The Adolescence Director Answers Your Questions

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1:49Hello and welcome to this special questions and answers edition of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. It is special, isn't it? It is. We spoke on Tuesday a little bit about adolescence. I don't think there's ever been a show that came out where we've had more questions from listeners who wanted to know lots of the technical aspects. I mean, so much stuff they wanted to know. So we thought we would do a special all about adolescence today. Can I just say, I do think that that's amazing, that apart from being this thing that everyone is talking about, the issues raised and what a sort of national conversation that is starting, people who don't normally comment on how television is made, how the sausage is made at all, are really fascinated by, because of the one-shot technique, how it's done, how it was achieved.

2:30I think it's like absolutely mainstream people going, now how on earth did they do that? Which, by the way, listeners to this podcast already do about a lot of things. It's fascinating stuff. We put your questions to Philip Berentini, who is the director, and to Matt Lewis, who's the director of photography. Put those questions to them. We've got lots of their answers coming up. The whole episode is just about adolescence. The spoilers, I mean, a few probably. So I would say maybe watch it if you want to watch it. But I really, really hope you enjoy it. The first question we put to them is from Charlotte Green.

3:01How on earth did you find Owen Cooper, who was the star of this thing, the young kid who's extraordinary? How did you find him? What was that process? and also how did he learn all of those lines how did he get everything done given given the whole thing was shot in one take yeah well we i'd received uh you know hundreds and hundreds of tapes through shaheem beg our wonderful casting director one of the first things i asked for was just an improvised moment of two two sort of ideas one of them was you've been to you've been brought into your head teacher's office and you're guilty of something and then the other the other scenario was that you were innocent of this thing right and i just wanted to see what you know the how they played it owen was someone who just was so real and so natural and you know it's quite rare to see that in an actor especially in auditions and i think he just didn't really have any preconceptions about what acting was he'd done some acting classes and you know he was doing it for fun really we got him in and we put him through his paces really we had like five auditions and a couple of those were with Stephen towards the end of the process.

4:12And it just, every time he came in, he just absolutely nailed it. And I sort of, you know, I would give him more and more things to do. And, you know, Matt even came in on one of the screen tests with Stephen and filmed it. And we were all just like, as he left, we were just like, oh yeah, this kid is like different level, different level, you know. So it was really special, yeah. He didn't know the full scope of what he would have to learn. Along the way, I was saying to them, this is going to be all shot in one take. I don't think he understood. He didn't quite grasp what that meant because he'd never worked before.

4:52When he finally got the script, we worked with him quite a lot. We got a wonderful acting coach in to come and help him to sort of learn his lines. Not to coach him in the acting side of it, but to help him to sort of get these lines in his head and just to be able to get off the page. But you know what? He was an absolute natural. The first day we came onto set, we shot episode three first due to Stephen's schedule. The first day he came on set, we all sat around the table and we sort of just were going to go through the script and get the script off the page, read it. We all had our scripts in our hand.

5:32Aaron had a script in her hand. All the other actors had their scripts in her hand. And Owen just came in and he had a script. He put it on the table and he just went, he just did it. It was mind-blowing. He does what most actors train for most of their lives, which is to be real, be natural, be in the moment and listen. It's so important to just listen as an actor and listen and respond naturally in the moment. And he just does that instinctively, to the point where I'd give him notes and I wouldn't think that he was taking these notes in I was like, I don't know whether he's actually taking all that in and then he'd go and smash out a take and you'd be like, whoa I'm just like, yeah, it was mind-blowing it was so exciting to watch I've never been so excited about watching an actor I'm not watching certainly with episode 3 I'm watching I forget sometimes that I'm that I'm supposed to be like making notes and checking on it because I'm so engrossed in it.

6:34And I mean, I was like, you know, so I have to watch it back again straight away. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. I think that I mean, he's so unbelievably phenomenal. It's really interesting. So many skills in actually the arts or whatever do actually involve when you achieve peak level of it. It is unlearning all the sort of bad habits and, you know, the artifice really of it all. and it's so interesting that he hadn't worked, as they described it, hadn't worked very much beforehand so that you don't have all that, you haven't accrued all those kind of bad habits and the fakery of it really. Yeah, that idea of saying we're doing it in one take and you go, yeah, sorry, is that not how you make telly?

7:12What's the take? Philip Berentino would never say this, you've got to be a great director to get that sort of performance from someone as well. It takes an awful lot of sensitivity from a director to understand who you're talking to, how to speak to that person, what it is you want from the script, how to get that across to somebody, Any actor will tell you working with a great director makes you a better actor. And how many directors are going to want to work with him? It's a risk of the problem of working with children and animals. That guy can carry your movie. He's going to win every award going, isn't he?

7:42I hope so. James Morgan and about 970 others said, everyone's talking about the drone shot and going over to the murder site. This is the end of episode two. How did they do it? And was it one of the first things they decided and based everything else off it? It seems very smooth, but I imagine technically it was really difficult. Yeah, we also we wanted to get a bit more into the background of how that shot even came about as a possibility. It was my idea because it was a suggestion in order to replace an existing beat, which was essentially that the camera moved down the street at eye level.

8:13And I was a little concerned that that would read as a person moving. And obviously we're talking about, yes, the camera is a character, but it needs to only be motivated by people. if you're going to detach from the characters it sort of feels like it has to be at the end of the piece because it signifies an ending it signifies a change i didn't know we could do it to be honest i no i thought i thought it'd be amazing if we could take off and fly away and you know use the motivation of someone crossing the road to fly us away to you know over the crime scene each episode would have its own three-week block so we do two weeks rehearsal uh and then we do the shoot week so the shoot week would be five days we'd shoot it twice every day once in the morning and once in the afternoon right um so we were doing the the takeoffs happy with some of them you know i mean we didn't have the for the take that we were fully happy with we were like okay we still got a few days it was wednesday right wednesday of the shoot week we were still weren't happy then toby bentley who's our exec at netflix spoke to mark herbert one of the other producers uh from warp and was like i think we should have steven in this episode somewhere somewhere uh what would it be possible that we could like steven could be at the murder site and we can like maybe i don't know could we potentially land the drone and i is it probably a stupid idea but i don't know maybe not and then mark came to me and was like toby was asked if we could what about this idea and me being my brains instead of saying no we're not doing that it's ridiculous i was like oh my god matt matt we need to land the drone we need to land the drone we to try it at least i think mac probably did you cry i'm i think you probably get ptsd from it i mean i get i totally understand the suggestion um it was just at the time obviously we were i knew we didn't have an episode we were mid-shoot we were on the shoot week of a very sort of like very planned piece there's not a lot of room for changes so yeah part of me wanted to absolutely freak out but um but but obviously we knew there was a possibility that we could so we explored it and we spent a little bit of time where we essentially replaced one of our takes uh i think what was it no it must have been wednesday it was wednesday morning's take we replaced with a rehearsal of that of the landing um so we all sort of like went over to that crime scene and we tried to suss out how we would approach this make sure it's smooth the coming down was really tricky because a drone when it's moving really fast can kind of cut through the wind and apparently pontovract is a really windy place so when it moves fast it's fine but then when it slows down and it has to descend you sort of you you start to feel that sort of almost like a leaf falling from a tree that sort of zigzag it can it can create so and we got the issue of the the drone had to be controlled on then on a moving vehicle because the range wasn't long enough from the school it was always going to cut out so so all of the so the the wheels for uh the gimbal uh were on the tracking vehicle and the controls for the drone was uh our pilot was also on the tracking vehicle as well so um and that came that just stayed sort of underneath the drone the whole time coming in and then and then me and the camera team um yeah me the focus puller my loader who was controlling uh the exposure and two grips would uh would came hopped into a van and we'd drive down the road and park in the car park and then get out and catch the drone so it was just it was rehearsing that and we got to a point where it was working it was a little tricky and phil knows i was terrified because i was like this is obviously it's a gamble if it pays off it's amazing if it doesn't i was a bit scared that the episode would we wouldn't get it because it's so critical and And obviously all of this is happening at the end of a 50 minute one already.

11:40And we've done all of the other stuff. We've done stunts. We've done kids having a fight. We've gone down all of these corridors and done all of these scenes. So it was, you know, it was nerve wracking. It came down to the Friday because basically the Thursday, it was super windy. We couldn't really take off even, I think. I think it was a no go for taking off. So we made like a little ending at the end where Stephen was near the school and all that. And it worked enough, but it wasn't the ending that everyone wanted. So then it was, so then it came down to Friday. came out the last day and so the morning take i sort of slightly i don't know if i threw my toys out the pram or i put my foot down but i was just like i think we need to get safety here like one where we just take off the drone but we don't come into land just so that we've got one in the bag because i was just worried that the wind was still on the cusp of it being you know too much and they said yeah let's do it so we got that and so there is a take where that happens and it works that was when i cried phil because i knew we got the episode at least you know we got it we got something in um and it was obviously still really good but then we managed to get the then with the second take of that day the very last one we did was the landing of the drone um and uh and we got it in that one as well and therefore it was the winner but uh yeah quite quite the experience okay well now i am 100 having an anxiety dream that for me the two technical achievements of the year are spacex catching that you know space rocket in the chopsticks yeah and that and that and there's not a lot to choose between them in terms of the achievements of humankind but how lovely, you know, it's fascinating that they've got about four separate endings there because they took off once, they've done a shot with Stephen Graham nearer the school and then they finally get the thing that they want which is, you know, just desserts for all the work that they put in, but that again imagine they do that and then Stephen Graham sneezes you're like, no it's fine Stephen and listen, let's do, we'll go again that's incredible, the craft the art and the craft at the same time now i had a question i was fascinated with i spoke on tuesday show about um pat nun who did the sound on the eastenders live special and just talking to him and understanding what an unbelievable undertaking that was so essentially ask the question how much did the crew obsess over making sure every battery pack on every actor was fully charged that's my way into saying oh my god this must have been a technical nightmare for everyone behind the scenes i mean i'm sure they did the sound yeah i bet because there was so many wasn't like i mean so many so especially on episode two everyone everyone was loved i mean that that that set up for the sound team and the camera team you know to be able to move through that school um was immense like the i'm pretty sure they like i can't remember the type of cable in that they brought in but it was like i don't know military grade cable or something like that i don't know is that for the video transmission or the no yeah video and and the sound um the sound team oh yeah it was it was mega that was good with with video we had because obviously we're moving between all these classrooms and we're in uh sort of loads of concrete walls everywhere like you know the basically just absolute end game for most kind of like receivers we had to um place receivers all over the school and hardwire them all back to one room the room that phil was in where video village was so that was that in itself took about two weeks that was the entire rehearsal of the video team were rigging that just to make sure it was that it would work and then they would like you know switch between all of the channels um and find the strongest signal Yeah, episode one, basically the convoy that goes up to the house before they arrest Jamie, the convoy of police, there's a police van in there.

15:04We dressed our video village van as a police van so we could be in shot and also be in range as well. And so that was episode one. Episode two, I was in one of the classrooms in the school, just sat there watching it on the monitors. Episode three, we should be shot in a studio. We built that set in a studio. So that was I was just in the studio there. and then episode four again we were in that same van but we just took all the police stickers off it and turned it into our video village van and we were just following the uh eddie's van and yeah it was you know at times you would be it was like we'd we'd in the during rehearsals and stuff like that we would lose signal a little bit so we had to like find the positions where the van could be so we could get the best signal and then sometimes when we were in the house they'd have to hardwire the van in and then they'd have to unplug the wire before we take off and But all of these things are going on.

15:53Honestly, the amount of people and the amount of hard work that everyone put in and effort and skill to create this mind-blowing to me. Because I'm watching the monitor and I'm across everything, but I can't be across everything. I don't know everyone's job. I don't ever claim to know everyone's job. I'm so interested in, you know, like, for example, I just say, you know, this is where I want to watch it from. And then suddenly I'm able to watch it. You know what I mean? And hundreds of people are doing their jobs like effortlessly to make this work. And that was the beauty of this show was, you know, when we were talking and interviewing people about to give them jobs or whatnot.

16:35And it was so important that we explained to them what we were doing. And if there's any seed of doubt, which there was on a few people, And I don't think it was doubts in terms like you're never going to be able to do it. It was more cases of like, oh, not sure whether that's possible or, you know, you know, maybe we have to, you know, then it's not the job for them. And then someone else would come in and you'd be like, this is what we want to do. And they'd be like, oh, my God, you could try this or this is how you should, you know. And it was that was the sort of family that we that we created.

17:02And it really was a family, you know. I think that's so interesting. When you often people think that the director, of course, has sort of worked their way up and knows what absolutely every single person there does. they don't actually it works because it's like a sort of it's sort of almost like a highly regimented society it's a fully functional society in which all the little cogs are spinning in the right way but you know when it's something flawless like this and it is extraordinary how everyone functions together they are highly functional environments i wish they'd remake the british state you rely on your heads of department a great deal and so the director everything the director wants goes through those heads of department as i say for setting up the video village you know there's someone who's in charge of that but you know so philip will talk to the sound people the head of sound will then have a team of 30 40 50 people and that is their director that is the person they listen to and when philip changes his mind they have to go back but that's the director for all of the sound stuff and they do what they're told and everyone you know is offering up solutions it's such an incredible ecosystem as you say the director has got this overall vision but absolutely has to rely on these incredible heads of department who and i loved when he said it's the people who offered up solutions people who got excited by it because excitement and nerves are very similar things in this in this uh context i think those were the people who are like oh come on listen we might as well should we take a quick advert break i can listen to philip and matt all day but we'll do a quick outbreak well we're cutting here for a moment oh that's clever

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20:13Welcome back. Now, Isaac King and many others ask. While the show's amazingly done in one take, I imagine there were parts that had to be cleaned up in post-production using some subtle tricks. At the end of the first episode, the laptop's important to the story was the video it plays edited in after to make sure it played on cue. What would happen if it was in sleep mode and needed a password code? I mean, we've all been there. The laptop's real. The laptop's real. We actually shot the stuff on the laptop. We shot that two weeks before we started the shoot. So we did like a pre-shoot. that and also the the fight that jamie has in when when erin is looking at the monitor when when he's been having a fight and he's punching that kid on the on the floor that was all shot on the same day so we i think we shot like a night shoot wasn't it and we just went out to the car park where you see that's all real you know that's because my one of my things is and matt's the same as well as like i want the actors to be able to i don't want the actors to have to look at a green screen especially in a in a one take they need to be real everything needs to be real and functional and and i'm working you know that you almost need to forget that they're in a set or you know because we built the police station we built the we built the secure training center but it when you're in it it everything the tiny tiny details uh you know attention to detail was key um there's so many factors that could have gone wrong uh and a couple of things did you know there's a there's a couple of moments go on matt you want to say something no i was gonna say every time that laptop came out in that at the end of that episode i was like please hit the space bar and it play imagine i don't think it never it never didn't like they were all over it um props and and all that but but it was just like because imagine you do all of that and then it just doesn't play uh it would it would have been awful but and you're right there is so many there was so many things like little details the the lift door's not opening it's not a real lift obviously we just go in and then we walk through it but that happened that happened on one take oh it did that's why it's in my head yeah they got stuck yeah they got stuck yeah just what it got stuck but like obviously and that no one would think oh that would be an issue but there's some there's two people pulling the doors open because you know it's not real so um i had a question as well which we we spoke on tuesday about um actors with theater experience and and i just wondered how many of the cast of this had theater experience and how useful that was to uh to the director and the DOP?

22:37Yeah, it was, I mean, it's important because, you know, the two disciplines are very different. You know, in a way you've got with theatre, it's about, you know, projecting and being bigger and sort of, you know, I mean, a lot of theatre nowadays is like film acting, but it was important to find people who could have that discipline and also have the stamina to do this, you know, in one take. It's nerve-wracking. It's incredibly nerve-wracking. so you obviously don't want to be the one who messes up but one of the things I did say to all the actors when we were auditioning them I actually like it when actors fluff their lines, they style it out and make you feel like it was meant to happen or even if it wasn't meant to happen they just style it out, they're not like oh no sorry can we go again, I've messed up you know what I mean, give them the sort of confidence to be like okay it's okay to mess up and the other actors got my back and they're going to pick it up for me you know it's important that you give actors that sort of confidence and you know to be able to play a little bit as well and have fun with it and not feel like they're restricted to exactly what's said in the script you know we'd go through you know the script and talk about how would you say that like for example with Owen there's certain things in there that you know you that were in the script and I'd say me and Steve would be like would you say that and he's like no I wouldn't say it like that well how would you say it then and he'd say how he would say it and he'd be like well that's how that's how Jamie's gonna say it then you know Matt is also a character because he has to be there with them and what is amazing about Matt is and I'm gonna blow smoke up his backside because I think he's cover your ears we worked together since day one and what Matt is he is so empathetic and so you know he will feel the emotion and he will really instinctively find the right moment so but but if something was to change if an actor did something differently matt wasn't again he wasn't fluffing his lines he was in it and just so you know instinctive and you could tell it a few times and it adds some sort of a good actor can add to the naturalness of their performance a couple of times you can see especially in that um episode three moments where they started saying the wrong thing and stopped and said the right thing, or the response to what they said was using different words to the thing that they had just said.

24:56There's just a few moments. And I'd be fascinated at some point to take Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne's script and put it up against what's actually on screen and see what percentage made it. I'd imagine a very, very large percentage, but there's always the odd bit and bob again that comes from being a theatre actor. You know that you have a little bit of leeway if you get the wrong word or two words in the wrong order and you've got a good actor working alongside you, the two of you can find your way through it. And find your way back. I did read Ashley Walter saying he messed up one day and that would be my watching it.

25:30I was just thinking, the fear, I'm probably going to have an anxiety dream about messing up one of these takes. When you just see how many are involved in every scene, the idea that you're messing up the take, you're messing up that half day. With this, yeah, you're spending millions of pounds on each episode. The whole crew are there and it's like 5pm and everyone's thinking, maybe we get to go home after this. and you're kind of 47 minutes through the episode and you yeah that's my anxiety dream but that's the beauty of of the whole thing because we we sense that all the way through and the fact that they took those pains makes this a proper work of art this episode is brought to you by our friends at sky now marina regular listeners will know that one of our favorite parts of sky glass or sky stream is the voice control it saves us a ton of time scrolling through lists of shows or moving between apps.

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27:57Head to sky.com to find out more. Samuel Bennett's got a question about the sort of technical kit. Do shows like, when they're trying something different like this, need special kit, new lenses, new cameras, whatever to make that to make it all work yeah we did loads of testing absolutely loads of testing um and the the camera that came on top was the ronin 4d which is the sort of the chicken camera as it was it's got a little z-axis and a smaller gimbal and you hold it by two grips um on either side effectively because you because it's small enough to hold in front of you um you can pass it to another operator which was huge because all the other systems were so large that you either you could barely fit for a doorway or you had to strap to someone because it's too heavy you know it like it limits you physically whereas something that small you can sort of move it between people and it does so much of the movement and that was the the priority obviously there's small like image limitations with it the lens choice was weird because obviously once you're in it you this is your one perspective and ideally i i i mean i felt like maybe we could have changed lens between episodes and being on something slightly different but the second we shot the first episode it was like or rather the third one so we did that one first i was like this is the point of view if we change it it's strange like if there's an audience expectation of what the world looks like i think if we changed it per episode it would have felt entirely different and it really it was a 32 mil um cook sp3 and and we came to that decision because any wider and we saw too much ceiling um so we started to see booms lights you name it it was probably there you also get like i mean you had a nice sense of movement from it but it was it was you know your close-ups don't look quite so nice because everyone's faces have got a little bit more sort of fisheye effect to them um and then and then we could have gone tighter the next one in was a 50 mil but then imagine how nauseating that could have been in some sections when you're cropping the image into this sort of smaller area and you're whizzing around it would have been super dizzying so so the 32 and it was always like a 35 was what i was thinking and that was what was on that set so so yeah that was that was how we settled on it just just trial and error running around an empty warehouse before they built the set um sort of playing with it and filming phil sat on a chair in the middle of a warehouse and getting a sense of movement with it, really.

30:00When you try something new, actually the technology really sort of catches up with you. That's one of the beauties on these things. That's why some people love working on them, because they get to try something they haven't tried before. And you see the glee sometimes on people's faces, because they just invented something that people are going to use for the next 10, 20 years. Alex Brown says, At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me when I saw Brad Pitt was listed as an executive producer. Was this a vanity credit, or did he play some sort of bigger behind-the-scene role that hasn't been spoken about?

30:28He was going to come to the shoot, but I think he was busy on F1 because he was in town. But no, I mean, Brad, Brad, listen to me. I mean, like... Bessie Mace, Brad. Bessie Mace, Brad. Bazdog. Bazdog. Baznaya. Yeah. We basically, when we sort of pitched the idea, me and Stephen pitched the idea to Plan B it was a weird one because we were waiting for ages to get this meeting in and they were like oh we're just waiting for Brad, his schedule and I was like oh it can't be Brad Pitt, I mean there must be another Brad in the company and no yeah sure enough Brad was on the Zoom and he loved the idea and then we had a bunch of other Zooms when we were pitching it out and stuff with Brad on the Zooms as well.

31:26He's such a lovely human being. And he's also really quite a hands-on producer. You know what I mean? He would feed back notes and stuff. And amazing, like amazing to have him, you know, to have him on board. And, you know, yeah, I mean, I just, I'd love to work with him again. You know what I mean? Maybe get him in another one. Well, I mean, that's great to hear, isn't it? You know, because you sometimes do see, you sometimes see like the Will Ferrell in succession titles. And I don't think he had a huge amount to do with the show. No, it's lovely. It's like, you know, you often hear great stories about Danny DeVito who often gets producer and exec producer credits on things and you talk to people and they go, oh no, he's really, really, he gets his hands dirty and he actually does the work and he shows up.

32:10If you're Brad Pitt as well, how lovely that this group of Brits have done this extraordinary thing and you were able to be in there at the beginning of it. It just, you know, must give you a warm glow. I'm now only going to be able to think of him as Baz Dog. I have a question from Lily watson uh who says you've mentioned on the show before uh the whatsapp group chats that cars and crew have during recordings and how they kind of die off once it's finished when a show goes big like adolescence does the chat fire up again are they all saying let's do it again yeah yeah i mean yeah i think they i think you know it's it's i think we need a bit of a bit of time to to process i mean honestly and i'll speak for matt as well i guess like we've spoken because we're currently working together on something else at the minute we're out in malta but we feel like we've made something special like but you know the uk it probably it probably resonate in the uk because of the sort of the knife crime and the subject matter and and all of that but did we expect what it's actually doing in the absolutely not so we're out here with all the crew like most most of the crew are with us on this new job every five minutes we're like this has happened oh my god this is this person's message this person's watched it you know this person's put it on the like it's it was in parliament today they were talking about it in parliament today it's like the prime ministers talking about it in you know prime minister's questions it's like wow it's it's exceeded anything that i ever imagined you know when we said we wanted to make this this this show incredibly grateful you know incredibly grateful for the whole team and everyone that worked on it as well and everyone who's watching it and and you know liking it oh that's so great that they are actually together people a lot of people don't realize that that you know cruise people have people they love working with and they get great results with and so they can sort of migrate from project to project so it's amazing that they're together in real life while this is happening that's so amazing the um the the great writer roy clark he wrote last of the summer wine and open all hours and things like that when he when he um got like a fellowship at the british comedy awards he said he said i wish you all hits you know because that's the thing it's it doesn't happen often and when it does you've got you've absolutely got to luxuriate in it especially a hit like this that you've you've really really really earned and that suggestion that they could do it all again i remember talking to this grip um who worked with roger deakins on sam mendes's 1917 and apparently sandra did a speech on the last night saying oh i feel like i could do it all over again and they just looked at each other at the wrap party like so traumatized still having to process the technical challenge of having to do it so yeah they probably needed a little bit of space it's like having a child isn't it you just think listen i guess one day i'll be ready to have another one but don't ask me now.

34:46Well as I said it's so amazing that it's got people talking in two completely different ways about the issues but also just as a technical masterpiece. We already know people are really interested in this kind of behind the scenes stuff but how amazing to have that insight. Thank you guys so much. That was amazing. I mean I hope that was fun to listen to as well. We've never done a Q &A like this before but I hope you can understand why we did. Greatly appreciated that Philip and Matt gave up their time. I know you guys are all over there in Malta and I know you don't want to do it again right now but everyone in Britain would like you to do another one if that's okay.

35:20Take a couple of weeks off guys but after that. Well thank you very much and we will see you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday everyone.

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