Has anyone seen "28 days Later" directed by Danny Boyle

[Don Berube]

Yes it is, says my buddy Mizell from ZGC, who by the way will be working alongside us in the CanonDV booth at the ETW SHOW. Mizell will be demonstrating the P+S Technik Mini35Digital adaptor. A fun time is guaranteed for all!

- don

[Mark Kubat]

It looks pretty promising - sorry to digress in this thread - but know you're trying to contact the guy - will you get a first-hand look of these? I'm especially interested in the Nikon and Canon adaptors...

please and thank you!

[Edwin Quan]

here's some proof:

http://www.filmcentre.co.uk/search.asp?str=28_days_later

[Rick Spilman]

There is an interesting review in Slate.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2084944/

They comment on the look of the film:

Boyle's work here surprised me. It's less heartlessly show-offy than in Trainspotting (1996) and less dopily picture-postcard than in The Beach. The music by John Murphy is an eerie drone that kicks into acid rock when the zombies show up. And it looks like nothing you've ever seen. The movie was shot on video by Anthony Dod Mantle, who often works in the low-tech Danish film collective Dogma. He gives it a documentarylike fluidity but with the punchiness of a horror flick. The light from those low, overcast English skies is yellow-gray and weirdly diffused: You believe London's lone surviving cab driver, Frank (the endearingly blustery Brendan Gleeson), when he surveys the empty pots he has set out on the roof of his skyscraper and curses the sudden drought. It's a mad world, indeed, when the rain stops falling in England.

[Andres Lucero]

I just got this e-mail from Fox Searchlight pictures... Doesn't say anything about DV, but he makes some great points about the horror genre, and the "knowing wink" that plagues soooo many films these days:

The following message is from director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, The Beach), his producer partner Andrew MacDonald, and writer Alex Garland (The Beach, The Tesseract) - who collectively are the creative forces behind 28 Days Later, in theatres nationwide this weekend.

In many ways it is useful to work within a genre. If nothing else, it means that a considerable amount of the hard work of filmmaking and story-telling has been done by the people who have worked in the genre before you.

In the case of 28 Days Later, we were working in a sub-genre of sci-fi and horror: the post apocalypse. The roots of the genre were born from the fall-out from a real apocalypse: the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Novels like John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids and Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend seemed to result from the nuclear paranoia that followed - a realisation that it had become a reality that mankind and civilisation might be ended, and not by the traditional act of God but by ourselves. The grip on our imaginations that nuclear paranoia exerted seems to be a clear indicator of how little we trusted ourselves to cope with such power.

Arguably, cinema followed the cues of these novels with equally fearful works, though found cause for paranoia in different areas, such as social issues and consumerism. Possibly, the finest examples of cinema’s contribution to the post-apocalyptic genre are found in George Romero’s Dead trilogy - Night, Dawn, and Day. But honourable mentions also include The Omega Man, which is an adaptation of Matheson’s I Am Legend, and also David Cronenburg’s Rabid.

There are other films and books that could be mentioned, but the point remains the same: that 28 Days Later is essentially a contribution to a lineage. We borrowed, sourced, and stole from these earlier works. Our opening sequence of a man waking in a hospital bed to find that London has been destroyed is lifted from Day of the Triffids. A scene set in a supermarket is a reference to the plundering of the shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead. The chained ‘infected’ - our version of triffids, vampires, or zombies - made his first appearance in Day of the Dead.

Aside from providing structure, genre also allows you to play games with convention. To pick one convention example out of many, it tends to be the case that in any horror film worth its salt, there will be a version of a scene where, say, a girl will walk into a dark and obviously dangerous cellar, holding only a flashlight with dying batteries as defence. At this point, all members of the audience will be asking, internally or externally - why the hell are you doing that? Our version was a drive into a dark tunnel full of smashed cars and broken glass. In this instance however, at least one of the film’s characters is smart enough to point out the complete idiocy of the action. Not that anyone listens, of course.

Our close relationship with genre raised a question for us as filmmakers - how much do we sign-post the borrowings and convention games? And we decided that we wouldn’t sign-post them at all. This was an attempt to sidestep what has become another convention of sci-fi and horror: the knowing wink. The ironic nudge made by the filmmakers at the genre-savvy audience.

The problem with the winking and nudging is that it has become a way to let everyone off the hook. If a scene is supposed to be frightening or suspenseful, an ironic reference becomes a way that the filmmaker can protect himself from failure. In other words, if the scene fails to be suspenseful, the filmmaker can pretend he was really just making a post-modern comment on the nature of contemporary cinema. Equally, the audience is let off the hook, because if the filmmaker has succeeded in making the scene suspenseful, the audience can reassure themselves by congratulating themselves on their ability to reference, sub-reference, and knowingly deconstruct the history of cinema.

The last (but probably most valuable) of the gifts that genre provides is that it provides you with proven story mechanics which you can customise as you see fit. Often, the customisation becomes a large proportion of what makes one genre piece distinct from another - the hidden agenda and social commentary.

It’s debatable whether sci-fi frequently operates as a debating ground for social issues because of the filmmaker’s noble intent, or whether it is the result of a failure of the imagination - that when trying to invent a new world, you end up drawing on the world you see around you. Either way - genre makes for a great agenda vehicle. Not least because it puts a limit on pretentiousness. (Okay, you want to make a piece of earnest work about the collapsing fabric of society. Congratulations. But let’s not forget you’re also making a zombie movie... so stop messing around and blow up a petrol station already.)

Danny, Andrew, and Alex

[Don Berube]

Following is more proof, actual footage of the DP and crew working with the XL1S!

Here is the link to the making of "28 Days Later"
http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk...urette_hi.html

Here's the preview: http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk...icial_big.html

Here's one of the promos: http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk...icial_big.html

Here's another video: http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk/video/seen_hi.html

Here's a spot: http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk/video/spot_hi.html

Check out all of the FILMMAKER INTERVIEWS here:
Danny Boyle: http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk.../boyle_hi.html
Megan Burns: http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk.../burns_hi.html
Christopher Eccleston: http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk...leston_hi.html
Brendon Gleeson: http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk...leeson_hi.html
Nadmie Harris: http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk...harris_hi.html
Andrew Macdonald: http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk...donald_hi.html
Cillian Murphy: http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk...murphy_hi.html

- don

[Rob Belics]

Here's a review

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/reviews.nsf/Movie/7815C1646DFE1D7486256D5100643F87?OpenDocument&Headline=+Post-apocalyptic+%2228+Days%22+adds+zombies+to+the+mix+

[Keith Loh]

//Nonetheless, Boyle provides us with some subtextual meat - Selena and a rabid soldier who is kept chained for scientific observation are both black, whereas the malevolent major is distinctly Aryan - and the director's jittery, digital-video images amplify the fright factor. //

From the St. Louis Today review. Only in America will this subtext seem important. I highly doubt that Boyle or Garland was trying to play up any kind of race card. In Britain it's just more matter of fact that you might have a black leading lady.

More atypical is that the Naomie Harris character is the *leader* for most of the movie and the male protagonist is more the everyman who makes the stupid mistakes. That is a real reversal, not the race.

[Rob Belics]

the director's jittery, digital-video images amplify the fright factor.

[Jesper Hallen]

I have seen the 28 days later movie, I liked it, especially the "dead street-scenes". I watched it at vhs and I thought it looked very good. I have recently got the xm2 camera by the way, and so far I love it...

[Erik Selakoff]

Anyone else see 28 Days Later? IMO it was truly brilliant. Not to mention disturbing & thought provoking. I only had 2 small problems with it.
(don't worry I won't spoil anything for anyone who hasn't seen it) There was a freeze frame shot which I felt did not work & I didn't like the ending. Otherwise it was amazing.
Anyone else with opinions??

[Alex Knappenberger]

Cool. How does it look blown up to 35mm on the big screen?

[Erik Selakoff]

There's a slight loss of sharpness but it doesn't detract from the feel at all. It adds to it if anything. I don't know if the loss in sharpness/clarity was intentional or a result of the blowing up of the film though. It still looked better than 90% of the movies out there today. And the audio (both musical score & Sound FX) are perfect. Most of the film was apparently scored entirely with an electric guitar.

[Mark Kubat]

Not to start a war with you but I think the subtext idea has more "meat" to it especially when our hero comments on the way up the stairs to the apartment with the Xmas lights in the balcony: "what is it about tall blacks and shopping carts?" (where all those shopping carts are piled at the bottom of the stairwell)which apparently is some sort of wisecrack that Londoners would appreciate or so my buddy from London explained when we saw the movie on Friday.

Saw the movie on the big screen here in Toronto.

It was a bit soft - didn't have any issue with the DV look in terms of pixel noise (none apparent) - there is an interesting effect when video is transferred to film that daylight streaming through windows always seems blown out. The close up shot on our hero when he first opens his eye in the hospital 28 days later is case in point. The sequences shot at night or low light made the grade - the early scenes with a lot of long shots in daytime London looked more "video." It's ironic that the latter half of the film is mostly at night in darkness - the film looked better as it went on not so much because you got used to accepting DV but because it was more night interior close-up stuff vs. long, daytime exterior stuff.

When he wakes up at the end, that whole bit is 35mm film and you can tell (last 5 minutes) so maybe that's a trick to let audience think your DV movie looks better than it really does because of recency effect? Good psychology!

I liked the DV stuff - the 2nd half with them travelling in the taxi meeting the soldiers etc. - it all looked good. The night attacks looked awesome.

Later that night I saw Charlies Angels II digitally-projected and it got me thinking that 28 Days Later probably would have looked a bit better if not transferred to print....?

I was more entertained by 28 Days Later than I was by Matrix Reloaded (honest!) - there are moments in the film when you see the desolation and the carnage that you really believe this has actually happened - the subplot in the 2nd half is a great twist and the story is cool. Christopher Eccleston steals the show a bit as the army commander.

I understand now when Boyle says "It's not a zombie movie - it's a war movie."

[SXTRAZOX]

Wow. I just caught up with this thread. Very interesting. We already know this film is making a huge buz, that it was shot on XL1 PALs in frame mode without the mini35, that it cost 15 million and that it was finished on Inferno stations. But how was it edited? In which system? FCP, Media Composer, Fire or what? Maybe Simmon could shime in again and tell us that.

Thanks