“Stranger Things,” “Wednesday,” and “Beef” became three of the biggest hits of the season by captivating audiences from the moment they began streaming. But any viewer who re-watched them can attest to the fact that all three shows remain captivating after the initial buzz has died down thanks to their impeccable attention to detail.
At IndieWire’s Consider This Event on June 3, artists from all three series joined IndieWire’s crafts reporter Jim Hemphill for a panel about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into our favorite television. Again and again, the panelists returned to the theme of going above and beyond to shape the smallest of details in their quest for perfection.
When you think about the sounds of “Stranger Things,” epic battle sequences and Kate Bush needle drops might be the first things that come to mind. But re-recording mixer/supervising sound editor Craig Henighan explained that he puts just as much effort into sounds that often go unnoticed. The way he sees it, any sound can be an opportunity to add an unsettling edge to a scene.
“Depending on the scene, if there’s lights that are flickering or buzzing, I look at what frequencies they’re at and even what key they’re in, making them a little bit more uneasy,” Henighan said. “Seeing what Michael (Stein) and Kyle (Dixon) are doing in terms of the score and seeing if I need to play off of that and either grind against it or if I actually try to flow into it.”
To find the music of “Wednesday,” composer Danny Elfman and co-composer Chris Bacon and music supervisor Jen Malone walked a delicate line to craft the perfect balance of original and existing music. While the three artists primarily worked separately, a scene of Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams covering The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” on cello in the first episode prompted the teams to work together in search of a perfect arrangement.
“For ‘Wednesday’ we came on super early, because in the first episode we had the on-camera cello performance of ‘Paint it Black,’” Malone said. “So we had to get that created and really dial in,” music supervisor Jen Malone said. “We also had to get it to Jenna in time so that she could learn it — which she did phenomenal with.”
Bacon explained that he was not originally planning on composing music for that scene, but jumped at the chance to add additional orchestrations. He said that the attention to detail that went into the scene was one of the first indicators that he was working on a potential hit.
“One of the places where we indirectly collaborated was while Danny was finishing the score for episode thing, we had this ‘Paint it Black’ thing happening,” Bacon said. “It was originally solo cello, and then at the end we thought ‘maybe we should add orchestra to this.’ So that was a really fun thing where I got to come in and do that. There was a direct synchronization between the source and score. To me, that’s where I first thought ‘this show could really be something.’”
Elfman took a different approach, but his process of working through music with his longtime collaborator Tim Burton is no less laborious. The two men have worked together for nearly 40 years, so Elfman knew that he couldn’t rush things with Burton. They opted to let the music come to them naturally, cycling through countless ideas before organically settling on the sound of the show.
“I was working exclusively with Tim, because when I’m working with Tim he just likes to keep a closed circle. Like a tank that nobody’s allowed in,” Elfman said. “I also got involved very early, because Tim didn’t know for sure what the tone was gonna be. It just involved lot of experimenting and finding out what is ‘Wednesday’ musically. And Tim doesn’t like to be rushed. So I came on early, did a lot of ideas, and finally honed it down to ‘this feels like Wednesday.’”
For “Beef,” the process of writing music was always deeply intertwined with creator Lee Sung Jin’s scripts. Composer Bobby Krlic explained that the showrunner allowed him to sit in on early table reads, which helped him understand the show’s two main characters, Danny (Steven Yeun) and Amy (Ali Wong). Once he understood the tense relationship at the heart of the series, he could shape his orchestrations to two characters’ personalities.
“Danny, from the very first frame of the show, there’s all this tension all this anxiety,” Krlic said. “With Amy, her life felt much more about the façade of things, so we had softer things: glockenspiel and felt piano.”
Because Krlic was invited to get an early start on his score, the show’s editing team was able to use his music to shape their understanding of the characters. “Beef” editor Laura Zempel explained how Krlic’s score didn’t just add to the show’s narrative — it actively shaped her understanding of it.
“We got a batch of music from Bobby before we started cutting, and so Harry Yoon who started off on the pilot, he found that cue for Danny at the hardware store. And just bringing it in right away for him, it just tips the audience off to ‘Okay, there’s something going on beneath the surface with this guy. And I know that sort of set us off with the soundscape for Danny,” Zempel said. “With Amy, when Amy is comforting June in the pilot and telling her about the one time she felt happy, it’s this beautiful melodic piece from [Krlic]. And that sort of set Amy’s character apart. With ‘Beef,’ we were obsessed with the music and how it sounded.”
Watch the complete panel from IndieWire’s Consider This Event above.
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