In the world of TV, 2025 is quickly becoming the year of the one-shot. Adolescence's four episodes are each filmed with stunning single takes, while Seth Rogen's The Studio also uses extremely long takes, including one episode that's a single shot. Now, Rogen has reflected on the two shows, and why it would have been "impossible" for The Studio to match Adolescence's hour-long shots.
The Studio's second episode is called "The Oner," and it follows Rogen's character Matt Remick as he visits director Sarah Polley on set while she attempts to capture a scene in one long take. In a very meta joke, the entire episode is a single take — or at least it appears to be.
"It is not a legit oner," Rogen admitted to Zane Lowe on the latter's Apple Music show. "I mean, because it is four things broken up, because it's not only a oner, it's shot at magic hour, and because there's so many logistical things happening, it had to be broken up."
He added, "It would've been impossible. Adolescence does it. And I think with comedy, it's impossible to nail every one of these beats every time."
Lowe pointed out that Adolescence has quiet moments "where they're literally shuffling papers for 30 seconds," but the fast pace of Rogen's comedy would have made that impossible.
"No, exactly. We have a hyper-dynamic style, and the timing of comedy is so important," Rogen agreed. "So for that episode, for example, it's like it starts in a car. Just resetting that car took 15 or 20 minutes. The whole thing is shot between like 5:30 and 6:30, basically. That was the only window of time that we could actually film for the light properly. So we would've only been able to do two takes or something like that if we had tried to do it all as one continuous thing because of how long it is and how long the reset is."
Watch Rogen talk about The Studio with Zane Lowe below.