Director Research: The Duffer Brothers

Director Research: The Duffer Brothers

As part of the directions unit I had to research in to other directors apart from the one I chose to emulate for my project. For TV directors I had a wide variety of choice but ultimatly settled on the Duffer Brothers (Matt and Ross Duffer). 

Matt and Ross Duffer are American twin directors that have worked together on a small number of productions, but they have been highly successful. Although they released a feture film in 2015 (Titled "Hidden") they are mostly TV directors and I will be primarilly using their most recent work on the series "Stranger Things" (2016) as my source material. 

The reason I chose to research the Duffer brothers is because of their work on stranher things and how it relates to my chosen director (Alfread Hitchcock). Their work on the series "Stranger Things" and the episodes they worked on for the series "Wayward Pines" are a perfectt example of how they can build up tension and create a sense of mystery. Something Hitchcock is also known for, infact he is often refered to as the "Master of suspense". 

The Duffer Brothers themsleves are also masters of suspense (I will explain why in this post) having had their first sci-fi drama film picked up by Warner Brothers and they were greenlighted to direct it themselves since the company had faith in their ability to craete an effective atmopsphere and coherant drama. M. Night Shyamalan even recognised their talent and hired them to help on a few episodes of the American suspense/drama series "Wayward Pines". 

The first thing to note about the duffer brothers is their frequent use and theme of lighting. Throughout "Stranger Things" their is consistant use of lighting to illuminate the characters but keep background detail to a minimum. Many of the shows most successful scenes are fillmed at night, while this was not always neccissary for the plot it was a stylistic choice to create more suspense and mystery. Whenever the characters enter "The Upside Down" (an alien dimension) it is always night time and the scene is illimunated artificially with torches meaning the audience only sees what the directors wanted them to see. That is exactly what drew me in to theese scenes and made me think of my project. Hitchcock is notoriouse for keeping certain details in his film concealed and I was fasinated to see how that could be done with modern cameras and equipment. 

This theme of mystery and using lighting and setting to create suspense only develops furtehr as the series goes on. Although this is a Sci-Fi series a lot of the most successful scenes are directed to be as minimalistic as possible. The very first dissapearence in the show we see takes plcae in a confined spcae (a shed) and we have the use of high camera angles to demonstrate a loss of power from the characters (they are not in controll of their situation and are being hunted). While the Duffer Brothers could have used a number of props to demonstrate an atmosphere of danger and threat, instead they chose to focus on a single flickering lightbulb (which is used as a metaphor for a number if things icluding hope, the human spirit, and an indicator of which world we are in etc).

Hitchcock himslef liked to place importance on an individual object or prop and have it reoccur later in the plot. The Duffer Brothers made otehr interesting creative decisions when it came to how charcters transitioned from one scene to another. In the very first episode we get an establishing shot of a garden which slowly pans accross the space bur=t does not cut until the sprinklers activate. We next see use of water when one of the characters is sitting isolated in the dead of night over an empty swimming pool. Cinimaticly this scene is visually gorgiouse, it primarilly uses static shots to maintain this inate sense of calm yet suspense at the same time, which is something I really hope to be able to pull off. The scene then demonstrates how the directors can change the sense of a scene in moments, the character cuts her hand and we get thhe first introduction of violant colour for that scene and as she falls in to the pool the camera begins to move and shake as she desperatly tries to cling to her life. Demonstrateing how effectively a director can stage a relativly simple scene n to something that has us on the edge of our seats, seamlessly blending static and moving shots and changing the lighting to metaphorically demonstrate to us that paranormal activity is afoot.

Finally the theme continues further in ttwo seperate scenes that demonstrate the stylistic compitance of the directors. One scene has "Will"s mother atempting to contact him through the use of christmas lights. We tend to see quite a few wide shots in this scene so that we can establish whats happening in the full scene on a regular basis (something that becomes more and more present in the series such as when Will's brother gets in to a fight, or Eleven fights the alien, and is something that reflects my personal directing style and appeals to me). We then break in to close up's as the tention rises in the scene and Will's mother becomes more and more desperate. We then see more use of water when the character "Eleven" transports herself in to a place of null where she atempts to find certain people. We have another high angel shot (again simulating the loss of controll/power) and when we are in this null the background is entirley black but the character remians fully illuminated and we never see the full figure that she finds in this place only a breif shot of it rushing past the camera, a graet way to build suspense and block a scene and it's yet another thing I hope to pick up on.

So Overall even though their career is currently quite small their is a lot of development of particular style's and stylistic techniques for the Duffer Brothers, that I hope to take influence from.