Martina Radwan is an award-winning cinematographer with nearly 100 credits to her name. She was the director of photography on several fiction films before she developed a deep interest in documentaries. In 2024, she received an Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program for her DP work on Apple TV+’s Girls State. Her recent work includes The Only Girl in the Orchestra, the 2025 Academy Award Winner for Short Documentary, The Fire That Took Her, the 2023 Emmy Winner for Outstanding Crime and Justice Documentary, and Inventing Tomorrow, winner of the 2020 Peabody Award.
After her first feature-length documentary as director, 2023’s Tomorrow, Tomorrow Tomorrow, Radwan was selected by Matt and Ross Duffer to direct One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5, a documentary chronicling the making of the fifth and final season of the smash Netflix series.
We spoke with Radwan about documenting such a large-scale project, editing a year’s worth of work down to two hours, and the ethics of documentary filmmaking.
First of all, congratulations on the film. I really enjoyed it.
Thank you.
What was your familiarity with the series before the Duffer Brothers approached you for the project?
Well, I was a huge fan, like everybody else.
Your career is extensive, to say the least, but I imagine this was one of the higher-profile projects you’ve worked on. Were you hesitant to take on something with this much notoriety?
Yes and no. I liked the challenge of it because it was also so different from anything else that I’d ever done. But the fact that we knew we had a year really helped. That was like, “Okay, we can figure this out.”
Your previous feature-length film, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, was six years in the making, correct?
That was 12 years in the making.
So, this was a drop in the bucket for you, right?
Yeah. That was also interesting to me, because another great challenge was that I knew there was a time frame. We have to be done in a certain time frame, no matter how big and extensive the shooting was. We knew when we had to be done.
What was the turnaround time from when you finished filming the documentary to when you had to turn it around for Netflix?
It was pretty much a year. They wrapped on December 20th, and we had started editing, I think, in October. So, it was an extensive edit.
How many hours did you end up filming altogether?
Well, that’s always a joke. When Ross said at the end that they had 650 hours, we had 713.
Wow. What was the process like for you, whittling that down into a two-hour film?
Well, we started out, and I had certain themes in mind already. And then I knew over the course of the year, other themes would reveal themselves. So, I kept whittling it down towards the theme, and then whatever else was happening. Obviously, you always want to be surprised and take all these happy accidents into account. I didn’t know that we’re going to end up with a Pain Tree set or things like that. The idea that this is really the end of an era in terms of set building. That developed on set. But I always knew that I wanted it to be primarily about the creative process and the collaboration. So those two things. And then, of course, coming of age. It’s a 10-year show. The kids have grown up, but then everybody else also grew up, including the Duffers.
You had a built-in narrative as far as the series episodes were concerned, but then you focused on them not being able to come up with an ending, which you carried throughout the film. Was that a happy accident, or were you looking for something to hang the film on?
It’s not uncommon that the writers are writing while the shooting is happening. That’s why every show has guest directors. Because you have to not only write it, but you also have to prep it. The show is so big that they really didn’t have the time to sit down and write it, and that happened on set.
What would you say was one of the biggest challenges you faced with this project?
I think really the sheer amount of good footage that I can’t use.
Sure. This could have been a series. You could have had a two-hour film based on each episode, really.
Pretty much. But, you know, at some point it has to end. We knew the show ended. I never wanted to mirror the show. I wanted it to be a standalone that really is just a bow on the end because the show is the driving force.
You managed to capture some pretty intimate and sometimes crucial moments amongst a rather chaotic set. Can you talk about finding those intimate conversations when you’re surrounded by hundreds of crew, extras, stunt people, etc.?
Well, at the core, I am an observational filmmaker and a cinematographer. So, it’s a lot of instinct, but also, I know the people. I have built trust with them. So, they let me come close. And then you shoot this way, and you listen to what’s happening over there. It’s like you have your eye on the viewfinder to the right and then your other eye is open to the left, and you’re like, “Okay, I have to move over there.”
I also spent a lot of time in rehearsals, so I kind of knew what the story points were, what the plot points were, where it’s going to get hairy, or where they have to bring everybody in. So, that was also the guideline. You need to know the people that you’re working with to be able to anticipate what they may say or what they may do.
Was there any aspect that you really wanted to explore and expose to the world, as far as how a project like Stranger Things is made?
Well, I’m a crew member since, you know, ever, so I really wanted to highlight that it takes a village. That was sort of my focus – the collaboration. A story that emerged that I didn’t foresee was how good everyone was and how engaged they were. The team was 500 people, 250 on set every day, and everybody was at the height of their craft and an artist. They were really artistically inclined, and everybody wanted to give their best for this particular show, and that was really amazing to see.
We didn’t see much of David Harbour or Winona Ryder in the film. We didn’t see their last scene. You didn’t have any interviews. Was there a reason behind that?
You know, most of it is just schedule. Sometimes there were schedule changes that we didn’t anticipate. And I only have two hours.
What would you say is the big difference between acting as a director of photography for someone else’s project versus a project that you’re directing?
Even as a DP, you go in with certain stories in mind. You have to have a goal. Otherwise, you’re just hosing it down. And as a director, I can follow what’s happening more. Although I do the same thing as a DP. Even as a DP, I edit in my head. But as a director, I was constantly editing. It was also knowing where to be, because everything was happening in parallel. They were working on 12 different stages at the same time, and I had to decide where to go and which story to follow. That’s really the main difference.
How did the editing for this project differ, or didn’t it, compared to your other projects?
It didn’t really differ all that much. I mean, the concept is the same. You discuss with the editors which storylines you want to follow, and they build it out and hopefully find better scenes.
Did you learn anything about yourself as a filmmaker on this project?
I always knew that I like a challenge. And then on this project, I was like, “Oh, yeah, I really do.” And I had to deal with the fact that I’m not very patient. I had to really trust the process. That was the beauty of having a year. You’re a fly on the wall here.
Are you ever concerned about not actually capturing a pure moment because of your presence?
That’s a constant thought and a constant concern. As a documentary filmmaker, that’s your responsibility. It’s really how you present somebody. I think people who are not in the field think it’s a one-way street, but it’s not. There’s constant communication between the characters or subjects. And it’s always like, “What do we call them?” Which is part of the
ethical problem. Are they subjects? Subjects is very passive. But it’s a constant negotiation. And that was actually much more on this set because there was a general consensus that we’re making a documentary. But do people really decide that they have a camera in their face while they’re working when the stakes are so high, right? So, I had to negotiate that, in particular with the actors. Did they really need another camera following them around when they were hoping to be off? So, there were a lot of negotiations with that.
Base camp, for example, was off-limits. That was just the agreement with the actors. I’m not going to follow them into makeup and their trailer. That’s their time. And so, yes, the ethics of documentary filmmaking is always at the forefront. My entire last film, that was the core question. Do you point the camera at somebody who’s depending on you?
You captured some pretty emotional moments for a lot of the cast here. So, I imagine that it might have been a little more difficult to negotiate. It’s the end of a very long process for them, 10 years, and here you are capturing it for them, and maybe they don’t want that moment captured necessarily.
Right. I think at that point, again, it was a year, and there was a long roll-up where I just let them watch me work so that they would understand. Because it’s also behind the scenes. Everybody always thinks, like, you’re looking for the things that go wrong, which I wasn’t interested in. There also wasn’t anything going wrong, really. Right. But I just let them watch me work before I even tried to approach them so that they could get a sense of what I was doing. Then by the end of the year, I think everybody also understood this is a document of their time. In 10 years, they can show that to their friends and kids, and I think they understood that.
Is this a type of project you’d like to revisit? I mean something on this scale, this commercial, or do you not have a preference?
I’m open to anything, really. I need to be interested, and I need to be curious. I had grown up on sets. I actually started out in fiction before I switched to documentary. And so, I knew how a set was run, but I’d never been on a set of that scale, in particular, not for so long.
Because with Stranger Things, literally every episode is a fiction film in itself, so I was really curious. How do they pull this off? How is this humanly possible? And they did pull it off, and with such grace. And so that contradiction was really what I’m after. I’m ready for anything, really. As long as I’m curious about it.
You can watch our full interview with Martina Radwan below. You can find out more about her at martinaradwan.com.
One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 is currently streaming on Netflix.