just buy a new one anyway for a lot of
Speaker 1: the older tech, So I imagine it gets really tricky,
Speaker 1: especially if they want something that's going to work on screen.
Speaker 1: If it's something that's just going to be like, all right,
Speaker 1: well we just need this this washer dryer that was
Speaker 1: back then, but whenever you're going to use it, we
Speaker 1: just need in the background. I guess that's one thing,
Speaker 1: But if we need a working one, that's a totally
Speaker 1: different thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's this Season two has a lot of Well,
Speaker 5: we have the Arcade, which has John and I. Early
Speaker 5: on we were getting the scripts and stuff for season
Speaker 5: two talking about like how to get arcade cabinets that
Speaker 5: were in good enough shape or you know, when we
Speaker 5: get real ones, and then there's all this. I don't
Speaker 5: know if like the average viewer knows, but like playback
Speaker 5: is a thing that we deal with constantly on Stranger Things.
Speaker 5: It's the frame rate adjustment and stuff on various like
Speaker 5: screens and monitors.
Speaker 1: Right, so your screen that you're you're shooting is refreshing
Speaker 1: at a certain rate, the camera is going at a
Speaker 1: certain rate, and if that doesn't match up properly, that's
Speaker 1: when you start getting those weird lines that start scrolling
Speaker 1: across the screen, which is realistic, but it's distracting because
Speaker 1: now you realize you're looking through the lens of a
Speaker 1: CA camera as opposed to being an observer on a scene.
Speaker 1: So you have to fix that all.
Speaker 5: Right, and so and even season one was similar to
Speaker 5: like the there's various security rooms like at Hawkins Lab,
Speaker 5: and then we I think, I feel like I've bought
Speaker 5: every Commodore sixty four available because they tend to be
Speaker 5: fairly reliable and easy to work with and you can
Speaker 5: put various things into them, and so doing something similar,
Speaker 5: you know, a lot of I think a lot of
Speaker 5: productions probably would have put like LED screens or LCB.
Speaker 5: You know, they would have just updated with new technology
Speaker 5: and not dealt with the playback aspect of running through
Speaker 5: like CRT monitors with whatever we need to show on screen.
Speaker 5: But we're we try to be as authentic as possible
Speaker 5: and stranger things, and so there's just a lot of
Speaker 5: our playback guy was always present. I felt like on
Speaker 5: every set it was always like real monitors. Same with
Speaker 5: the arcade, and we did it all pretty practically, leaving
Speaker 5: a lot of those those alls monitors inside the cabinets
Speaker 5: and then just like running stuff through them and adjusting
Speaker 5: the frame rate.
Speaker 2: So that's great.
Speaker 1: I mean again, I just to me, that stuff definitely
Speaker 1: pays off. Like again, it gives that that feel that
Speaker 1: you want and that that sense that you're watching something
Speaker 1: that was made years ago and yet with a modern sensibility.
Speaker 1: So it's anyone who grew up around the same time
Speaker 1: I did, I think just has that deep connection when
Speaker 1: they see this there, you know, because it feels very
Speaker 1: Spielbergian in many ways. You know. It just it's very
Speaker 1: evocative of those those great films and TV series in
Speaker 1: the eighties. So you guys did phenomenal work to recapture
Speaker 1: that and to make it feel like it was on screen.
Speaker 1: It looks effortless. I know that that's exactly the opposite
Speaker 1: of what it really was. It was very, very full
Speaker 1: of effort. But from an audience perspective, it just it
Speaker 1: just works so well. So I'm really looking forward to
Speaker 1: season two. We keep hearing rumors about how many seasons
Speaker 1: they are going to be. I think there need to
Speaker 1: be as many seasons as there need to be to
Speaker 1: tell a story, and then we can we can close
Speaker 1: the chapter on that book and want more. I'm happy
Speaker 1: with that. We'll see because who knows what will happen
Speaker 1: down the line. But I am so really excited to
Speaker 1: see season two and beyond. And if you can put
Speaker 1: a word in for they need a bald guy as
Speaker 1: an extra, you know, even if he's just like screwing
Speaker 1: a light bulbin in the background. I'm local, I'm right here,
Speaker 1: I know Randy, So Randy and I go way back.
Speaker 1: I can it's just throwing it out.
Speaker 2: There maybe needs an assistant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who knows, I mean teaching assistant, or maybe just
Speaker 1: like a guy to like deal with all the insanely
Speaker 1: attractive women that he's dating. It's phenomenal. Really, it's like
Speaker 1: we I had a discussion with him about that, Like
Speaker 1: that was to me, like everything was believable up until
Speaker 1: they showed me, Like I was buying into it right
Speaker 1: up to that, and he's like, thanks, Jonathan, thanks a lot,
Speaker 1: You're welcome, Randy, You're good guy. Thank you Jess and
Speaker 1: John for joining me on this show. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: the opportunity to explore what it is you do and
Speaker 1: get a deeper appreciation for the work that goes on
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. And this was phenomenal. I wish you
Speaker 1: guys the best of luck and success in the future,
Speaker 1: and maybe we'll have you on again at some point.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about some other crazy stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: let me tell you what now is the hardest prop
Speaker 1: I've ever had to find. You never know when that
Speaker 1: story is going to change totally. Well, thank you guys again,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. I know it sounds like a
Speaker 1: broken record, but once again I have to thank Jess
Speaker 1: and John for coming into the office and talking with us,
Speaker 1: and of course thank you Ramsey for landing the interview.
Speaker 1: It was an amazing opportunity and I think it really
Speaker 1: turned out great. I very much enjoyed this. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of the show, and also just
Speaker 1: learning more about what goes on behind the scenes on
Speaker 1: any kind of shoot is fascinating to me. I see
Speaker 1: all these terms all the time, and I don't really
Speaker 1: have a working knowledge of what they all mean. So
Speaker 1: we're hoping that in the future we'll get other professionals
Speaker 1: who have worked on various productions here in the Atlanta
Speaker 1: area to talk more about what it is they do
Speaker 1: so we can understand how the Best Boy turned out
Speaker 1: to be so darn best Because we don't know. We
Speaker 1: want to know, but we don't know. You might already know,
Speaker 1: but keep it to yourself because I'm going to ask
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