How ‘Adolescence’ was filmed in a single take
The Netflix drama Adolescence dropped in March 2025. It’s a four-part series that examines the case of a teenage boy accused of killing a classmate. The boy, Jamie Miller, is arrested at dawn in the first moments of the series. Over four episodes, the Miller family grapples with the dark realities of online bullying, the male-dominated online manosphere, and the pressures on teenagers and their parents in the 21st century.
I won’t give you any spoilers today, because I’m not going to talk much about the story. Don’t get me wrong. The story is great. But what I want to talk about today is the cinematography—and the one creative choice that makes Adolescence so powerful.
But before we do that, I want you to think about your favorite movie or series. Most movies have dozens of scenes, and a typical scene runs two to three minutes. In an action film or a fast-paced comedy, it might be even shorter.
Although a scene usually takes place in just one location, there are often multiple cameras capturing that scene from different angles. For example, in a conversation between two characters, one camera might be trained on the first speaker, while another camera captures the second character from a different angle.
Depending on the complexity, a typical scene might involve several cameras to capture all the action from different perspectives. Cameras might be mounted on drones, cranes, tripods—or even carried on an operator’s shoulder.
A movie or an episode is a collection of scenes. There are usually between 40 and 60 scenes in a feature-length film. When filming is done, the producers begin the editing process and stitch the scenes together. If the final product is too long, they may cut some scenes out.
That’s how it normally works—but that’s not how they did it in Adolescence.
Each of the four hourlong episodes of Adolescence was filmed in a single, continuous scene—just one take filmed on just one camera.
That means there was no stopping and starting, no multiple camera angles, and no jumping forward or back in time. There were no invisible edits, no stitching clips together, no cutting-room floor.
This was an artistic choice by Jack Thorne (the writer) and Philip Barantini (the director). Viewers get a heightened sense of realism and emotional intensity, as if we were living the moment alongside the characters—without interruption.
This approach required meticulous planning and rehearsal. For one thing, the script needed to accommodate this approach. In episode four, the family drives to a hardware store. The camera follows them in the car for the entire trip, so something needs to be happening during that trip. So the writers inserted dialogue here that establishes the family’s background story, and the way Jamie’s parents were before they had kids.
Episode 3 was an interrogation scene—Jamie is in a room speaking with a court-appointed psychologist. This would be perfect for two cameras, but it was a real challenge to capture both characters with just the one camera.
The writers had to include some movement in that scene so the camera would have a reason to move around a little. When Jamie takes a sip of water, bites into his sandwich, or stands up suddenly—these were all reasons to get the single camera moving and keep the tension high.
The approach also complicated location scouting. Where were they going to shoot all this? They wanted the at-home scenes to be in a real house, but the police station scenes had to be shot at a movie studio. So to make the first episode work, they needed to find a house close enough to a movie studio so the drive wouldn’t be too long. Remember—there’s no skipping time, so the camera follows the characters as they move from one place to another.
There was also the question of the camera—I mean the actual camera. Each episode was one take, and one camera. And that camera had to do a lot of things. It followed actors in tight spaces—up a narrow stairway, in the car, down corridors, in an elevator. It also soared above the unnamed town on a drone.
The producers decided to use a camera on a gimbal, sometimes called a camera stabilizer. This is a device that keeps the camera steady, and the shot smooth, even if an operator is moving around. The camera operator holds the gimbal with both hands out front. This is usually no problem in a short scene, but an operator would have difficulty holding the camera for a full hour. The gimbal allowed one camera operator to pass the camera to another, without the viewer noticing.
Something else about the equipment: there’s a drone scene in Episode 4, which captures the Millers’ town from above. The stabilizer allowed the crew to click the camera onto a drone without disrupting the shot.
Rehearsal was essential—if someone messed up, they had to restart the entire episode. A mistake in minute two wasn’t so bad. But a mistake in minute 40? That meant 40 minutes wasted.
A few things did go wrong. In one take, all the lights went out because the iPad controlling the lights crashed. They had to start over. In another, the camera operator walked into a wall accidentally.
One especially tricky thing was managing crowds in Episode 2, which took place at Jamie’s school. All the kids were real students from the public school where the episode was filmed, playing themselves on camera. The teachers, on the other hand, were played by assistant directors. When the camera wasn’t on them, they doubled as crowd control—guiding everyone to the right place at the right time.
Jeff’s take
A couple notes on the actors. Stephen Graham plays Jamie’s father. He’s a well-known British actor and his performance captured a wide range of emotions—starting with defiance, support for his son, then confusion, and then grief.
Ashley Walters played the detective. He had been thinking of giving up acting altogether, but this role helped change his mind. Erin Doherty plays the child psychologist and I thought she was excellent.
Owen Cooper plays Jamie. He was just 13 years old when this was filmed. He is trained as an actor, but this was his on-screen debut. And he was really, really good.
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