Philip Barantini, the director behind Netflix’s smash hit series Adolescence, talks to Screen about the logistics of shooting in one take, how he found the show’s breakout star and plans to screen the series in classrooms.
When Netflix came on board Adolescence, the one-take series about a teenage boy accused of murdering a classmate, the streamer had to put a lot of trust in director Philip Barantini and producers Plan B Entertainment, Warp Films and Matriarch Productions.
“Normally they can come in in the edit and that’s when all the tweaks and changes can be made,” says Barantini, who broke out in 2021 with his one-shot feature Boiling Point. For obvious reasons, that was not an option here. “They were nervous. I know they were nervous,” the director admits.
Netflix can breathe a sigh of relief. Adolescence is currently the streamer’s number-one English-language series globally and has caught the attention of everyone including UK prime minister Keir Starmer.
“It’s nuts, it’s crazy,” says Barantini, who speaks to Screen from Malta where he is in pre-production on another Netflix hit, Enola Holmes 3. “You always hope it would happen, but I couldn’t have imagined this.”
Netflix’s executive producer Toby Bentley did, however, suggest one major change halfway through the week-long filming of episode two. “The drone was meant to fly off and stay in the air and just slightly tilt over the murder site before flying away into the distance,” explains Barantini.
Bentley suggested bringing the camera down to the murder site to show Stephen Graham, who stars, produces and co-created the show, laying down flowers. “The hairs on the back of my arms just stood up,” the director continues. “[Bentley] was like, ‘Is that even possible?’ – I genuinely didn’t know but I had to try.”
Many of the elements that make up Adolescence seem impossible – Zoom calls with Brad Pitt, perfectly-timed locations and a breakout star with no prior acting experience. Barantini takes Screen through it all and why he does not want to be known as “the one-take guy”.
How did this idea for Adolescence first come about?
Boiling Point had just come out and I was having a bunch of general meetings with producers and one of the meetings was with Plan B. Jeremy [Kleiner, Plan B’s co-president] said they were looking to get into the TV space and would love to do something with Stephen [Graham] and I that used the one-shot format per episode. The original idea was eight episodes but I wasn’t sure about that so it went down to four episodes.
Stephen and I both love [Channel 4 doc series] 24 Hours In Police Custody. There was something about the ticking clock and the stress of that show but also the intrigue of what these police have to go through. That was sort of the spark. Then there’d been a series of stabbings in the news, young boys stabbing and killing young girls. And we thought, “Why on earth are these kids doing this to each other?”
Stephen pitched that idea to me, and we got on a call with Plan B – with Brad Pitt, Jeremy and Dede Gardner – and they loved it. We got Warp Films on board to co-produce it with us. I’d been desperate to work with Jack Thorne for years so he and Stephen went away and wrote it together. Jack was the one who came up with the incel side of it and the social media element.
Netflix came on board in December 2023 and we went into pre-production in February 2024 and started shooting in July in north Yorkshire.
How did you end up casting Owen Cooper as the central character, Jamie? Did you always want someone who had no previous experience?
Initially, because young actors can only work a certain amount of hours, we thought it might be better to try and get someone a bit older, maybe 17 or 18, who looks 13. But these 18-year-olds were coming in and they looked young but they had differently shaped bodies, you could tell they were about to become men. It became apparent that we needed a proper 13-year-old.
We saw over 500 tapes. I wanted Shaheen Baig, my casting director, to look at theatre schools and youth clubs but also more open stuff so she handed out flyers at shopping centres and anywhere where young kids might hang out.
We got it down to four or five young lads. Owen [Cooper] was the standout from day one but Stephen and I made a pact that out of these five, they all had to get some part in the show. We didn’t want to bring them through all this stress just to say no.
What was it like working with Owen?
Actors have trained for most of their lives to do what Owen just does instinctively. He’d done a couple of drama classes as a hobby but he’d never really acted before. He didn’t have any preconceptions.
We shot episode three first [largely a two-hander between Cooper’s Jamie and Erin Doherty as a court-appointed psychologist] because of Stephen’s schedule and I was nervous about it. I thought, I’ve got to work really hard with this kid if he doesn’t know his lines and we only have two weeks. But he came in for the first day and he was off-book completely.
I was egging him to go further [in episode three], really push it, and he lost it at one point and got upset because I don’t think he’s ever been that aggressive towards anybody in his life. I took him aside and we had a heart-to-heart. I said to him, “What you felt in there, it’s so real. But you know it’s not you. It’s just acting. You’re special because not all actors can do that.”
What was the split between real locations and sets?
We started with the police station because that was our main base for episode one. Because of the script, we needed to drive from a house into a police station. We found these studios in Pontefract, Yorkshire [Production Park] that had never been used for filming – it was a rehearsal space for massive artists. We took over one of the studios and built the police station in there.
Then our location manager had to find a house that was no longer than about three minutes’ drive. He letter-dropped and we looked at different houses in the area; the one we used was perfect in every way.
For the school, we found the local school which was two minutes away from where the studios were. It was a community college. Then for Wainwrights [the garden centre in episode four], we found this big empty warehouse and Adam Tomlinson, our production designer, turned it into what you see in the show. Episode three was all shot in a studio.
How did you plan for the logistics of shooting in one take?
We had to plan way more in advance than you would do with a conventional show because the actors need to rehearse in the spaces and we need to know exactly where the camera can go. Me and [Matthew Lewis, the cinematographer] had models of the police station and we used little figures and a little camera to map it out. When they were still building the studio but the walls were up, we would go down after everyone had gone home. Matt would have his iPad and then I’d play all the characters and we’d just be walking around and be like “Right we can’t go in that door, let’s try this one”.
We shot each episode in three-week blocks. We’d have a week of rehearsal with me and the actors; a week of tech rehearsal with the whole cast and crew; and then we’d do two takes a day for the final week so 10 takes in total. Sometimes we’d have to stop and go again, and that was one take, so for some episodes we did up to 16 takes. It usually ended up being the last take that we’d use.
What was the hardest episode to shoot?
Technically, episode two [in the school]. We had to jump out of a window, we were running up the street, there were near misses with the cars and the drone as well. On top of that, you have 370 kids. Most were from the school because it was the summer holidays and we asked them if they’d be interested in being in this show.
It was Tuesday of the shoot week [when Bentley suggested the alternative ending with the drone landing at the murder site]. So on Wednesday morning, we scrapped the first take and practised that move. On Thursday, we woke up and the wind was so bad that we couldn’t even fly the drone so we had to come up with another plan to end it. We thought, We’ll still have Stephen in it but we’ll have him just stood at the school gates and he’s got the flowers, which is still a powerful moment. On Friday, we came in in the morning and it was windy but we tried with the drone anyway, and it didn’t really work.
On the final take on Friday, it was lovely. The wind had gone, and we took off the drone. Once the drone took off, my monitor lost the signal. All of the monitors lose signal because we can’t get the feed from the camera that far away. The only people that can see it are the drone operator and the follow vehicle who are following the drone to then land it. There was about 10 minutes after it took off where none of us knew. Someone said it had landed and we were all silent. Then they went, “We got it, we got it, we got it!” The whole room just erupted.
Is it true that there are plans to show Adolescence in schools?
The wheels are in motion from what I’ve heard, yes. Keir Starmer is all for it. It’s incredible, that’s the win for me.
Would you do a one-shot project again?
I would do another one-take show or movie for sure, but it would have to be the right subject matter. It’s important the story comes first, and the one take is just the vessel carrying it there.
I don’t want to be known as the one-take guy but everything that I do going forward, I’d like to get at least a one-take sequence in there somewhere. It’s an amazing way to work and incredibly efficient. We were finished by four every day.
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