Tim Ives On Infusing Hawkins With More Color for ‘Stranger Things’

Stranger Things is known for its darkness. For the last two seasons, the Netflix sci-fi/horror series delivered atmosphere and scares unlike any other show on television, and we have cinematographer Tim Ives to thank for it. With this new third season, however, it’s summertime in Hawkins, and Stranger Things is more colorful than ever.

With school out for summer, everyone has hightailed over to the Starcourt Mall. You can shop or even sneak into the latest zombie flick. The neon lights pop and feel so different than anything we’ve seen on the show before. After setting additional lights, Ives utilized the florescent overheads to help give us that mid-80’s consumer glow. When we descend into the bowels of Starcourt, it’s darker and much more sinister.

I chatted with Ives about his favorite shots and how the series has grown over the last few years.

Awards Daily: You and Lachlan Milne split duties for season three. What did you guys talk about to create a unified vision for this time around?

Tim Ives: I started with episode one and two with The Duffers and they had a vision to make season three a lot more colorful. They wanted to move away from the Spielbergian references and embracing more of a John Carpenter/Back to the Future feel to it. We didn’t make it as moody as it had been in the past. We wanted it to be fun. We shaped it in one and two and then it was a ball pass for Lachlan to continue with Shawn Levy.

AD: You just mentioned the colors and season three feels so much brighter because of the costumes and the production design. The darkness feels really dark because of that. 

TI: Yeah.

AD: Can you talk to me about establishing Starcourt in that first episode? It’s really fun.

TI: We wanted it to feel like such a throwback. The lighting had to be all of the period. We looked at films, especially Fast Times [at Ridgemont High]. It didn’t have the Stranger Things moody lighting, and we were looking forward to embracing that. With this new storyline with the kids growing up, we introduced a lot more neon to go with it. It was a departure from seasons past and it felt absolutely right. You can see that even in Melvald’s, the store that Joyce works in. Even the little things on the walls have more color in them than the previous seasons had. So all departments were on board.

AD: I assume that shopping malls in the 1980’s all had that horrible, fluorescent lighting. Did you just use the lighting that was in the store to light those scenes?

TI: We added everything in there. It was an open canvass. It took 2 months to light.

AD: Oh wow.

TI: AD: Our rigging gaffer, John Hilton, oversaw it with Dan Murphy who was our shooting gaffer. They made a plan where the neon would be and what color it would be and where the fluorescents would be. Remember, this is Stranger Things, so everything needed to be able to turn on and off on a dime or they might need something to flicker. It was a monumental task, and it was one of the biggest undertakings we’ve ever had on the show.

AD: And that space is so huge.

TI: Yeah, it was a huge space, and there was that huge skylight that we had to tent over. We wanted to be able to shoot day and night, but sometimes, during the day, there’s too much light. It was also fun to do it in a way—in true Stranger Things fashion—by honoring what’s come before us and having the feel that was shot back then. It looks like something where we just turn on the lights, so that’s probably the best compliment.

AD: There are a few shots that I just love. The first is when, in the first episode, the moms are getting ready for Billy to come out and take his shift at the pool and the camera just sweeps over them.

TI: Oh yeah.

AD: I love that shot so much. And then when Billy opens up the trunk later on and his face is lit by the trunk light. That’s super creepy. Is there something this season that you are particularly proud of?

TI: There is a lot of camera movement—more than what we’re done in the past. It’s sort of an evolving thing. On top of the hill in episode one, it was in the middle of nowhere. We had to bring in Technocranes on tractors and I was pretty proud of the hill. That turned out really well because it was an exercise of being on the right place at the right time. We couldn’t get a lot of equipment in there. We did the night time hill with blue screen on a nice piece of grass that we happened to find near our stages. We couldn’t get lights up there for the location. That’s one scenario that I’m really fond of.

AD: Yeah I didn’t know that that was all effects. That’s really cool.

TI: The pool stuff you mentioned was really fun because we needed a blue sky. There was a few days where we were scheduled to shoot, but the forecast wasn’t great. It wasn’t supposed to rain but we needed that sky and we needed the sun to hit the actors. We needed that feeling where it was summer and the pool just opened and everyone couldn’t be more psyched to jump in. The sun was a major player in that. In the past, we might have done some silking to make it more moody and pretty, but I wanted to embrace the sun for this.

AD: Yeah.

TI: The shot you mentioned was one of the most fun to shoot. It’s another nod to Fast Times. All of the ladies in a row, outside in the sun, but in full makeup will always make me laugh. It’s really hysterical. Most of that was done with a Technocrane—I think there was a 50 footer there that day. We had a nice pullback when the kid jumps off the diving board. We wanted the camera almost on the water like in Jaws when the camera is super low in the water. It feels like you’re almost in there with them.

AD: And that’s a great way to start the season because it indicates a hot, sweaty summer.

TI: It really is a departure from seasons past. It’s full on fun, and Billy is a fantastic character to follow this time around.

AD: The hospital scenes are really fun. I love how the camera slowly follows that gross, sticky monster as it slides across the floor. Was that whole thing one of the more challenging bits of this season?

TI: The whole show is pretty challenge because we always have buttons at the beginning or ending of each scene. You’ll have someone in the background enter the scene and you’ll go with them. The timing always have to be right as we move to another character. I just remember the effects were a little tedious, but we are used to that by this point. Season one had minimal effects and it got bigger in season two. By season three we are used to that stop/start mode. It was fun to shoot in the hospital. We went in and did the lighting. You can almost never use practical lighting on Stranger Things because you never know what you’re going to have to do.

AD: (laughs)

TI: There’s a whole monster behind that that’s evolved over the seasons. Does it flicker when the monster is close? You gotta be prepared for it. Even in that wing of the hospital, we had to bring in a lot of LED lights to go with the fluorescents.

AD: Not knowing when the lights need to flicker is possibly the most honest thing I’ve heard about Stranger Things.

TI: You never know. It would be a disaster if the director needs them to go off and on and you can’t do it. It takes a few days to rig everything.

AD: I really love the scenes below the mall. It feels kind of claustrophobic, especially when some of the kids are trapped in an elevator. Can you tell me about establishing the tightness in those scenes?

TI: That had a sort of The Wizard of Oz, fantastical when you first get in there. There’ a lot of Wizard of Oz in there for me (laughs). We had a lot of different things going on there. We had a cab in there with a rotating Ferris wheel of lights that would make it feel like the elevator was descending at a really fast rate. We had pieces that you could pull apart and move, and we also had the top of it rigged so when they go on top we could do a descending camera. The VFX team added all the other pieces to it. The underground set piece was really fantastical. I always played with color but now we are playing in a way primary colors mixed in to take it to a more vibrant colorful space.

AD: Yeah.

TI: We had a lot of equipment down there like tracking vehicles and all the way down to handhelds for when Steve gets his seasonal beat down.

AD: It feels like a video game down there. It felt there were darker tones and blues.

TI: We wanted Stranger Things to feel like it could’ve been made in the ‘80s. It’s grounded in this sentimental, nostalgic feel of that time.

AD: I love that you guys don’t get stuck in that Spielbergian tone though.

TI: Yeah, it evolves. It will never give up the initial influences, and you can still see it in the darker portions. You can see it in the Byers’ house, and you see it in Billy’s lair where the monster lives.

Stranger Things is streaming now on Netflix.