Capturing The Sound of Adolescence, Part 3

Don’t Pass Up ‘Capturing The Sound of Adolescence’ Parts One and Two!

Each episode had a three-week production schedule. The first week was devoted to director rehearsals with the actors, but heads of departments were allowed to be there. “Since it’s a continuous shot, the actors learn a huge chunk of script,” McManus said, “so before the performances got baked in, we could step in and ask to try something different if we saw anything that would have made our job impossible to do.”

Week two was the tech rehearsal with all the kit and crew. This was the chance to make changes, to learn the moves, to get it right. “We took a chunk, like one of the moving-car scenes, and we’d work through that on a particular day to knock out all the kinks,” said McManus. “Then we would start from the beginning, get as far as we could, and when we ran into a problem, we’d all stop to chat about it. We’d all have to come up with an idea to fix it, and then we’d go from there and work through to the end. Everyone would learn what was working and what wasn’t.”

By Thursday of tech rehearsal week, there would be entire run-throughs, which were all recorded and then reviewed by the crew, director and actors. “Our boom ops could see that the camera’s coming in here and it’s that wide, so there’s that much headroom as they enter a room,” McManus offered as an example. “We wanted to make sure our equipment wasn’t in the shot, yet we were getting as close as possible. We had a really nice relationship with the camera department, so we’d ask them to make sure their moves were repeatable, done the same way every time.”

“Information would come from them, as well,” added Entwistle. “It was all very collaborative. If they saw something that was a bit tricky for us, they would change the shot. Often, they wouldn’t have to ask. They would have come up with a solution or a different move that would help us get what we needed. It was all super-collaborative in that way. It had to happen. You couldn’t go into it with a question mark hanging anywhere.”

Week three was shoot week. The production would run two takes a day for five days. While stops were inevitable, they were easier to do at the start of a take. If something went awry further in, the shoot kept going, “because you never know, it might work on screen,” McManus said.

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“It became an agreement of what would stop a take—like a technical reason, or when the power went out at the police station,” added Entwistle. “As long as it felt like the flow was right, and there were no massive hiccups, we’d continue to tape.”

Even if a particular take felt like “the one,” production would continue until the very last take on the very last day. “There’s always that one take when the actors hit a vein of magic, and that’s what you’re waiting for. On Episode 4, the last take we did was ‘the one,’” McManus said.

THAT’S A WRAP

Adolescence ends with a line from Jamie’s father, Eddie, who’s crying and tucking Jamie’s teddy bear into bed. He says, “I’m sorry, son. I should have done better.” McManus, who was mixing in the production van with the director and several executives from Netflix, recalled, “When the director finally said cut, and I pulled all the faders down, there was complete silence except for the tears. It literally traumatized the people in the van. It’s extraordinarily beautiful and a brutal scene. You see a man’s life. You see the cost of Jamie’s actions for all the people around him.”

“It’s not often you get emotionally affected by something you’re recording. You shouldn’t, by rights,” Entwistle added. “You should be so focused that your emotions are put to one side. But for me, if I’m affected by it, I know other people are going to be affected by it in the same way. That’s the joy and the excitement of it, isn’t it? You’re given all these challenges, even the odd last-minute ones, and you pull it off perfectly. There’s great reward in that.”