A Music Superstar Took to the Streets of NYC for Netflix. The Result Was Bleak.

"Philip Barantini, the director of this year's megahit Adolescence, loves a oner. Each episode of Adolescence was a single take, which contributed to the sense of nightmarish tension as we watch Jamie's life, and the life of his family, implode in the aftermath of him murdering a girl at his school. Before that, Barantini made Boiling Point, an almost unwatchably nerve-racking one-shot film charting a disastrous evening at a busy restaurant."

"In One Shot With Ed Sheeran, we follow the singer, in a single take, from a sound check on stage at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom, out through the backstage door, and from there on a whistle-stop tour around Manhattan, including stops at the High Line, an Irish bar, a souvenir store, a rooftop birthday party, and the subway, before he circles back to the theater, now filled with a crowd, to start performing that night's show."

"A one-shot film or television episode comes with a sense of immediacy, even when the drama is scripted: a foregrounding of the sense that the things we are seeing really are happening, in real time. The background thrum of knowing that at any moment, something could have gone wrong, although of course we wouldn't be sat on our sofas seeing it if it had."

Philip Barantini specializes in single-take filmmaking to create intense immediacy and mounting tension. Past projects like Adolescence and Boiling Point used continuous shots to heighten real-time stakes and claustrophobic pressure. One Shot With Ed Sheeran follows the singer in one continuous take from a Hammerstein Ballroom soundcheck through multiple Manhattan locations and back to a packed theater, showcasing seamless transitions between handheld camera and drone. Fans react with astonishment as Sheeran moves through everyday spaces. The one-shot technique foregrounds the illusion of events unfolding in real time and carries a persistent sense that something could unpredictably go wrong, producing cinematic magic even when narrative stakes are comparatively low.

Read at Slate Magazine