{"id":7000,"date":"2025-11-26T17:58:55","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T17:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/new-stranger-things-digital-de-aging-tech\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T17:58:55","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T17:58:55","slug":"new-stranger-things-digital-de-aging-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/new-stranger-things-digital-de-aging-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"The New \u201cStranger Things\u201d Is Using Digital De-Aging Tech After Its Child Actors Kept Growing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The final season of Netflix\u2019s blockbuster show \u201cStranger Things\u201d is kicking off today, well over nine years after the show premiered on the streaming platform.<\/p>\n

And as Salon<\/em> reports<\/a>, producers had to resort to some visual trickery to wind back the clock for the show\u2019s rapidly aging cast. In a new five-minute preview<\/a> of the upcoming season, actor Noah Schnapp\u2019s character, Will Byers, had to be digitally de-aged to retell the story of what happened when Will became trapped in the Upside Down, a shadowy parallel universe, in the show\u2019s first season \u2014 but this time, from Will\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n

Screenshot showing a digitally de-aged Noah Schnapp on the new season of \"Stranger Things.\"<\/figure>\n

In other words, the now 21-year-old actor had to look like his 10 or 11-year-old self. According to Deadline<\/em><\/a>, young actor Luke Kotokek had to stand in for Schnapp during filming. Then, Schnapp\u2019s digitally de-aged face was swapped with Kotokek\u2019s in post by VFX company Lola \u2014 with some environmental assistance, since the Upside Down is blanketed in endless darkness in the show\u2019s fictional universe.<\/p>\n

The technique isn\u2019t without precedent on the show. Costar Millie Bobby Brown, who plays the character Eleven, also had to undergo the same process for season four of \u201cStranger Things\u201d for a similar sequence, with actor Martie Blair taking her place.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen whether other actors will also be de-aged if their stories are revisited through similar flashbacks during season five.<\/p>\n

While the tech isn\u2019t exactly new in Hollywood<\/a>, it\u2019s a startling instance of de-aging tech, especially considering we\u2019ve seen Schnapp grow up with each passing season of \u201cStranger Things\u201d over the better part of the last decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime may move strangely in the Upside Down, but the actors\u2019 hormones do not care,\u201d Salon<\/em> wrote. \u201cThis is the fate of long-running series about kids. At some point, all such shows lose their battles with biology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schnapp had to do some outside-of-the-box thinking to help Kotokek reimagine Will\u2019s treacherous experience in the Upside Down.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked [Millie] for help, honestly,\u201d he told Deadline<\/em>. \u201cI was like, \u2018How did you work with the kid when you had to do it?\u2019 It was fun to step into those director shoes that we don\u2019t really get the chance to do on the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had to \u201cthink introspectively and reflectively of how I act and how I did act and move and breathe and turn and look and kind of relay that onto this little kid, who was so cute.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little digital-looking,\u201d he admitted. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to make it look perfect, but it turned out pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many ways, fans were able to grow up with both the fictional characters and the actors portraying them, a fascinating documentation of how time has passed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s so interesting,\u201d Schnapps told Deadline<\/em>. \u201cTen years ago, social media wasn\u2019t a thing. It was not what it is like [now] at all. I posted pictures of my dog, and I had like 25 followers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting, the sense of humility you really have to leave at the door,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

More on de-aging:<\/strong> New Movie Uses AI to De-Age Tom Hanks and Robin Wright to What They Looked Like in the 90s<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The post The New \u201cStranger Things\u201d Is Using Digital De-Aging Tech After Its Child Actors Kept Growing<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The final season of Netflix\u2019s blockbuster show \u201cStranger Things\u201d is kicking off today, well over nine years after the show premiered on the streaming platform. And as Salon reports, producers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3842],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-future-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}