keen on utilizing digitally-produced special effects for the second season, and even more so for the third season. During pre-production, the Duffers sat down with Senior VFX Supervisor Paul Graff, production designer Chris Trujillo, and senior concept illustrator Michael Maher to plan out the digital visual effects for the season. One of the most important topics of discussion was the design of the "corporeal" manifestation of the "Shadow Monster/Mindflayer," which the Duffers wanted to be cognizant of the titular "Thing" from John Carpenter's 1982 science fiction horror film The Thing. To emulate this decided look, the group decided the creature should have "some real weight and, consequently, a different new feel for [the animation], including specularity and moisture," an aesthetic that also translated to the "Tom/Bruce" monster that attacks Nancy at the hospital. The team for season three found it important for the actors to have some sort of on-set physical guide to interact with the large would-be digital entities, as money wasn't budgeted for any sort of costly on-set augmented reality previsualization renderings. Graff noted it was impractical and too expensive to 3D print a rough replica of the physical "Shadow Monster/Mindflayer", as had been done with creatures in the previous season, especially considering the monster is essentially "something the size of a T-Rex invading a shopping mall." A one-hundred pound "zeppelin-shaped creature shell" was initially constructed for the actors to interact with, but it too was deemed impractical and was scrapped. Graff eventually went out and purchased "the largest object [he] could think of" — a blow-up beach ball — and taped it to the end of a twenty-foot boom pole so he could "puppeteer the ‘head’ enough to provide an eyeline for the actors while also giving camera operators a shot at framing for and tracking the creature's movements.” Graff employed a much more unique means to visualize the "Tom/Bruce" monster during filming since the extremely erratic and complicated lighting situation of the scenes that it was featured in mounted a number of potential hardships to be faced during postproduction work: Music The original soundtrack album for the third season, titled Stranger Things 3, was released digitally on June 28, 2019, via Lakeshore and Invada Records. Like the previous two seasons, the soundtrack was composed by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of the electronic band Survive. The album was also released on physical formats such as CD,