Once you've digested 'Adolescence'

Adolescence (Adolescence), the masterful Netflix series we talked about on Saturday in this column, has the power to devastate us emotionally. It's necessary to digest it, because the sediment of the story remains within you for days. After the first week of success, the platform has explained, through social media, how it filmed each episode through the sequence plan. Each chapter was recorded in its entirety without stopping the camera, connecting it at the beginning of the action and maintaining it until the end.

It's quite possible that Adolescence would have been exactly as good if it had been recorded using a conventional technique, because the approach to the conflict is masterful. It's evident that, beyond structuring a story, the creators have always had as a priority what they wanted to say with that series. And this always elevates the production, because it knows what it wants to communicate beyond developing the plot.

Now, once you've digested the story of little Jamie, with a necessary emotional distance, it's advisable to rewatch some episodes to observe the technical recording process. It's so complex and unusual that it allows you to enjoy the series in a different way.

In the long thread of tweets on X, Netflix has explained that the filming plan called for recording each episode in its entirety up to ten times: once in the morning and once in the afternoon over the course of five working days a week. However, on occasion, a significant error could force the series to stop and start over, so much so that in some cases more than ten shoots were made. In the end, the one with the best results was chosen. Before filming, there was preparation work in which the actors rehearsed and familiarized themselves with the script, gradually incorporating lines to better adapt the story. The technical team, for their part, also choreographed all the behind-the-camera movements. On occasion, they disguised a technician as an extra and integrated them into the image if that position was essential for the filming. Filming began with the third episode, the conversation between Jamie and the psychologist at the juvenile center. It was the first acting job for young actor Owen Cooper and his first time on a film set. In an interview, he revealed that the yawn he makes during the conversation was spontaneous, the result of fatigue, and that the actress incorporated it naturally into the dialogue. The smile the actor displays is part of the surprise of that moment, but it follows the thread to facilitate the filming's continuity. This insignificant detail further demonstrates the series' virtuosity. The realism is directly related to the actors' ability to imbue themselves with the story's harsh emotional burden through an unusual exercise of concentration. Adolescence For the second time, it's understanding why the series is so true. Because life is a sequence shot.