{"id":26820,"date":"2018-06-26T15:18:04","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T22:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/locationmanagers.org\/?p=26820"},"modified":"2018-10-08T13:37:34","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T20:37:34","slug":"stranger-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/locationmanagers.org\/es\/stranger-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Stranger Things | Tony Holley, LMGI, LM"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We have so much nostalgia and love for this era. We really wanted to see something on television that was in the vein of the classic films we loved growing up: the Spielbergs, the John Carpenters, as well as the novels of Stephen King. What makes all of these stories so great to us\u2014and so resonant\u2014is that they all explore that magical point where the ordinary meets the extraordinary. When we were growing up, we were just regular kids, living in the suburbs of North Carolina, playing Dungeons and Dragons with our nerdy friends. But when we watched these films and read these books, we felt transported. Suddenly, our lives had the potential for adventure\u2014maybe tomorrow we would find a treasure map in the attic; maybe my brother would vanish into the TV screen. We really want to capture that feeling with Stranger Things. We want to bring that feeling to people who grew up on those films\u2014and we also want to bring it to a whole new generation.\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

\u2013Matt Duffer, co-creator of Stranger Things<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

by Nancy Mills<\/h3>\n

All photos by Jackson Lee Davis\/Netflix, except as noted<\/h5>\n

Back in 2015, when no one had ever heard of a Netflix series called Stranger Things<\/em>, location manager Tony Holley, LMGI and his team could work wherever they wanted without hassle. With the exception of Winona Ryder and David Harbour, the actors involved in this fantasy\/horror\/drama series were totally unknown. Stranger Things<\/em> was just another blip on the thriving Atlanta shooting scene.<\/p>\n

Flash-forward to today. Virtually, the whole cast has risen to superstar status. For Season 3, that means a huge increase in security, including innovative ways to avoid paparazzi, tourists and locals bent on uncovering Season 3\u2019s upcoming twists. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had no idea what we were getting into,\u201d Holley admits about those long-gone early days. \u201cInitially, it was all good because the scripts were so good, and the atmosphere on the set during the first season was always very pleasant. Then the bingeing occurred, and the wildfire started!\u201d<\/p>\n

No one could have predicted that twin brothers, Matt and Ross Duffer, whose limited credits include writing a few episodes of Wayward Pines<\/i>, would hit on an irresistible premise. And yet, like all surprise successes, the success of Stranger Things<\/i> really isn\u2019t so strange after all. It simply touched an unidentified nerve: nostalgia for the 1980s.<\/p>\n

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Kyle Carey (left) and Tony Holley. Photo: Greg Grudt\/Mathew Imaging<\/p><\/div>\n

All the buzz brought instant attention to Holley and KALM Kyle Carey, LMGI, who were nominated two years running for an LMGI Award for Outstanding Locations in Period TV. Last year, they lost out to The Crown<\/i> and this year, to Game of Thrones<\/i>. Trying to explain the series\u2019 remarkable popularity, Holley says, \u201cIts viewing population is basically 18 to 44. (The Duffer brothers are 34.) A big chunk of those people grew up in the \u201980s. The show is a love letter to a generation. The fashions, music and even the way it\u2019s shot are in that mode of nostalgia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Executive producer Iain Paterson credits Holley with some of the success. \u201cAs a native Georgian, Tony brings an insider\u2019s knowledge of the Atlanta area that is unparalleled.\u201d<\/p>\n

Production designer Chris Trujillo elaborates. \u201cFirstly, Tony has a very intimate understanding of Atlanta and all of its endless highways, byways, woods, rivers, tunnels, hills, back alleys, neighborhoods and myriad small and not-so-small towns that make up the greater Atlanta area. He has cultivated working relationships and friendships with every person with any bearing on procuring locations in this part of the world. We have been working closely since before Stranger Things<\/i> had even settled on Atlanta as a filming location. Early scouting with Tony is what convinced me and subsequently everyone else that Atlanta would work for our show.\u201d<\/p>\n

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From left: Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin, Finn Wolfhard as Mike and Noah Schnapp as Will with co-creator Matt Duffer in front of the Wheeler home, shot in East Point, Georgia.<\/p><\/div>\n

Trujillo was not disappointed. \u201cIt has served us so well because Atlanta proper and the various towns that surround it really represent a broad spectrum of archetypal Americana. There are all of these incredible neighborhoods that, with very little modification, perfectly paint the picture of split-level ranch-style suburbia born in the \u201960s that came to define the look of \u201970s and \u201980s American life. So, we get rid of the DirecTV dishes, manicure the lawns, switch out a few mailboxes, fill the driveways with period-correct station wagons and sedans and voila! You\u2019re ready to travel back in time with some misfit middle schoolers on BMX bikes.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Stranger Things<\/i>\u2019 premise is seemingly very simple: It\u2019s the early 1980s in the fictional town of Hawkins, located in rural Indiana. Nothing much happens there. Then one night, a 12-year-old boy disappears. As friends, family members and the police search for him, they begin to wonder if his vanishing could be related to the top-secret experiments going on at the Hawkins National Laboratory. Are supernatural forces to blame? Is there really another dimension called the Upside Down? Where did the odd girl named Eleven come from?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that all eight episodes of Season 1 were instantly accessible to millions of Netflix subscribers brought a new kind of excitement to Hollywood and the Atlanta community. For the location team, which was getting ready to scout for Season 2 when success hit, there was one overriding fear: they wouldn\u2019t be able to go back to some of the places they used in Season 1. \u201cEven though I asked them, the studio decided against issuing location agreements that gave us the right to return,\u201d Holley says. \u201cSo there was a big scramble to lock down as many of those locations as we could. Beginning in Season 2, we now build options into location agreements where appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hawkins Lab was formerly a state-run psychiatric hospital. Photo: Tony Holley\/LMGI<\/p><\/div>\n

Many of the locations in the fictional town of Hawkins have become iconic. \u201cThe Palace Arcade, Hawkins National Laboratory, Melvald\u2019s General Store and Hopper\u2019s cabin are characters in their own right,\u201d producer Paterson says. \u201cEven some of our less frequented locales have entered the pop culture zeitgeist. For instance, it\u2019s not uncommon to see someone wearing a Benny\u2019s Burgers or Hideaway Bar T-shirt.\u201d Hawkins Laboratory is a favorite location for the crew. \u201cIt\u2019s always felt like a second home to us,\u201d Paterson says. \u201cThe actual building has such a fascinating history. The lab itself was formerly a state-run psychiatric hospital that was in operation up until the \u201990s. There is an inherent gravitas there that makes it an ideal location for the show\u2019s nefarious research facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

PD Trujillo adds, \u201cFinding Hawkins Lab was a tall order, and we explored many options before arriving on our now iconic brutalist masterpiece. I didn\u2019t start with a perfectly clear architectural vision for Hawkins Lab, but I had a very clear sense of the imposing but clandestine mood and tone I wanted to emanate from it. The location (owned by Emory University) where we ended up spoke exactly to that feel. \u201cHistorically, the building we shot as the exterior lab was effectively a mid-century \u2018insane asylum,\u2019 complete with these terrifying, long, low, stark-white, underground corridors that linked the main building to what once were patients\u2019 quarters. Above ground in the main building, there were a number of incredible, very institutional, dark-wood hallways and a massive tiled half-basement space that seems to have once been, at least partly, a cold storage facility. We were able to retrofit and elaborate that space into what became the rooms and hallways that Eleven lives and suffers in at the hands of Doctor Brenner and the insidious Department of Energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Byers house and barn, where much of the action occurs. Photo: Tony Holley\/LMGI<\/p><\/div>\n

When Stranger Things<\/i> is not filming on location, the company works out of EUE Screen Gems Studios in Atlanta. \u201cOn Season 1, we shot about 40 percent on stage,\u201d Holley says. \u201cOn Season 2, it dropped to about 25 percent, so more was on me. Most of our domestic interiors have been shot in the studio, including the Byers house, the Wheeler house, Hopper\u2019s cabin and the tunnels.\u201d Despite more reliance on locations, Holley\u2019s team hasn\u2019t expanded much. \u201cI have two key assistants, three assistant LMs, one of whom is the coordinator and location staff assistant,\u201d he says. \u201cFor Season 3, my coordinator has become a new key assistant, but that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Season 3 will be almost all on location, according to Paterson. \u201cAs the story expands, so does the fictional town of Hawkins,\u201d he says. \u201cBe on the lookout for several new locations in Season 3. Without going into spoiler territory, I will say one in particular has to be seen to be believed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the large number of productions shooting in Atlanta, Holley insists the location team has not had to compete for locations. \u201cBy and large, everything we shoot is within a 30-mile radius per the union contract,\u201d he says. \u201cThe city is very large, especially if you take into account the metro area. We don\u2019t step all over each other\u2019s toes unless we\u2019re in downtown Atlanta. Then it wouldn\u2019t be easy. But the only time we shot there was when Eleven was going to Chicago.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Holley\u2019s view, the location team\u2019s greatest challenge \u201cis that the show takes place in the early and mid-\u201980s, and there\u2019s very little of the \u201980s left in Atlanta. Even though it was burned to the ground (during the Civil War), we still don\u2019t value the history of the edifices. We need to keep the show in period perspective, so renovations are bad. Updated kitchens are bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sean Astin as Bob Newby and Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers, in the fictional town of Hawkins, shot in Jackson, Georgia.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cOur fans spot anything that is not strictly period,\u201d Paterson says. \u201cThat has meant we have become laser-focused on accuracy and authenticity. And that is very hard to achieve in an age where cell towers, recent construction and twenty-first-century life clutters the landscape. It\u2019s getting more and more difficult to create a scene where none of these things exist, so we spend a lot of time narrowing our frame to exclude elements.\u201d<\/p>\n

The town of Hawkins is shot in Jackson, Georgia, a city 46 miles from the location office. \u201cWe explored a number of small-town main streets in the myriad small towns around Atlanta,\u201d Trujillo says. \u201cJackson offered us the greatest amount of period-appropriate downtown real estate. The Duffer brothers wanted a recreation of what we remembered and loved growing up as kids in the \u201980s. It\u2019s a reinvention of classic American cinema from the early \u201980s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Jackson is beyond the 30-mile zone. \u201cGoing there is an expensive trip,\u201d Holley says, \u201cso we go there about once a season. We\u2019ll stack the work that takes place at Melvald\u2019s, where Joyce works, and downtown all together. The first two seasons we pretty much put all the Hawkins\u2019 work in one shot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe police station is supposed to be in downtown but it\u2019s not. If we need Hopper pulling out or walking away, we\u2019ll do that. We have little scenes on the street and mostly just establishing exterior stuff downtown.\u201d Those exteriors include the public library, Radio Shack, Regal Furniture Company, the Hawk Theater (actually a furniture store with a marquee added) and Hawkins Water and Sewer Authority.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another Georgia city housing numerous Stranger Things<\/i> locations is East Point, which is within the 30-mile radius. It\u2019s home to exteriors of the Wheeler, Sinclair and Henderson houses. The Hawkins General Hospital is filmed at East Point First Baptist Church.<\/p>\n

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Dustin at the Snow Ball with Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler. The gym of Patrick Henry High School in Stockbridge, Georgia, was used for Hawkins Middle School.<\/p><\/div>\n

Stockbridge, Georgia, is where they found Patrick Henry High School, the location for Hawkins Middle School and Hawkins High School. \u201cWhen Chris (Trujillo) and I were driving around there in Season 1 looking for Benny\u2019s restaurant, we saw a school that looked closed,\u201d Holley says. \u201cI was the first one in there, and we locked that school down for five years. It\u2019s a very important location. It was just a high school, but we split it in half to be a middle school and a high school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although many of the Stranger Things<\/i> locations have not been used in other shows, Bellwood Quarry isn\u2019t one of them. \u201cThat quarry was already a hot filming location,\u201d Holley says. \u201cSeason 1 of The Walking Dead<\/i> filmed a number of episodes there. One of the early Fast & Furious<\/i> movies drove a car off a cliff into the quarry.\u201d For Stranger Things<\/i>, the quarry was where people searched for Will Byers\u2019 body. \u201cThat location was really challenging because in the winter it was an awful place to be,\u201d Holley says. \u201cThe coldest night in the first two seasons was in that quarry. But it\u2019s no longer available as a shooting location because the city is converting it into a water reservoir and park.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shooting outdoors is rarely problematic. \u201cGeorgia does have four seasons, but none of them are extreme,\u201d Holley says. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a big rainy season, although we get enough rain here. We\u2019ve never honored Indiana winters too closely. Season 1 covered Christmas. Season 2 was fall\/Halloween. We did some snow in both seasons but not to where we had to worry about making a winter wonderland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Stranger Things<\/i> has a considerable number of young actors, the impact on the location team is minimal. \u201cMainly, we need to find places to school them or place the school trailer,\u201d Holley says. \u201cKids can only work 9\u00bd or 10\u00bd hours, depending on their age, but there are enough adults in the show so we can split our days between kids and adults.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we shot our library in Season 1, the building we ended up choosing was in East Point, the town I was born in. It\u2019s just south of Atlanta, about a three-mile drive to the city limits. The library was on the state\u2019s Places in Peril list. It had been unused and fell into disrepair. We were in jeopardy of losing it because it was so far gone. It had a lot of mold, lead paint and asbestos. As a result, no one had ever shot there. People would get quotes on how to fix it, but the city was of the opinion, \u2018That\u2019s on you. Thank you if you want to fix it, but if you want to shoot there, those costs are yours.\u2019 I came up with this idea and pitched them a deal. \u2018We\u2019ll do the renovation and abatement to clean it up and give the building back to the city. The city would then have a workable shooting stage, but they would have to set up a fund used exclusively to rehabilitate other buildings and make them available for filming.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt goes back to my love of architecture. Old East Point Library is not much to look at on the outside but is beautiful on the inside. All the old fixtures are still there, as is the beautiful inlay for the bookshelves. It\u2019s just a gorgeous space, and now it\u2019s available to everyone. The city loves it, and it has become a hub for Atlanta filming. I don\u2019t want to toot my own horn but I definitely think I had a positive impact on that.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As for finding the cabin in the woods, he didn\u2019t. \u201cI didn\u2019t think most traditional cabins in the woods would be all that accessible or shootable,\u201d he says. \u201cWe found some woods on the property where the pumpkin patch was, and we built a cabin. We left it on the property (Sleepy Hollow farm in Powder Springs) and have a standing agreement with the owner to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Upside Down provided its own challenges. \u201cThe Upside Down is everywhere ultimately,\u201d Holley says. \u201cEvery location can be part of it because that world is a mirror of our world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talking about some of the other filming spots, KALM Carey says, \u201cOne fun location from the first season was the abandoned junkyard. I\u2019d actually found it a few years earlier for another film project (HBO\u2019s Lewis and Clark<\/i>) that got shut down. When I first came onto Stranger Things<\/i> and discovered they were looking for a junkyard, I pulled it up on my computer. I told Tony there could be some cool techno-crane shots. It was owned by this guy who has a hobby of collecting these old cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield in the junkyard.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cAll the junkyard scenes feature an abandoned bus,\u201d Paterson adds. \u201cIn Season 1, the kids first stumble across the junkyard while searching for the Gate and later hide out there following the Hawkins Power and Light van chase. In Season 2, it\u2019s prominently featured in the scene where Dustin and Steve go chumming for Dart and the demodog fight sequence that ensues.\u201d Adds Holley, \u201cIt\u2019s surrounded by granite outcroppings and looks fantastic on camera. The owner had 40 acres, and he was just a collector. He sold it in the off season but never fear. The new owner was aware of the history behind it and reached out and said, \u2018If you guys want to come back, I\u2019m open.\u2019 Since the show is such a success, when you tell people who you are, a show like this never gets a negative reaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there is a downside to popularity. \u201cIt\u2019s certainly led to heightened security measures, especially while on location,\u201d producer Paterson adds. \u201cSocial media has been problematic in instances of locations being shared with the general public online. Our goal is to preserve the content of upcoming seasons for our viewers, and we go to great lengths in our efforts. While it\u2019s great to have such a large and devoted following, it does present new challenges at every turn.\u201d \u201cEssentially, everyone I talk to goes on an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) immediately,\u201d Holley says. \u201cThis started in Season 2.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Matthew Modine as Dr. Brenner carries Eleven through Hawkins Lab.<\/p><\/div>\n

Carey, who spent his Stranger Things<\/i> downtime working on Spider-Man: Homecoming<\/i> and Ant-Man and the Wasp, <\/i>points out, \u201cThere really are no easy locations.\u201d His biggest test came in Season 1. \u201cI had a really hard time finding a location for a bar scene. Two actors are sitting in a bar, and they have a fistfight in an alley. Most bars don\u2019t want to stick with the period look. They want the TVs. And even if something is shot outside, the surroundings have to have the right period look.\u201d He finally found his location for the \u201cHideaway\u201d bar in Stockbridge. \u201cIt was a local pool hall that had been in operation as a family business for decades,\u201d he says. \u201cIt first appeared in episode 4 of Season 1 and reappeared briefly in episode 9 of Season 2.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carey, who studied journalism at the University of Alabama before taking a production management class in his last semester, got his first job from his current boss. \u201cMy professor told me to read up on location work, and I decided that\u2019s what I wanted to do. I called home and told my mom I wanted to have a career in film, and she freaked out and called my aunt and told her I was making this crazy decision. Not long afterward, a key assistant knocked on my aunt\u2019s door and told her there was going to be filming occurring in the neighborhood. She gave him my information, and six months later, Tony asked me to meet him at the W Hotel at six o\u2019clock the next morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

KALM Tim McClure, LMGI, who started as a set PA in 2008, joined Stranger Things<\/i> at the beginning of Season 2. He had been working on Transformers: The Last Knight<\/i> in Michigan when Holley offered him a job. McClure had already been through the routine of working on a show with buzz. \u201cLM Mike Riley gave me a job on Season 3 of The Walking Dead<\/i>,\u201d he said of the Atlanta-based series. \u201cI got used to working in Georgia and dealing with uber secrecy and the fan base tracking us down. It was a crash course.\u201d Like with many TV series, Stranger Things<\/i> shoots two episodes at a time. \u201cIt\u2019s like working on a series of small features,\u201d McClure says. \u201cIt\u2019s not quite as grand a challenge as a big feature, and it\u2019s not as unpredictable as a series. We want to be finding new and awesome places, but it\u2019s tough coming up with stuff that wows our creative team and isn\u2019t too far away or hazardous. You start to have to dig deeper. We work about six weeks ahead. We tend to get script outlines that describe what\u2019s happening. We\u2019ll get two or three of those every month. Then we get two episodes about five weeks out. By then, we\u2019ll have locations already selected or have a number of great options. As we\u2019re winding down filming a two-episode block, we\u2019ll get scripts for the next two episodes.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Scientists search for malevolent forces at Hawkins Lab<\/p><\/div>\n

LMGI ALM Luke Welden\u2019s Georgia upbringing has been a plus in Stranger Things<\/i> work. \u201cThe South is a friendly environment, so it\u2019s a handshake and a smile,\u201d he says. \u201cA promise goes a lot further. I grew up in a small town in the construction business, and it taught me how to talk to people. That\u2019s the majority of our job. I see myself as a large-event planner. We plan seven weddings a week.\u201d Even so, dealing with locals sometimes can be complicated. \u201cHawkins is full of small-town politics,\u201d Welden says. \u201cOne person knows everybody. When you involve a small community and you change their downtown square when you\u2019re filming, you don\u2019t necessarily make friends everywhere you go. You\u2019re always juggling different personalities and different perceptions of how we\u2019re impacting businesses. But once you\u2019re in a good Southern city\u2014luckily, I know how the culture is here\u2014you kind of evolve into another citizen while you\u2019re filming there and you can keep the excitement real for the people around you.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Welden\u2019s favorite aspect of the job? \u201cThe gumshoe part,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re detectives. Part of the challenge is figuring out who owns large pieces of land. Everything else is pretty much a checklist. Until you gain access, you can\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before starting work on the show, the writers watched (or rewatched) a large list of films, including E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Stand by Me, The Goonies, The Thing, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Poltergeist, Aliens<\/i> and Star Wars<\/i>. The reason: \u201cStranger Things<\/i> is intrinsically an homage to films of the \u201970s and \u201980s,\u201d PD Trujillo explains. \u201cSo EVERY location and EVERY set is influenced by those films. We try to keep the homage tonal as opposed to directly copying anything from those films. So when we scout locations, we are after a very specific look and feel. We want our locations to feel like they came straight from that era without being a duplication of something you\u2019ve already seen on screen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Not every homage is fully spelled out in the scripts. \u201cDuring the scouting process, we aren\u2019t necessarily asked to find locations for specific homages as much as to consider a number of classic 1970s\/1980s films as the driving force for the look of a location,\u201d Carey says. \u201cThe art department does a great job of incorporating Easter eggs for specific homages within the set dressing as well. We\u2019ve referenced Stephen King stories and Spielberg movies, as well as films like The Goonies<\/i> for scenes involving the kids riding their bikes through town. One of my favorite locations from Season 1, episode 6, is the kids biking through a neighborhood until eventually coming across the aftermath of Eleven stealing the boxes of Eggos from a grocery store. We shot these scenes in Palmetto at a local grocery store that was called Bradley\u2019s Big Buy at the time. The owner, Don Hayes, told us that he had worked at the store when growing up in the area. He later bought it in order to preserve its history and keep a grocery in town at a time when it was at risk of closing. That Eggos scene has turned into such a staple for the show, and it\u2019s exciting to see a location work its way into popular culture. I actually saved an email from the Duffer brothers with their initial reaction to the photos that I\u2019d taken for that location. That\u2019s something that I plan to hold onto.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, in Seasons 1 and 2, there are a number of scenes in which the kids are walking down train tracks. This was described to the scouts from the start as an homage to Stand by Me<\/i>. We ended up using the train tracks at Stone Mountain Park. The rails circle the park\u2019s granite mountain, which provides a safe, controllable option surrounded by mixed, old-growth woods. We\u2019ve also worked with the park on multiple occasions for various wooded scenes. The film liaisons, Christine Clements and Jeanine Jones, along with Paul Maharry of Stone Mountain Police Department, are always incredibly helpful in coordinating our filming with consideration for the patrons of Georgia\u2019s most-visited park.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before becoming LM on Stranger Things<\/i>, Holley, 46, worked as an ALM on We Are Marshall<\/i> and X-Men: First Class<\/i>. \u201cX-Men<\/i> was such a giant movie,\u201d he says. \u201cWe shot it four hours from Atlanta, not anywhere I work regularly. When you\u2019re shooting a movie that big, it\u2019s very compartmentalized. I had specific locations that were mine. Most of the other stuff I didn\u2019t have to deal with. I was training for managing bigger things.\u201d Holley has always liked working on location. \u201cTo me, that means shooting out of town, and it always has the potential to be a wonderful experience,\u201d he says. \u201cUsually, you\u2019re somewhere that\u2019s not a hub. Everyone is happy to have you because you\u2019re bringing money to the town.\u201d<\/p>\n

He fell into location work by accident. \u201cI was in college in a normal degree program, in risk management and insurance,\u201d he says. \u201cI decided I wanted to become a filmmaker. After graduating, I got a job helping to open an Outback Steakhouse and met this guy working there. He also wanted to be a filmmaker. After work, he\u2019d go to my place and we\u2019d write. After we put a bunch of stuff together, we said, \u2018What now?\u2019 One of the counties in Georgia had public-access channels without programs. We paid $50 to buy this book, which was useless. There were \u2018six courses\u2019 that covered camera, lighting, editing, truck\/field management\u2014the full run of production. It was very rudimentary. You take those courses and then you have to volunteer on six half-hour programs doing whatever they\u2019ll have you do. Then you pitch a show. As long as it\u2019s not smut or porn, it\u2019s public access and anything goes. We did a little sketch comedy show for 18 months until we broke the camera. That ended that career.<\/p>\n

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Will checking on strange things in the Byers barn.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cAlong the way, I met this guy who was a director on a student film\/teaser\/sizzle thing. He remembered me a year or so later, when he was working at an advertising firm on this industrial spot for Novo Nordisk, a biotech corporation. He said, \u2018There are a series of spots for their annual convention, and the company I would normally use can\u2019t do it. Do you want to produce it?\u2019 I said, \u2018Hell, no. I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing in too many fields.\u2019 He said, \u2018Here\u2019s your budget. Hire the people on things you don\u2019t know. That\u2019s what producing is.\u2019 I took the job, and I took the person I\u2019d met at The Outback, Alex Orr, who\u2019s now the producer of Atlanta<\/i>. He and I have been friends for 20 years. I hired out all the crew, found an editing house back home and put it together. At the end, I had $20,000 in my pocket. I\u2019d done what I\u2019d been trying to do my whole life. I quit my day job and said, \u2018I\u2019m in the film business. Somebody please hire me.\u2019 At that time, there was no production to speak of in Atlanta. The first movie I got on was Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius<\/i>, as a location assistant. Someone I went to college with was the production coordinator. She said, \u2018The location manager needs somebody. Do you want it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That was 14 years ago, and Holley has never looked back. \u201cI love solving the puzzle a script presents when you first read it,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery filmmaker plays a part in the collaborative process, and to be able to contribute in some way, often a crucial one, is very rewarding. I love being a bridge between the project and the community. The relationships we build, inside and out of the production office, matter more to me than the credit, the paycheck or the payoff seeing the work come to life on the screen.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the very beginning of Stranger Things<\/i>, I\u2019ve been able to help tell a fantastic story that continues to unfold. It\u2019s been the most fulfilling experience I\u2019ve ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

STRANGER THINGS Location Team:\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Tony Holley, LMGI<\/strong>, LM
\n<\/i><\/b>Kyle Carey, LMGI<\/strong>, <\/i><\/b>Key ALM
\n<\/i><\/b>Tim McClure, LMGI<\/strong>, <\/i><\/b>Key ALM
\n<\/i><\/b>Haley Billue<\/strong>, <\/i><\/b>Key ALM\/Coordinator
\n<\/i><\/b>Luke Welden, LMGI & Jay Elgin<\/strong>, <\/i><\/b>ALMs
\n<\/i><\/b>Michael Slack, Liza-Anne Cabral, Roderick Davis, Nick DaLonzo<\/strong> \u2013\u00a0Location Assistants<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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