‘Stranger Things’: How the Its Sonic Environment Was Created

If you’re an audiophile who also loves “Stranger Things,” then brother, have I got the interview for you. The sonically inclined folks at A Sound Effect recently spoke to Brad North and Craig Henighan — the Netflix drama’s supervising sound editor and sound designer, respectively — about all things strange, from how they got involved with the ’80s-set show to its now-famous synth score to those attention-grabbing light bulbs. Find some highlights of their chat (which was presumably recorded on the finest equipment available) below.

Henighan says that he was lucky insofar as much of the music was already in place for “Stranger Things” when he came onboard, granting him a more complete sense of the aural environment he would be working within. “From the beginning, they established the instrumentation and the sound of the synths, to create that 70s and 80s vibe,” he explains. “Those guys came up with that feeling and I just looked for opportunities to work around it, by using more low-end sounds in places, or doing more atmospheric sounds in others.”

Asked about the Entity, a monster that enters the “real” world of the show through a parallel dimension called the Upside Down, he adds that “Predator” was his main reference point — he wanted the creature to have “an identifiable vocal” so that he could “sonically evoke creepiness and intellect.”

Read the full interview here, especially if this is your field — North and especially Henighan go deep on their approach to the show, which at this point may officially be the most obsessed-over series of the summer.

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