Our first 26 seconds are one unbroken shot: out of a front door, down the street, up into a drone, over the roofs and down into a close-up. It's how Netflix's Adolescence (2025) was made: every episode a single continuous take. "There's no breaths, no jumps, no time cuts," director Philip Barantini said.

Cinematographer Matthew Lewis carried a small gimbal camera, a DJI Ronin 4D with a Cooke 32 mm lens. On a bigger rig, he said, they couldn't have done hand-offs. At the end of episode two, two grips held a drone over him, he came in underneath, and the camera clicked into a mount on top. It flew about a third of a mile, two grips caught it, and he unclipped it and walked into a close-up.

The landing was only added mid-week. Thursday was too windy; the final take on Friday worked, and the take they used was number 13. For about ten minutes after take-off, nobody knew if they had it. Lewis won the 2025 Emmy for that episode.

Our street, drone and stand-ins are built and lit in code.

Where would you have cut?

Sources: Matthew Lewis to RedShark News (Pennington, 2025) and Cooke Optics (2025); Philip Barantini to Screen Global Production (Calnan, 2025) and the Royal Television Society (2025); Netflix UK via TVBEurope (Priestley, 2025) and TheWrap (Cobb, 2025); Television Academy.
Music: made with ElevenLabs Music. Sounds: made by us; street traffic by janbezouska (Freesound, CC0).