Adolescence tells the story of how a family’s world is turned upside down when 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) is arrested for the murder of a teenage girl who goes to his school. Stephen Graham plays Jamie’s father Eddie Miller. Ashley Walters stars as Detective Inspector Luke Bascombe, while Erin Doherty portrays Briony Ariston, the clinical psychologist assigned to Jamie’s case.
The Netflix series reunites Graham with director Philip Barantini, as the two previously collaborated on Boiling Point, which received critical acclaimed for its one continuous shot. James Drake (pictured) is the show's supervising sound editor and says Adolescence has been both a creative dream and technical challenge.
"We've spoken a lot about Episodes 1 and 2, and crafting some of the most chaotic and intense moments in the series, but just as much time and thought went into the creating the soundscape for Episode 3, which may feel like a sonically simpler episode on the surface," he explains.
Director/EP Barantini stated early on that he wanted to have the ability to make the room incredibly silent.
"From the start, we knew we needed an absolutely pristine dialogue track," Drake explains. "The production sound was brilliant but still needed extensive editing and cleaning throughout so we were just left with the pure dialogue. It meant that we could strip all the sound back just to the tiniest hint of supporting room tone in our highest moments of tension."
From there, Drake says the focus became building the sound of the training center, where viewers would hear the other children and staff, their movements around the building, and the outside world that's never seen.
"A huge part of this was the weather," Drake reveals. "The lighting cues reflected the mood and tension between Briony and Jamie, and so sound had to follow suit. I began by marking up the lighting cues and then added notes to where the emotion was pitched at those times. There was a lot of experimentation to get those sounds correct. Too little and it would be lost to someone listening on a television. Too much and it became distracting. After the temp mixes I went back and recorded a brand new library of rain and wind sounds for the episode. A lot of those wonderful sounds of the rain on the skylight, buffeting of the wind against the windows and tonal elements, come from a few weeks before the premix. I'll never complain about the British weather again!"