Here’s How ‘Adolescence’ Filmed That Stunning Drone Shot at the End of Episode 2

Several elements of “Adolescence” are remarkable, from Philip Barantini’s direction to the young Owen Cooper’s charged acting. But we finally have an answer to one of the puzzling details of this Netflix original: How did the limited series capture its drone shot at the end of Episode 2?

One of details that makes “Adolescence” so extraordinary is its camera work. Each of the series’ four hourlong episodes is a oner, meaning it was filmed in one shot with no breaks for editing. It’s a style of filmmaking that Barantini, who’s known for his work on the movie “Boiling Point,” has mastered. But the Stephen Graham-starring series doesn’t just use its one-shots as a cheap gimmick. Every minute the show progresses without cutting away from its cast, the tension of this high-stakes story racketing up another degree. So incorporating a drone shot into the mix is extra impressive.

According to a thread posted by Netflix’s U.K. and Ireland X account, the director of photography carried the camera and followed Jade (Fatima Bojang) as she walked to a traffic light, a shot that helped indicate that the school day had ended. That’s what the audience sees. But behind the camera, the team attached the camera to a drone before Jade crosses the road. That camera then flew roughly 0.3 miles to the murder scene where a second team was present. That team of grips along with a camera operator then caught the camera just in time to capture a close-up shot of Graham’s grieving father, Eddie.

“Easy,” the post joked.

But perhaps the most interesting detail of this ambitious shot is the fact that it wasn’t part of the original plan. Writer Jack Thorne knew he needed the camera to move from the school to the murder site, so he originally wrote a chase sequence that followed Ryan (Kaine Davis) and DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) running to a second location near the murder site. The camera would have then travelled on its own back to the school.

“That moment would have felt almost like a video game,” cinematographer Matthew Lewis said in a making of video posted by Netflix. It was Lewis and Barantini who figured out how to construct the drone shot, a decision that made the scene feel more “ethereal,” Lewis explained.

“It was an example of the technical meeting the story and finding a fusion, which is actually better than anything that the story had come up with on its own,” Thorne explained.

Watch Lewis and Thorne’s breakdown of the scene above.

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