‘Adolescence’ Filming Secrets: From Filming Locations To That Drone Shot In Episode Two
Following on from the raging success that Netflix's Adolescence has been since its release on the streaming platform on March 13, the service is now answering questions about how exactly the show was filmed.
The four-episode limited series, which was co-created and written by its star Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, tells the story of a fictional 13-year-old named Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), who is arrested for the murder of a teenage girl who goes to his school.
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'We could have made a drama about gangs and knife crime, or about a kid whose mother is an alcoholic or whose father is a violent abuser,' Graham told Netflix. 'Instead, we wanted you to look at this family and think, "My God. This could be happening to us!" And what’s happening here is an ordinary family’s worst nightmare.'
It's not only the premise of the eerily prescient series that's resonated with viewers though, but the process of filming it too. Adolescence's director Philip Barantini's signature filming style is one-shot takes, which the director explained in a Q&A with the streaming service. 'Basically that means we press record on the camera, and we don’t press stop until the very end of the hour,' Barantini said. 'But it’s much more complicated than it sounds. It takes months of preparation and weeks of rehearsals and an incredible team of people to pull it off at every stage, from the script to the locations to the production design to where exactly the camera is going to be able to shoot and from what angle.'
This is all of the Adolescence filming secrets, from how many shots it took to film each episode to how they filmed that drone shot.
How was Adolescence filmed?
Netflix has said that producers used the second take for the first episode, which was set mostly in a police station, and was captured on the first of a five-day shoot for the episode. The second episode alone was filmed during take 13 amid a cast of 370 extras.
The third episode was filmed 11 times before Barantini was happy with the interaction between Cooper, who plays the accused teen Jamie Miller, and a psychologist played by Erin Doherty.
The fourth and final episode was captured during take 16 as the Millers wrestled with the reality of their child's situation. Like episodes two and three, the final episode was shot on the final day of filming.
The streaming service's original plan was to film each episode in full 10 times (once in the morning and once in the afternoon) but a few attempts had to be abandoned, so some episodes had more than 10 takes.
Did they use a drone at the end of Adolescence episode two?
Yes, in the final moments of episode two, the team used a drone camera. 'The surprising thing was using the technical to free us,' Thorne told Netflix.
There was a danger though, as director of photography Matthew Lewis added, that the shot could have felt too much like a video game which would 'just take the audience away from what the piece is.' Barantini, however, came up with a solution, which involved attaching the camera to a drone to create what Lewis described as a 'more ethereal' feel.
'It was an example of the technical meeting the story and finding a fusion which is actually better than anything the story had come up with on its own,' Thorne added.
Where was Adolescence filmed?
Most of Adolescence was filmed in studios in Pontefract in West Yorkshire, which are usually used by the music industry, which uses the facility as a rehearsal space for artists.
'It was a massive, brilliant space, one of the best I’ve worked in, and we were able to build our police station there and also our interview room for episode three,' Barantini said. 'It became the nerve centre of the entire production.'
The studios were also near enough to the real locations used in the series that the camera could travel between them in real time.
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