Each episode of the new Netflix drama Adolescence — which focuses on a teenage murder in the UK — was shot in just one take.
The single shot format runs “very differently to normal,” according to the director of photography Matthew Lewis. “It took a few weeks to really understand that it was only one camera moving through space. That there was no cuts and whatever was shot is the episode.”
The unusual filming technique prompted actor Ashley Walters, who plays Detective Inspector Bascombe, to describe it as being more in a “theater space than in a movie space.”
Adolescence follows the horrific story of Jamie, played by Owen Cooper, after he attacks and murders a girl from his school. It’s described as a “whydunnit” rather than a “whodunnit,” by writer Jack Thorne.
Thorne wrote the show alongside Stephen Graham who plays Eddie, the boy’s father. He tells Still Watching Netflix that he had always wanted to “tell a tale over a long time span.” And in the end, the four-episode series plays out over a period of 13 months with each episode concentrating on one specific day in that time frame.
This single-shot format has been employed previously by Birdman (2014) and 1917 (2019), two movies that both picked up Academy Awards — Birdman won Best Picture and Best Director.
The camera is clipped onto a drone so it can fly away during the filming of episode two. | Netflix
To pull off one-take episodes, the cast rehearse for three weeks beforehand to learn the script, the set, and “literally walk through scene by scene.” Then on the final week, there are 10 chances, two per day, to get the episode in the can.
It requires some ingenuity such as when the camera magically flies off for an aerial shot in the second episode. This is done by a team coming up behind the cinematographer Matthew Lewis and clipping the camera to a drone via a hook. The drone then flies down to another location where it is unclipped.
In other shots, the camera is attached to a car via a crane to film the actors within. The cinematographers are following ahead in another car and jump out to grab hold of the camera once they reach their destination. The camera never stops rolling.
Despite it being a UK-centric show, Variety reports that Adolescence has racked up over 24 million views in its first four days of availability on Netflix and is the most streamed show in the US.
