28 Days Widescreen ?'s
 

I saw 28 days after on DVD this weekend. Watching some of the deleted scenes, I noticed that they were all in 4:3. this leads to some interesting questions- well one interesting question, anyway.
Did they shoot the whole thing in 4:3 (as opposed to using an anamorphic adaptor) and then change it to 16:9 in post?

Anybody know?

BTW, The answer to the question may have a direct bearing on my next camera purchase.

Anyway, I really liked the movie, aside from some extreemly large plot holes, it was very well done and quite enjoyable.

MG

Because they didn't care one jot about picture quality. That's the only reason I can think of. Why else does it look like the sharpness is turned up full? We all know that when taking DV to film you turn the sharpness right down. We also know to shoot true 16x9 or with an anamorphic adapter to miximize picture quality.

OOPS NEVERMIND...
 

I changed my search pameters and found a link to the article in American cinematographer than answers my questions.
Thanks...
MG

Perhaps you could post the link here? Thanks

The main emphasis on this thread is the cameras abilities, but you have to give kudos to the guys in post who made it look good and more filmic. If you watch the special features on the DVD, it shows some brief raw scenes, especially the scene where the head military guy is talking to the main character about the broadcast and what he expected. In that raw scene, which looks NOTHING like the final product, you really can tell it's video, and it looks interlaced to me.

I would really like to know more about what Simon and the guys in post did, rather than what lens was on every shot. After seeing that raw stuff, it's obvious that there's a lot more involved.

Great job!

the address.
 

http://www.theasc.com/magazine/july03/sub/index.html

I am cyber-stupid, and couldn't find the listing in the faq about how to post a live link. Sorry.
Hope this helps.
MG

Re: the address.
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Michael Gibbons : I am cyber-stupid, and couldn't find the listing in the faq about how to post a live link. -->>>

That's not stupid! There's a short tutorial on using vB codes in your post to make clickable links and such. You can get to it using the "FAQ" button at the top right of your browser window. Then scroll down and click on the link "Are there any special codes". There you will find another link about vB code (yeah, it's pretty well buried ;-)

Or better yet, just click here!

Yeah some of the raw footage found in the deleted scenes looks horrible.

Anybody know what they used for post?

Close to the beginning of this Thread, Simon said briefly that it was a uncompressed Flame/Inferno system that was used (from Discreet - very expensive). He also listed some of the filters they used.

Discreet is up there with the online Avid systems. Frame of reference, they use Flame/Inferno to edit the show CSI: Miami which is HD.

I must disagree strongly with you here. Why do you say they
didn't care? How can most people making movies not care?
(especially these kind of movies, and I am talking about directors,
cinematographers and camera operaters here)

Personally I always shoot in 4:3 and then go 16:9 (masking)
in post. Why? Because I want to have the possability to move
the picture up and down underneath the bars in post.
In post with all the work being done (editing, effects etc.) you
can choose to do framing a bit different. Or sometimes it is hard
to frame 100% accuarate when filming.

I do agree mostly with your sharpness comment, but it ain't a
hard formula! It is still an asthetic thing. Some people like more
or less sharpness then others!

Also not everybody can afford anamorphic adaptors (I don't think
I know of one person here on the boards that has posted they
are using one) not to mention other troubles this introduces
(like zooming). Ofcourse they probably had the money to get
these on 28 days later, but it would be way more interesting to
get a mini35 setup with some good lenses attached then.

If I'm not mistaken the people who made 28 days later wanted
to have an in your face feel to which this all helped I can imagine.

If you shoot 4x3 and crop to 16x9 in post instead of shooting anamorphic 16x9 then you're sacrificing resolution for convenience.

If you want to apply sharpness, you'd get a better result by applying it after your DV gets up-rezzed rather than before. I've seen PAL and NTSC SD put onto 35mm and HD at an SMPTE conferance I attended in Toronto and the results were vastly superior to 28 days...

Although 28 days... was shot on DV it was by no means a low budget movie. They could certainly afforded to shoot on a higher quality format and still get the ease of use and quick setups they required to make London appear deserted. I could have understood the choice of using DV if it had looked as good as I know a DV blow up can look, but for it to look so bad as to remind me of a VHS rental tape is not clever and not funny. I could also have understood if the movie was low budget, but it wasn't.

DV was used to give it the look intentionally. It was heavily processed in post also. I thought it was the best dv could offer but that's the first I've heard that it had a vhs quality to it. Haven't seen it yet myself.

My major experience with what SD can look like when put onto film was at a SMPTE confererence I attended in Toronto. One of the major players in Toronto - Command Post & Transfer / Toybox, put on a set of demonstrations of HD v Film, with both film and HD projection. To establish a base-line they also showed examples of SD video transferred to film. The quality of the SD transfers ranged a fair bit, and they were showing how both resolution (PAL v NTSC) and frame rate (25, 30, 60) make a difference, and the various techniques (from speeding up the footage, to using motion interpolation).

That is why I don't think 28 days... is not an example of the best DV to film transfer, but rather one of the worst, in both terms of resolution, and the excessive sharpness made it almost un-watchable in the cinema. Rental VHS is renowned for having really bad sharpness lines around everything in the picture (to help it stand up to the abuse of rental so the 100th person can still sort of make out a picture) and is often very noisey. 28 days... had very bad sharpness lines and was very noisey.

So, the DVD of "28 Days Later" is now available. I watched it and paid attention to the image quality. As many of you commented before, the edges looked funny. Is the DVD a DV->film->DVD transfer or DV->DVD ? If it's DV->DVD, is the film grain simulation done in post? It didn't seem particularly consistent from scene to scene. Sometimes it looked good, but overall, it seemed artificial.

Overall, I haven't seen many good film grain simulations. I'm
thinking about experimenting with coding this sort of image processing.