Stranger Things: Industry

Stranger Things: Industry

Duffer Brothers - Born 1984

The Duffer brothers began making films in the third grade using a Hi8 video camera that was a gift from their parents.

• They relocated to Orange, California to study film at Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, where they graduated in 2007.

• After writing and/or directing a number of short films, their script for the post- apocalyptic horror film, Hidden, was acquired by Warner Bros. Pictures in 2011.

• The brothers directed the film in 2012, which was released in 2015.

• Director M. Night Shyamalan read the script and hired them as writer/producers on the Fox television series Wayward Pines.

Production and Distrubution

• Produced by 21 Laps (TV and Film credits include Night at the Museum)

• Original Netflix series, so paid for by them and distributed by them exclusively

• Ranked as the most popular digital series in the US only after the week after its release on Netflix (3 x more viewings than OITNB) 

Netflix

•Has over 100 million customers world wide, all paying a minimum of £5.99 per month.

•CEO Ted Sarandos has championed the production house “Netflix Originals”, Netflix’ in house production company, by committing $8bn to original content in 2018

•This includes 30 new anime series and 80 new films.

•Double Oscar winning film Manchester by the Sea was a Netflix original production.

•This is a perfect example of vertical integration – i.e. Netflix do not need to pay any outside agencies to produce or distribute their products. All the money is kept in house.

  

Why Netflix?

•In large part, the success of Stranger Things can be attributed to its pacing and its binge-ability — a quality characteristic of Netflix. In its earlier iterations, the Duffer Brothers wanted Stranger Things to be a film. It wasn't until meeting with Netflix that they could decided not only their ideal format, but to also let their series play out without being restricted to a standard 13 or 22 episode run.

•Matt [Duffer]: The cool thing about TV is you have a lot more time. (But) you’re not stuck now with 22 episodes. It’s almost impossible to tell a cinematic story when you have that many episodes.

•Ross [Duffer]: This is almost really the first time that I can think of in history that people are able to come up with a story, and they’re able to go, how long should this be? Should this be six hours? Should this be seven hours? Should this be 11 hours? And Netflix is very good at not dictating how many episodes it should be. 

The Idea of Stranger Things

•After discussing the movie as a jumping-off point, the brothers began talking about what Matt describes as "bizarre experiments we had read about taking place in the Cold War," specifically Project MKUltra, a mind-control program the CIA led from the Fifties through the Seventies.

•That led them to placing the show in the 1983, a year before the Cold-War–hysteria epic Red Dawn came out, and it brought into focus the fantasy aspect of the story they'd wanted to include.

•"We wanted the supernatural element to be grounded in science in some way," Matt says. "As ridiculous as it is, the monster [in the alternate dimension] doesn't come from a spiritual domain and it's not connected to any religion. It made it scarier. I don't believe in ghosts, but I believe in aliens and alternate dimensions.