A couple of years ago, John Boswell made a splash when he began to autotune scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan in a series called Symphony of Science. He’s since shifted his focus to pop culture, and his latest work is a fantastic compilation from Netflix’s Stranger Things.
Titled Superpowers: A Stranger Things Musical, Bowell has auto-tuned Eleven, Mike, Will, Dustin, and Lucas, creating a fun and genuinely catchy track.
It's a genuinely fun and catchy track
To capture the right tone for the song, Boswell "started out inspired by sounds of the '80s," he told The Verge in an email. "[Like] analog synths, drum machines, etc. But I wanted to give a modern spin on it. So I brought in some more contemporary sounds to give it a really thumping vibe."
To assemble the video from a variety of clips, Boswell watched through the series, looking for interesting sounds, the right pieces of dialogue, anything that caught his ear. "This could be anything from a great one-liner, to a weird sound effect, or big speech."
Once he had collected a list of the right sounds, he listened for a common theme and sound. "Crafting a song becomes like putting a puzzle together," he said, "not knowing what the final product will be, but just experimenting to flesh out something captivating."
In all, the video took about two weeks to assemble. "It all depends on how long it takes to stumble upon a kernel of a good idea," he said, "and develop it into something compelling."