Emmy-Winner Angelo Palazzo Brings Scarier, Organic Sounds to ‘Stranger Things’

Stranger Things season four dropped last Friday, and audiences are already buzzing about its elevated intensively and scare factor. This darker season introduces a new villain in Vecna, a formidable and deadly foe with the ability to pull his victims into a trance-like state and… Well, you really need to see it, or hear it, to believe it.

The same could be said for season four itself with incredible production values, globe-spanning locations, and expert crafts that underscore and support the main storyline. Lead Sound Effects Editor Angelo Palazzo received an Emmy for his work on season three, which featured the awe-inspiring Battle of Starcourt Mall. Returning to Stranger Things for its fourth season, Palazzo and team saw an increased opportunity to provide more sound effects than in previous seasons as the new season relies less on 80s-era pop songs.

Palazzo worked with the design team to help turn up the volume on the scare effects, something that wasn’t necessarily present in previous seasons.

“The whole idea was to really notch the whole thing up to the next level. We were kind of talking about making it more aggressive, more greedy, abrasive, and disturbing. There were things like jump scares and a lot of leaning into the horror of this season, which we didn’t see much a lot of in the previous seasons,” Palazzo explained. “Previous seasons were more otherworldly sounds and there were creatures, but this season, it was just leaning much heavier into scares, a lot more violent. We really come out of the gate pretty hard with it, and you get a sense of what you’re in for pretty quick.”

For Vecna, Palazzo created a sound palate that originated from unexpected sources. Vecna’s presence over the course of season four exists as a component of a hive mind, an interconnected series of vines all controlled by him. That plot device drove most of his sound design.

To create the sounds of Vecna moving, Palazzo recorded sounds based off of fibrous vegetables. That’s right, if Vecna’s movements sound like twisting cabbage to you, then give yourself a gold star. Those sounds became the base on which Palazzo and team layered wet, slimy sounds to create the sense of Vecna’s vines moving all over his body.

When Vecna attacks his victims, the nightmare-inducing sounds also stem (pun intended) from the vegetable world.

“A lot of it are vegetable recordings, carrots and celery, things like that. I’ll always I start with a fresh new palette of these type of sounds, and I set up my mics and I do a whole day of it where I’m doing carrots, wet carrots, cabbage, anything like that. I like to start with the most organic sounds I can, and then I’ll later go and start to tweak and process and pitch. Vecna’s world and his body are all very organic. It’s all very much real world type sounds like that which is great because you recognize the sound but at the same time it’s foreign because you’ve never seen a body get busted up like that. You physically recognize it and you respond to it, but at the same time, you’re watching this horrific thing. That’s my approach with horror, starting with organic sounds and then I get this really nice palette going and then build from there.”

Palazzo believes this season is a prime example of how quality sound design takes an audience through a story line and support the emotional beats of the material. Given the smaller quantity of songs used within the season, sound design has the opportunity to provide disturbing and emotional reactions to the terror on screen. From Vecna’s bone-cracking attacks to the breathing sounds associated with his home base, the sound effects, to Palazzo, become more disturbing because it has roots in authentic and familiar sounds.

“We watched the screening in LA where we had a screening party at the Netflix building. I was able to hear it finally on the big screen, and it’s pretty disturbing. When overlaid with the visuals and everything, everyone did such a great job, and it was really fun to watch it.”

Stranger Things season four is now streaming on Netflix.