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Cinematographer Matt Lewis talks about shooting much-praised Netflix limited series Adolescence on the DJI Ronin 4D with Cooke SP3s and some of the mind-bending choreography that was needed to make it all happen in single shots.
The team behind one shot feature Boiling Point are back with four-part drama Adolescence tackling the hot button topic of knife crime in a perfect marriage of style and substance.
“All the time you are wanting to keep the camera movement
smooth and in a way where that movement still feels motivated,” explains
director of photography Matt Lewis.
Stephen Graham stars as working-class bloke whose teenage
son is accused of murder. He also conceived the idea, co-writing it with Jack
Thorne and bringing back regular collaborator director Phillip Barantini and
Lewis for episodes which each unfold in a single take.
The cast had two weeks of rehearsals for each episode then a
week of filming. They shot two takes a
day per episode resulting in 41 single-shot takes across the whole series.
Thorne was present during rehearsals to hone the script and match performance,
blocking, timing and camera movement. Lewis was integral to this process.
“The first week was a sort of loose choreography and the
second week was more tech week, but they were all interwoven,” he says. “As you
can imagine, every single decision affects another one and we're editing the
thing we go.
“We recorded rough sections and watched them back to work
out the timing. If Jack wasn't on board with making changes to his script then
it would make this entire process impossible. There’s no way a writer can
possibly know exactly how their script is going to connect to a geographical
space. For example, if it takes 15 seconds to get from one room to another then
we need to add something in so that the [interest] doesn’t slacken.”
Episode 4 follows the family of the accused making a trip in a van from their
house to a hardware store and the return journey. The timings were meticulously
planned. The family’s house location was close to Production Park studios in
Wakefield where the police station interiors from #ep1 and the interview room
in #ep3 were filmed. They had two stores in mind which were a six minute and a
eight minute journey from the house.
“Immediately we went to the six minute one because it felt we
were flying through the city. As we repeatedly rehearsed the route, the cast understood
how to space the dialogue out knowing what beats they should hit from seeing landmarks
they passed. Towards the back end of that journey was a section where they were
ad-libbing to help buffer the time, adding in little memories that their
characters had as a family until the perfect moment where we can step out of
the car.”
Lewis operated the entirety of episode #3 and half of each
of the other alongside operator Lee David Brown carefully handing off the
camera to each other.
“On the first van journey in #4 I would gently place the
camera onto a magnetic release mount that's on the bonnet,” Lewis says. “There's
a remote slider. It clicks in and settles. I change some settings on the side
and run away to get into a unit vehicle to pick the camera up when they arrive
at the store. On the bonnet the slide drifts the camera slowly to the left to
bring it into the enter. I didn't want it to feel like a hard stop, more as if
it was floating. At the store the slider would just drift off to the left, and
I would have it by the handles. The grip came in and released the magnetic
release, hopefully in a way that you don't feel it click moments.”
After Graham exists the store Lewis passes the camera to
Brown who runs with Graham as he pursues a kid he thinks has damaged his van.
Meanwhile Lewis gets inside the van. With the door opened Brown passes the
camera through to him for the return journey. “I'm on a makeshift seat where I
can lean forward to the front seat and get to the actor’s faces. We spent a lot
of time trying to make sure we can see enough of them - because from behind,
you don't see a lot. It was also very warm in the van because we had a bit of tungsten
lighting in there kicking out a lot of heat. Plus, it was a 30-degree day
outside. We were all sweating.”
The whole series was shot on the DJI Ronin 4D using Cook SP3
primes with a Tilta Mirage variable ND. “The clarity of the lenses is fantastic
compared to the stock lenses that come with the camera,” Lewis says, who shot
full frame F2.8.
For the fourth episode he reversed the ND filter so it was
also a polarising variability which they made a custom mount for. “My loader
was basically the variability controller. He had a monitor and was walking with
us around or driving around with us keeping the levels controlled so that we
can grade transitions a lot smoother.
The second he came across the Ronin 4D in testing he knew it
was the right – perhaps only – choice, purely because it was a compact
gimballed solution enabling tight movements in confined spaces.
“Any slightly larger gimbal and would have been too limited.
It would have been heavier and had to have been connected to a single operator
the whole time. We couldn't have done handoffs or anything like that. So much
of what ended up in the show was based on being able to be nimble.”
Its compactness also made it suitable for mounting on a
drone in an extraordinary shot ending episode #2. Although a drone was always
planned to be used, the original ending was different with the camera floating
down the streets at head height.
“I was worried that this would feel like we’ve introduced
the camera as a subjective point of view, a being by itself.”
Instead, they decided to fly the camera over the houses and
finish on an aerial above the murder site using a magnet mount but this time on
the top of the camera. “Two grips held hold the drone over me as I came in
underneath and as it clicked into the mount. We turned the z-axis off and
hopped it straight over to Master Wheels [DJI controller]. Normally, you
connect anything to a gimbal and it will recalibrate but there was no issue
here at all.
Aerial film specialists The Helicopter Girls assisted with
this shot. This included building custom brackets to hold the camera on the
drone.
A last-minute decision made half way through the week of
filming was to land the drone and show Graham’s character laying flowers at the
site. “The challenge was working out how to land the drone and essentially
reverse the process of catching and unclipping the camera. It's just getting
the timings right, and having the operating of the drone happen on the move. after
I’ve clipped the 4d to the drone I’m driven in a tracking vehicle to the car
park. The drone is caught by two grips, I come up underneath, unclip it and
take the gimbal to close in on Stephen’s face.”
Episode 3, essentially a double hander between suspect Jamie
(14 year old Owen Cooper) and a
psychologist played by Erin Doherty and set entirely in an interview room,
could be the series’ standout Bafta winning moment.
“Because there was so many camera moves to remember I'm constantly thinking
ahead to the next step,” Lewis says. “So while I am responding to performance,
a lot of my bandwidth is taken up. But when Owen bangs on the table, even
though I knew this was coming, it would occasionally catch me off guard.
“The moment when he stands up and confronts the psychologist
is when the operating gets a little rough. You can press a button on the 4D and
it goes handheld which I did then because I could react to his energy. It’s a powerful
moment.”
Lewis says this episode, which he operated all the way
through, left him in physical pain with the repeat takes. “By the end of the
week, I wanted to take time out after the morning take. Do we do we need to
keep going when we've got so many good ones? We had so many options for episode
3 but the one we used in the end was the very last take. Owen was losing his
voice, everything’s even more distressed, and you can feel it.
“So even if we felt we’d got it in an earlier take, we
carried on through because there’s always the feeling ‘what if the next couple
of takes are amazing?’ Even if my spinal column felt toxic.”
Was there any plan B?
It was always intended as one take, but there were a few
moments where Lewis thought they could have something in the back pocket should
all not go to plan.
The hardest episode to shoot was #2 which was set in a
school (filmed at Wakefield’s Minsthorpe Community School) with 320 pupils as
extras.
“There were moments where I thought we might have to split
the beginning and the end. I’d look for natural places to cut throughout the
choreography. There were two or three moments in each episode where you wipe a
wall or move behind someone’s back which in theory could be a stitch point. It
was an option if we needed to, but I didn’t vocalise it. The minute you start
to think you've got a fallback and you say it out loud, it becomes a reality.”
Lewis commends the boom-ups whose moves are based off Lewis’ movement. In ep3 there re two boom ops circling behind Lewis round the table. First assistant Sean Beasley, achieved “not a single buzz” in all 41 takes as focus puller. “There are a lot of very critical pulls, loads of slow moves and push-ins. He became Jedi Knight.”
“My loader was controlling the exposure. We had all these marks but he had to use
some intuition if the sun came out or suddenly we need to adjust. We practiced
keeping it within a threshold of knowing that we'll have the information we
need in the grades to be able to keyframe all the differences out if we need
to.
“My grip team were stunning, spotting myself and Lee walking backwards and
doing ridiculous handovers. Gaffer Max Hodgkinson had to work out how to light
the thing because there’s no rulebook here for how to shoot one-shot drama. Our
methodology was to not go in too heavy, using natural light where possible. For
the final scene in ep#4 the gap in the curtains in the bedroom was critical down
to centimetres in order to throw enough light onto the actors (augmented by
lamps outside the windows).”
The format and subject work extraordinarily well but is it possible to envisage
other stories being told this way? As Lewis puts it, they were essentially choreographing
a play and then putting a camera in amongst it.
“It’s a weird sub-genre that works as long as time is moving
forward,” he says. “Any story would have to work in realtime and you can’t be
changing locations all the time. You can always apply a one shot – whether you
should is a different matter.”
He adds, “One shot stories work best where there's
underlying tension. Light-hearted scenes are much harder to cover this way. You
need to have Chris Nolanesque ever-climbing narrative. It's very hard to
diffuse tension in a one shot. You're always on edge because the viewer doesn’t
get a moment to blink. You can apply to loads of stuff, I think you just need
to be careful about the what the story is and whether it feels right.”
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