Masterclass With Creative Team Behind 'Adolescence' Takes Filmmakers and Emerging Talent Behind the Scenes of Hit Show

“We wanted the audience to peek into a window and then be swept away. It’s about letting the audience make up their own minds and have their own perspectives on things.” - Philip Barantini 

That was the message from the creative team behind Adolescence to filmmakers and aspiring directors and writers during a virtual masterclass hosted this weekend. Attended by participants from across many of Netflix’s talent development programs, the more than 350 guests hailed from over 15 countries.  

The session focused on the making of the hit series with director/executive producer Philip Barantini and co-creator/co-writer/executive producer Jack Thorne. Adolescence is a crime drama filmed in an ambitious real-time, one-shot. It tells the story of how a family’s world is turned upside down when 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) is arrested for the murder of a teenage girl who goes to his school. Stephen. The pair spoke about the process of bringing the story to life and the one-shot filmmaking technique.

Moderator Benji Wilson asked Barantini and Thorne several questions from the audience, including how they overcame the challenges this technique presented but also what they found most rewarding about it.

They were asked how they choreographed camera movements while maintaining narrative momentum, and whether the casting process sought out actors with specific skills to enable the one-shot process.

Barantini, who started his career as an actor and spoke about how that influenced his directing style also explained how he worked with his director of photography, Matt Lewis, on this project. Thorne discussed how he developed the storyline, saying that the process, “Forces you to be incomplete. It forces you to be partial. You can’t tell the story in a conventional way.  You can’t cut to people in different worlds doing different things. You have to break the usual way you have of telling a story.” 

Following the masterclass, some of the attendees who have gone through Netflix’s talent development programs shared their insights and perspectives:

Roeqayyah Kariman, from the Qissa film school programme in The Netherlands, said, “I really enjoyed hearing about the casting process from an actor’s perspective and learning about the specific qualities they were looking for in this series. It shows that this approach to casting brings a completely new perspective to the film industry!” 

Pawel Aderhold, from the New Motion Shadowing program in Germany, said, “It was very interesting to see how the makers of Adolescence had a clear approach to realise their vision — also with this collaborative mindset - to get the best possible result from the creative abilities of all participants. It's good to have such down-to-earth masters of their craft in top filmmaking. It also inspires and encourages me to pursue a career in the movie industry. 

Nicole Atalla, who is based in the UAE and part of our Women in Film initiative with The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) said, “During the Adolescence masterclass, it was inspiring to hear how such creative decisions were able to be made on a large scale through detailed planning."

Since debuting in March, Adolescence has won acclaim around the world. The drama currently stands at 99% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and ranks as Netflix's third most popular English language series of all time with 130.2M views.