Adolescence director explains the genius way they filmed Jamie’s strip search without cutting

The one-take filming approach was used with brilliant success in Netflix’s new TV show Adolescence, but that isn’t to say that the technique didn’t pose some issues during the four-part series.

Adolescence was not the first project to use the one-shot technique, and it wasn’t even the first Stephen Graham project, but there’s no denying that it worked a treat for conveying the harrowing message of the Netflix show. During episode one, after Owen Cooper’s Jamie was nicked for the murder of schoolgirl Katie, director Philip Barantini was forced to employ some clever camera work to keep the film rolling.

Unlike some shows that use much older actors to play younger characters, Owen Cooper was 14 during filming so he couldn’t strip down in front of the crew and many cameras.

“When Jamie is being strip searched…one of the ideas was initially that we’ve got a young, 13-year-old boy,” Philip told the The Filmakers Podcast. “From the moment I read it, I was like ‘that’s amazing, but we can’t have the actor strip naked’. He has to strip to get changed but we can’t cut.”

To approach the crucial scene, the crew chose to have Owen move behind a curtain where neither the cameras nor the crew could see him get changed.

“At one point, Jamie goes behind a curtain and quickly gets changed, but no one can see him. The whole time, we’re holding on Stephen’s face. Later on we put in the sound of his footsteps moving across and turning around. The police officer who is talking him through it – those words and seeing Stephen’s reaction, is – you don’t need to see him getting changed,” he added.

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Despite the clever workaround, they still needed the scene to be uncomfortable so that task was down to Stephen Graham’s reaction as Jamie’s dad Eddie.

Philip said: “You can see him [Stephen]- the little nuances in his face. It’s like doing a play. You are on stage the whole time, you have to be in character the whole time. It forces them to be in the moment.”

Ironically, the Adolescence strip search scene was kind of inaccurate

Despite the smart workaround the crew of Adolescence used for Jamie’s strip search scene, police officers have spoken out about how inaccurate it actually was.

“With a 13-year-old suspect, there would be a specialist unit involved. They would have been talking to Jamie like a teenager instead of playing bad cops,” police officer Steven Barclay told Time Out.

“If you start being horrible to suspects, they clam up. Especially with a kid, you don’t want him to get upset. I would literally say to them: ‘Mate, I’ve arrested you. I don’t know what’s happened and I know this is shit.’ You want them to feel comfortable. I could never do their job, but the sexual offending team ​i​s nice to sex offenders for that same reason.”

A former copper also told UniLad that the scene seemed unnecessary because real police officers wouldn’t have dragged him into the room to be strip searched.