27-05-2025
‘The dialogue is king': ‘Adolescence' sound editor James Drake on the ‘chaotic and intense' first episode
'We've worked together on pretty much all of Phil's stuff, and I worked on his very first short film,' says James Drake of how he became involved in the Netflix limited series Adolescence, directed by Phil Barantini. The two have collaborated on projects including the Boiling Point short film, feature film, and television series, all which also featured Adolescence creator and star Stephen Graham. Drake discussed the buzzy Netflix series as part of our Meet the Experts: TV Sound panel. (Watch our full interview above).
Drake says that Barantini first mentioned Adolescence while the two were working on Boiling Point. 'It sounded unbelievable what they wanted to achieve,' admits the sound editor. He knew from this early moment that each episode of the show would be shot in a single, continuous take, which added to the excitement. 'He explained the opening of Episode 1, going from the car to the house to the van to the police station, all around the police station. … Nothing had been done like this, at least in the U.K.,' reflects the BAFTA nominee.
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This unique approach to the production of Adolescence meant Drake became involved earlier than usual. 'The process was different, and really early on Phil said you really need to come to set,' remembers the sound editor. He explains that he was there for the shoot of both Episode 1 and Episode 2, which afforded him and the sound team unique opportunities: 'We had this approach where post sound and production sound were working together. … We were doing two takes a day, which meant we had down time after every single take to go away, go up to the edit room, and listen to everything.' The result was 'a huge library of 600 sound effects recorded on set' and '10 takes of each episode' from which Drake could work.
SEE 'It's saving lives': 'Adolescence' stars Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper on the series' stunning success
The first episode of Adolescence wastes no time in gripping the audience, as the series begins with police breaking down the door of the Miller house and conducting a home search to arrest Jamie and collect evidence of the crime he is accused of committing. 'I spent a week just on the production dialogue of that first 12 minutes,' says Drake, continuing, 'I knew that was going to be the biggest challenge we were going to have, maybe in the series.' A big element of that challenge was conveying the chaos of the situation without sacrificing the audience's ability to gleam important information. 'We needed the audience to understand as much as they could about what was going on, so it was very much taking a very slow approach with the dialogues and working through and finding alt takes,' he says, adding, 'The dialogue is king … so we're always trying to keep that clear and front and center, but also … it needed to feel chaotic and intense.'
Another standout scene from a sound perspective comes much later in the episode, when Jamie undergoes saliva and blood tests and a strip search. Part of creating the intrusiveness of that scene came from 'the air condition unit in the room, the room tones being more abrasive, more uncomfortable, and being able to shave those away and have this really stark and really upsetting moment of a dad hearing his son being strip searched a meter away from him,' describes Drake. He and Barantini also wanted to foreground Graham's performance as Jamie's father, Eddie: 'It should at that moment be Eddie's breath and hearing P.C. Jenkins and Jamie going through the strip search. … When the performances are that good as well, we just want to let them shine.'
Episode one culminates in a long interrogation scene, where the detectives lay out their case against Jamie to the teenager, his father, and their attorney. Drake notes that an early cut of the scene featured 'a few sounds coming from the police station,' but he and the sound team quickly realized 'we want to be behind that door and be sealed off from the world.' He shares that the biggest hurdle in getting the sound design right for this pivotal sequence was separating the performances from the technical aspects of the shoot, revealing, 'There's three or four people — camera operator, two boom operators — actually walking around that room, all throughout that scene, and in real life, that's a tiny, tiny room.' The sound editor thus embarked on a 'really careful cleaning process so we didn't affect anything, but kept every performance we could.'
This article and video are presented by Netflix.
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