Emmy-winning cinematographer Matthew Lewis and camera operator Lee David Brown indicated they will make another one-shot series following Netflix’s “Adolescence” during a panel at WAVES Film Bazaar, though they emphasized the new project would feature a different story.
“There won’t be something that is the same story, because that story is definitely finished,” Lewis explained during the session moderated by actor Rajdeep Choudhury. “But we’ll probably be making another one of the same format down the line, but not just yet. We’re going to let it breathe… we don’t want to saturate the market with one-shot, because everyone’s going to get really bored of it eventually.”
Lewis won the 2025 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for the first season. The series collected eight Emmy Awards total and distinguished itself through hour-long episodes filmed as seamless single takes.
The production utilized a DJI Ronin 4D paired with Cooke SP3 lenses. Lewis initially considered Sony Venice and Arri Alexa Mini cameras but found those setups either technically incapable of lasting an hour or too cumbersome.
“My grip actually suggested to use the 4D from DJI, and we had a test day with it, and we fell in love with it,” Lewis said. “It meant that we could hand the camera between people really easily. It didn’t have to be attached to us, because it’s so lightweight.”
The team programmed lighting into a desk system with cues corresponding to camera positions, with the first episode alone featuring 50 to 60 different cues. “We basically built in lighting connected to a lighting desk, and we had essentially every position that the camera went into was like a new cue for us,” Lewis explained.
The blocking developed through extensive collaboration. “So much of the blocking was a conversation between me, the director, the actors, even the writer, sometimes,” Lewis said. “If it’s a school, and we can’t knock down the walls, we had to add dialog for certain walk and talks, or lose dialog in certain places.”
Brown emphasized performance-driven camera work. “The camera movements have to be motivated, and the lighting has to be motivated,” he explained. “I don’t think there is ever a point where the camera moved or did something that wasn’t dictated by something as small as a look or a slight movement.”
Lewis stressed that story remained paramount. “It would be very easy for the one shot to create too much compromise and ruin the story. I didn’t want that to happen, because I wanted people to forget that it was a one-shot piece and just be inside the story,” he said.
Technical mishaps occurred during the lengthy takes. Lewis walked into a wall in episode one and backed into a fence in episode two. A boom dipped across an actor’s face 45 minutes into an episode four take.
Brown described episode four’s vehicle journey as particularly challenging. “Every time we went around the corner or up a hill or round a roundabout, I was always adjusting the camera remotely from the wheels,” he said.
During episode two, Brown had to quickly adjust when actor Ryan jumped through a window at a camera handoff point where neither operator could see the monitor. “It was just a reactive moment where I think it helped to add energy to the section,” Brown explained.
The operators had never worked together before production. “We’d actually never met prior to ‘Adolescence.’ ‘Adolescence’ was our first job together,” Brown said. Lewis began running eight months before production but sustained a knee injury during the shoot.
Lewis praised lead actors Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper, though Cooper presented uncertainty. “We didn’t know Owen was going to be any good, because he’s a child,” Lewis said. “We only started to know that he was going to be really good for this in energy reads. But at that point, we were already committed to him. Luckily, he was fantastic.”
The decision to use a one-shot format originated from Lewis’s previous work on “Adolescence” director Philip Barantini’s “Boiling Point.” “Off the back of that, there was already a discussion straight away about seeing where we could take the format,” Lewis said.
Lewis emphasized the format’s limitations while expressing pride in the project. “It’s definitely not the best way to make everything, there’s massive compromises everywhere, but it does teach you a lot about camera language and motivation,” he said. “I’m more proud of this project than anything else I’ve done. I’m normally very self critical. So it’s quite nice to look back on something and be like, ‘Oh, it’s objectively quite good.’”
WAVES Film Bazaar is the market component of the International Film Festival of India, Goa.
variety.com
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