<P> The third season sees Ryder, Harbour, Wolfhard, Brown, Matarazzo, McLaughlin, Dyer, Heaton, Buono, Schnapp, Sink, Keery and Montgomery return . They are joined by Maya Hawke as Robin . </P> <P> The brothers had desired to film the series around the Long Island area to match the initial Montauk concept . However, with filming scheduled to take place in November 2015, it was difficult to shoot in Long Island in the cold weather, and the production started scouting locations in and around the Atlanta, Georgia area . The brothers, who grew up in North Carolina, found many places that reminded them of their own childhoods in that area, and felt the area would work well with the narrative shift to the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana . </P> <P> The filming of the first season began in November 2015 and was extensively done in Atlanta, Georgia, with The Duffer Brothers and Levy handling the direction of individual episodes . Jackson served as the basis of the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana . Other shooting locations included the Georgia Mental Health Institute as the Hawkins National Laboratory site, Bellwood Quarry, Patrick Henry High School in Stockbridge, Georgia, for the middle and high school scenes, Emory University's Continuing Education Department, the former city hall in Douglasville, Georgia, Georgia International Horse Park, the probate court in Butts County, Georgia, Old East Point Library and East Point First Baptist Church in East Point, Georgia, Fayetteville, Georgia, Stone Mountain Park, Palmetto, Georgia, and Winston, Georgia . Set work was done at Screen Gem Studios in Atlanta . The series was filmed with a Red Dragon digital camera . Filming for the first season concluded in early 2016 . </P> <P> While filming, the brothers tried to capture shots that could be seen as homages to many of the 1980s references they recalled . Their goal was not necessarily to fill the work with these references, but instead make the series seem to the viewer as a 1980s film . They spent little time reviewing those works and instead went by memory . Matt further recognized that some of their filming homages were not purposely done but were found to be very comparable, as highlighted by a fan - made video comparing the show to several 1980s works side - by - side . Matt commented on the video that "Some were deliberate and some were subconscious ." The brothers recognized that many of the iconic scenes from these 1980s films, such as with Poltergeist, was about "taking a very ordinary object that people deal with every day, their television set, and imbuing it with something otherworldly", leading to the idea of using the Christmas light strings for Will to communicate with Joyce . </P>

When did the first season of stranger things start filming