Is that the facility where, in the first episode, they leave the house for the police station, and you have to get there in two or three minutes?
Yeah. We drive into the studio gates, and as the van drives through, we built a slight exterior where the van can drive into the studio. So then, when Bascom and Jamie are walking through the small space, it’s like a narrow tunnel to get into the police station. They are walking from outside of the studio into the studio and into the police station, where we built it. And we also built the episode three set [there].
How happy does it make you that people think that you just found all these locations and made it work, and that it was just like this little tiny budget thing that you guys did?
One shot? I feel like so much joy.
There is a video that exploded online where one of the producers, Hannah Walters, is freaked out about the drone. She’s wanting it to happen, making sure it’s O.K. And I think in the context of just someone from the outside watching the show, thinking like, “Oh, that must’ve been the day you guys were most nervous about pulling that off.” Is that the case, or was there another moment that made you nervous?
I think the most worried I was was once we’d cast Owen Cooper, whether he could do episode three. Episode one, I wasn’t too worried about, because there’s so many other people and it is quite high energy. He’s being arrested. Yes, it’s a very emotional roller coaster, but in terms of episode three, two actors in a room together, solidly, nonstop for an hour is really difficult to do. And especially the subject matter and what they’re talking about and the emotional journey that they have to go on, the ebbs and flows, and the highs and lows. And so I was incredibly worried about whether this 13-year-old boy could do that. I was nervous about Owen. So, on day one of the cast rehearsal, we would sit down, we’d read the script, and we would go, “Let’s get it off the page. Let’s just feel it out and let’s have a talk about it and see how it flows and stuff.” Owen turns up with no script, and I was like, “Where’s your script, man? We’re doing a quick read. Do you want me to go and grab you one?” He’s like, “No, no, no, I’ve learned it.” I was like, “You’ve read the whole script?” He’s like, “Yeah, was I not supposed to?” I’m like, “Well, yeah, of course, but we’ve got a week here to rehearse, and I wasn’t expecting you to know it offhand by now.” And we do just a read-through. And Erin and all the other actors are there with a script reading it, and he’s just there with no script, and he’s just memorized the whole thing. And it was word-for-word perfect. I was then relieved and like, “O.K., this kid’s going to be O.K.”
The other things worried me, obviously the drone thing was one, “Are we going to be able to pull off this many little things? How are we going to make driving to a hardware store, which is about 12 12-minute drive, how are we going to make that engaging? Are we going to be inside? Are we going to be handheld?” And Matt and I came up with the idea of attaching the camera to the front of the van and just letting it play out in the three shots. And what is happening in that scene is engaging, and it’s a beautiful family trying to have a nice day, and everything around them is crumbling. It comes with massive challenges, doing a one-take. And obviously there’s certain things that you can’t do. You can’t just cut to a wide or you can’t just cut to a close-up of something. It all has to happen in real time, but it also has to feel organic and sort of natural and not too jarring for the audience and not too in your face.
Had you given yourselves as a team an out, “Listen, if we have to put in a stitch, we’ll put a stitch if we have to.” Was that something that you guys had considered, or was that sort of the last resort sort of thing?
It was never even a question. If we weren’t going to do it in one-shot, we weren’t going to do it at all. And the same thing happened with “Boiling Point.” There were so many people questioning, going, “But you need to put in a blind edit something that you can just get out of jail .” I was like, “No, because then if you put that in, then people are going to think that you have done that. And I know it can be done, and I’m confident that we can do it.” And I was confident. Matt Lewis was confident, Steven was confident, we’d all done it before, and it was a case of just all of us coming together and being on the same page. And I think when we were interviewing people for certain job roles, one of the first things we’d be like, “This is going to be a true one-take, no cuts whatsoever.” And sometimes the reaction from people will be like, “Yeah, but I mean surely you need to do something…” And then you’re like, “O.K., thanks for coming in.” This is not the job for you. I’m sure you’re amazing at your job, but we need the same passion as what we’ve got. And then someone else will come in and they’d be like, “Oh my God. Oh yeah, and you could do this and this.” And asking all the questions, or the passion needed to be there from every single member of the team. And I think that’s what made it feel easy. It’s not easy, believe me, it’s not easy. But because everybody was on the same page and everybody we were driving together to reach the same goal, it made it really joyful to do and a joy to work on.
There’s been talk about doing another season, finding another way to do it, and it’s unclear whether it would be under the “Adolescence” brand or just sort of the one-shot. Is this something you want to do again, or do you sort of feel like I made my mark here, let Steven and everybody else go forward?
I would do it again. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think it’s an amazing way to work. It’s like doing a play, right? I mean, I’ve never directed a play, but I’ve certainly watched hundreds of plays. And I think it’s such an amazing way to work for me as a director with actors because it’s a very collaborative process. And all my work is done in the prep. All my work is done in the rehearsals, and then as soon as we start to shoot, I have to let it fly and let it go and just sit back and observe it. And there’s something really beautiful about that process.
“Adolescence” is available on Netflix
