To make “Adolescence” come to life, producers of the smash Netflix drama had to find a way to make the camera fly and to corral 300 middle school students through filming a fire drill in order to maintain the integrity of the show’s one-take format.
Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, co-creators and executive producers of the four-episode U.K. drama thriller that has become one of Netflix’s most-watched series, offered details of how it came together on Saturday during the opening session of Produced By, the annual conference hosted by the Producers Guild of America.
Graham, who co-stars in “Adolescence,” said one key to pulling off the tricky production process was to have worked collaboratively with the leaders of the school where much of the series was lensed.
“We empowered the local community and brought them on the journey,” Graham told the crowd that gathered on the Universal lot for the daylong event. “In our industry there’s a very hierarchical structure. With this, we ripped up the rulebook and threw it out the fucking window.”
That work paid off when they realized that the script called for a fire drill scene with hundreds of actual students — and only a tiny window to get it right.
“This lunatic decided to write a fire alarm in an episode with 300 kids in it,” Graham said nodding to Thorne, his frequent collaborator. (“A lovely fellow and one of me best mates,” Graham enthused.) The investment in getting to know the school’s headmaster helped them navigate that scene and other high-wire elements.
Graham emphasized that from his experience an actor who has been low on the call sheet and made to feel insignificant, he made a point of making sure every single person in the cast and crew felt invested in the show.
“All the cast became the crew and all the crew became the cast,” Graham told moderator Rebecca Sun, a veteran entertainment journalist and cultural critic.
The pair detailed the intricacies of plotting out the story including moments where characters are driving in cars. To coordinate shooting all that without any edits was a feat. “We couldn’t switch off the traffic lights,” Graham noted.
Drones proved the solution to allowing the characters to move around in physical space without breaking the intensity of the one-take format.
“As soon as the camera is separated from a character it loses its power,” Thorne said. “If the camera flies, it’s not a computer game. It’s something else.”
Graham and Thorne explained that they did film numerous versions of each episode as they perfected the one-take template, but they only had time to film two takes per day. Other than the first episode, the take that was used for the remaining episodes was always the last one captured.
For episode 1, the take that aired was the second take. Episode 2 was clinched on take 16. Episode 3 was take “11 or 12,” as Graham recalled. And the devastating final installment was take 14.
The success of “Adolescence” is more evidence that global audiences are open to all kinds of storytelling, the pair stressed. In the past, Graham and Thorne were told that some projects they were shopping were too thick with “Liverpool accents,” as Graham recalled. Not so with Netflix and “Adolescence.”
“This shows the joy of the particular. We are a very particular show,” Thorne said.
Graham and Thorne shouted out the hard work of producers Jo Johnson and Hannah Walters, as well as cinematographer Matthew Lewis and director Philip Barantini.
“I don’t think either of us would describe ourselves as showrunners,” Thorne said. “It was a group of people working together.”
Johnson “was the Atlas who held the weight of the show on her shoulders,” Thorne added.
The pair noted that “Adolescence” had a number of first-time department heads in key below-the-line areas. The success of the show has helped turbo-charge careers.
“We made it with love. We made it with care and we were incredibly respectful to our subject,” Graham said. “Without each piece of that jigsaw puzzle we would have never had that final picture.”
The session also featured Sun in conversation with “Squid Game” creator/executive producer/ showrunner and director Hwang Dong-hyuk. Sun asked director Hwang about the whipsaw of having years and years to work on the concept for Season 1 but only six months to write Seasons 2 and 3. (Hwang started developing the concept as a movie script in 2009.)
“Squid Game” creator/executive producer Hwang Dong-hyuk at Produced By in Los Angeles.
Jordan Strauss for PGA
“It was like never-ending work. I lost another couple of teeth,” director Hwang said, in a nod to the legend that he lost more than one tooth during the production of Season 1 from sheer stress. Season 1 bowed in September 2021. It wound up taking the world by storm – becoming Netflix’s most-watched scripted series.
But when filming was done, director Hwang assumed it was a standalone one-season series. He didn’t save any of the sets, which meant they had to be recreated three years later when it came time to film new episodes.
Director Hwang noted that he had a bigger budget for Seasons 2 and 3. But he remembered fondly how the limitations of his Season 1 budget drove adjustments that became signature elements of the thriller.
“The limited budget in Season 1 worked in our favor in some ways,” director Hwang said.
“Originally my plan for the dormitory where the players would sleep was a separate place from the other activities, separate from the eating hall and where they take the votes,” he explained through translator Haley Jung. “My co-producer came to me and said ‘We don’t have money for that.’ That’s how we came up with the sleeping quarters with all the beds on top of each other.”
Director Hwang shifted between English and speaking in Korean for translation by Jung. He got a big laugh from the roomful of industry pros by pointing out another big difference between the nine episodes of Season 1 and the subsequent episodes. In Season 1, half of the characters taking part in the deadly game were killed in episode 1. The reason was simple, he confessed.
“More extras means more money,” he said with a grin.
(Pictured top: “Adolescence” co-creators Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham with moderator Rebecca Sun)