Even though Netflix’s Stranger Things has ended, iconic moments from the final season still live on. Season 5 saw the brutal take down of various military factions, demogorgons and series big bad Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) and the Mind Flayer at the hands of the beloved ragtag group of rascals Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Will (Noah Schnapp), Max (Sadie Sink), their older friends Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Robin (Maya Hawke), Steve (Joe Keery) and the adults Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Hopper (David Harbour).
Tasked with choreographing a multitude of stunts for the cast’s more bombastic moments across the final season was Emmy award winning stunt coordinator Hiro Koda, who also recently snagged an Actor Awards nomination for Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series.
Below, Koda talks to Deadline about working with the Duffer Brothers, the challenge of planning ingenious stunts and getting everyone battle ready.
DEADLINE: You’ve been with Stranger Things since Season 3 and tracking these characters and their combat styles for years. How did you expand on them in the last season? What conversations did you have with other members of the production?
HIRO KODA: With this last season everything had to go as big as possible. The [Duffer] brothers always challenged me with everything that they threw at me, and I feel like they had a lot of confidence in what I could bring to the table for them. So they never were in fear of asking, “Hey, can we do this?”. From Season 3 to Season 4 and then Season 5, each opportunity grew bigger. It was a blast working with this cast. They are so incredible. Through the seasons, I’ve ended up working with all of them in some capacity at some point and they were all very excited to get in there and play, have a good time and get dirty.
DEADLINE: I’m assuming you have to keep track of which actors like which stunts, on those rare occasions they are allowed to do their own stunt work?
KODA: Yeah. It’s very important to figure out how the characters evolved through the years and track their developing style of what their character is capable of doing and what they can and can’t do in reality as an actor. Everybody, cast-wise, wants to do everything. And I try to let them do as much as they can and get them in there and rehearse with them as much as possible. But there’s just some things that obviously we’re shooting that are just so fast-paced on television. There’s not enough time to get them in there to rehearse everything and be able to allow them to do stuff. If they get hurt, we’re shut down. If a stunt person gets hurt, we can replace that stunt person and get somebody else in there without anybody ever knowing that it even happened.
So, there’s certain things that I have to go through with the actors and say, “Hey, listen, I know you can do this. There’s not a problem with it, but if for any reason, if something were to go wrong, we have to use a stunt double. Let me let the stunt double do it first and then let’s see how it evolves and we’ll plug you in where we can.” But everybody got in there and did a ton of stuff of their own as well.
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DEADLINE: Where does coordinating the stunts start for you? Are you at home thinking of moves? Is it more of a mental planning first? Or do you wait until you get time to practice in a studio setting?
KODA: It’s quite a long process for me from once I read a script, I break it down, break all the stunts out of it. And then, mentally, I try to figure out exactly what I think first without having anybody else telling me what needs to be in there. I’m just visually thinking and trying to be innovative and new with the action that I’m trying to create and put in there. Then I’ll have my meetings with whoever’s directing, in this case, the brothers or Shawn Levy or the guest directors, and discuss with them, “Hey, this is what I’m doing.” We then discuss each of those stunt beats and incorporate their ideas to make sure we’re on the same page. Then, I get my team together and shoot a full previs [previsualization] that has been cut and edited with sound and visual effects so that I can present that to them and say, “Here, this is what I think we’re going to do. This is what I think we can shoot now and the time we have allotted for it.”
Then some there we go back for notes to say either, “Hey, it’s a little bit too long. We don’t have time to shoot that over the weekend,” or, “That’s perfect. Let’s go.” It makes it so much easier because then everybody’s on the same page. Everybody already knows ahead of time this is what we’re planning. And it helps mitigate anything that might pop-up because everybody already knows what’s happening.
Obviously things can change on the day sometimes, but when you’re working with the brothers and Shawn, you need to be fully prepared because they’re always prepped and ready to go. So if you’re not ready and you show up and something’s not ready, then that’s not good for you. So, I’m always well prepped as much as I can be.
DEADLINE: Let’s jump into some specific scenes. I’m thinking about the Vecna-Mind Flayer battle royale scene where Joyce delivers the final blow.
KODA: We called that set The Pain Tree. It was basically inside of the Mind Flayer and that’s where Vecna was attached up in the air to his heart and all of that. It was a whole big battle with Eleven and that sequence itself was huge – that’s why it took us a year and a half to shoot the thing. It was such a puzzle piece to put together. The visual effects team and [my team] put together an animation that was sort of my baby [laughs.] We talked to the brothers about what they wanted to do, it was supposed to be much bigger than we had time for, so it got shrunk down a little bit, which was OK. But the exterior stuff, where [the camera] was going to cut back and forth [was tough] trying to figure out because every time the group was out on land, we were shooting at this big monster. The monster moves, so then it would cause what fight was happening on the inside with Vecna and Eleven to shift. They’re getting thrown around inside from the movement of this monster, so it all had to be incorporated into this sequence.
Trying to keep track of all of that was a challenge, and then trying to have people understand it [on set] was too. But, I put that student previs together and then cut those pieces together with the exterior stuff, with animation to my stunt previs. Then it fell together and made sense for everybody to understand what was going on. And as far as the logistics of making that make sense between the two different scenes shot at multiple different locations, that was difficult too. Then the finale was just about being able to put a wire action sequence together between Vecna and Eleven and have them just going at it in there, and ending with the great scene of Winona taking out Vecna by chopping his head off at the very end was satisfying for a lot of people on set too [laughs.]
DEADLINE: I loved the mid-finale sequence with the group trying to save the kids from the military and demodogs, but then Vecna shows up and just blows through the military, which ultimately leads to awakening Will’s powers. Talk about putting that together.
KODA: That was the most difficult, if you can believe that because it was also a huge sequence because of those demogorgons coming to the military base to take out those soldiers. It was a ton of fun to put together, though. [The Duffers] had this big oner that they wanted to do and so, they let loose three demogorgons inside this military base and I had some of the most talented stunt performers in Atlanta come in. I think we had a total of 56 kills in the MAC-Z [Military Access Control Zone] sequence between the ones that are featured and the ones that are happening in the background. Every one of those people had numbers so we could figure it all out in the shoot, but putting the oner together was something that was very challenging because it needed to be all of the cast members specifically, because we’re seeing their faces through this whole thing. And they’re in the middle of this big battle with guns, explosions and everything else going on. So, we’re making sure that everyone is safe through all of this.
Also because there’s no demogorgons on set, I had three different guys in gray suits with sticks attached to them with tennis balls at the [monster accurate] heights. That way the actors knew where their heads were for the correct eyeline because the demogorgons are very tall. We had to know where everyone was and we had to track them through the whole shot – it was a very complex sequence. Essentially we ended up using numbers for everybody’s deaths to choreograph the scene, for example, we would say, “OK, we’re going to shoot deaths 5-10 tonight.” And then we would know where they started and ended. It was a team effort from everybody to make this sequence come together, and it came across brilliant. I was super excited to see the final product of it all. It was amazing.
DEADLINE: The sound design really sells all of that too.
KODA: Absolutely. It was incredible. The music, sound effects and the design completely adds to it. If you watch some of the BTS and the documentary [One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5], you get to see a lot of what the sound actually was while filming. You hear all the ADs yelling, you hear people screaming and you hear me yelling. You hear my stunt coordinator, Jahnel Curfman screaming numbers and then people are flying. It doesn’t sound anything like what the final product was [laughs.]
But you know what’s great? Is that the bros, had a great sound system always set up every day that they’d bring in to play loud music to get the vibe going. I did this on my second unit [shifts] as well. They would also play monster sounds so that the cast could react to those.
DEADLINE: What was a stunt that doesn’t look complicated onscreen but would surprise people to find out that it was?
KODA: The scene with Will, when it gets lifted up and is floating towards Vecna in the MAC-Z. It doesn’t look that difficult when you look at it because it’s just a guy floating across the air who lands in front of Vecna. It’s not a big, exciting stunt, but to incorporate that with what we were doing with the wires, we had a highline set across it and then he couldn’t be bouncing or moving. It had to be smooth, clean and perfect and he had to stay at the same level all the way across the MAC-Z to end up in front of James Campbell Bower. Everything had to be controlled.
It was always such a fun challenge with this show, and I loved that about Stranger Things. There were so many different monsters that are not really there on the day, so I had to come up with a way of how these people were being thrown, tossed, picked up and dragged to make it look like a monster was doing it. Again, being able to see the final product of all this hard work the crew put in was always satisfying to see. We did a good job with what we put together.
[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]
English (US) ·