Supervising sound editor Craig Henighan is part of the audio team nominated for their work on Episode 8 of Stranger Things (Season 5). “The Right Side Up” episode is recognized for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour).
Stranger Things’ soundtrack also received Emmy nominations for Outstanding Music Supervision and Sound Mixing.
Henighan says his role was to oversee all aspects of the sound editorial process during the show’s post production.
“This includes spotting sessions with showrunners/directors, dialogue/ADR and sound effects editing, sound design, Foley, as well as collaborating with the re-recording mixers during mixing of the episodes.”
The team’s main digital audio workstation is Avid’s Pro Tools, but they also use many standalone apps and software.
“We take it upon ourselves to record as much new material as possible for each episode, ensuring a sonic signature that we’ve tried to maintain since Season 1,” Henighan shares. “This requires quite an array of microphones and high resolution digital recorders.”
In Episode 8 – “The Right Side Up” – Henighan points to a scene that on many levels, wraps up a storyline that has threaded through the entire show.
“It’s the final show down and the physical embodiment of the Mindflayer, which up until now has taken many forms over the other seasons,” he reveals. “Sonically we had fun revisiting a lot of the sound design from the past - things like the flamethrowers, the sling shots, molotov cocktails and gun fire. The Mindflayer roars were of particular interest, as I wanted to have some sort of sonic call back to all the creatures and monsters from past seasons. The roars needed to be gigantic, so what we ended up doing was compiling sounds, a sort of greatest hits of the best scenes, taking sounds like death screams and cries, and morphing them into new roars that would fit the rage of the Mindflayer as it battled with our main characters from the show.”