28 Days Later - DV feature movie

Barrie wrote on 7/9/2003, 4:31 PM
A new DV horror movie is out - "28 Days Later" directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting). Anyone seen it yet? Here's a paragraph by reviewer Megan A. Denny at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=6678

"Also of note, is the look of 28 Days Later. Due to a tiny $15 million budget (consider that the average Hollywood picture costs $80 million), 28 Days Later was shot almost entirely on digital video. Some stodgy critics will complain the DV look is distracting, but I think a film-look would be detrimental to the film. First of all, the action is faster with DV. A video camera can capture a certain kind of panicked pivoting in a way that would be very complicated for a heavy 35mm unit. Secondly, the video footage makes the images look more realistic. The first ten minutes of the film look like documentary footage of a post-apocalyptic world."

Comments

rique wrote on 7/9/2003, 7:12 PM
First of all, the action is faster with DV. A video camera can capture a certain kind of panicked pivoting in a way that would be very complicated for a heavy 35mm unit.

LOL

Yeah. DV also produces more tears and laughs for romantic comedies and can pop your corn and pour your soda. ;->

I'm all for the digital revolution, but it doesn't need to be sold with such hyperbole. There are small and lightweight 35mm cameras too if you need something nimble for a particular sequence. It's done all the time.

I haven't seen 28 Days Later but the extended 6 minute clip available on the official web site looks impressive. On a recent Charlie Rose show, several of the stodgiest critics commented on how good the film looks.
kingkool682 wrote on 7/9/2003, 11:32 PM
I heard they spent 8.5 million Source= TechTV, Techlive entertainment report

It's amazing how they shot London completely empty. I think they shot all of the footage in two minutes early one morning and held up traffic.
rique wrote on 7/10/2003, 4:47 AM
There is an article about the shooting of the film in the July 2003 issue of American Cinematographer.
cyanide wrote on 7/10/2003, 6:37 AM
I saw the film. It's beautifully shot, considering it was done all on Canon XL1. The trailers are super over-hyped- "scariest movie of all times"? There wasn't a scary part in it. Same plot as 1) Night of the Comet 2) Omega Man 3) Last Man on Earth (60's Vincent Price); based on a story, I belive was called "I Am Legend". I wouldn't pay to see it. It's been out on DVD in Great Britain for a year or more.
Barry_Green wrote on 7/10/2003, 3:57 PM
You saw it on DVD, or in the theater? I'm sure it looks fine on DVD, but in the theater I was quite disappointed -- it's just too fuzzy & soft. I don't mind the grit and blown-out exposure and other certain attributes of the picture, those can be incorporated into the concept of "having the format be part of the storytelling" -- but it was so soft that it flat out looked out of focus for half the film. Some shots looked fine, but others were just not acceptable.

Now, on DVD this probably won't be a problem -- a 32" TV will probably look fine. But on a 30' movie screen, where every single pixel is 1/2" wide, it wasn't sharp enough.

Part of the problem was probably the selection of XL1's in frame mode -- you're already starting with only about 320 lines of resolution from PAL frame mode, and then they cropped it down to 16:9, so they only got maybe 240 lines of effective resolution up on the screen. At least they used PAL -- NTSC would have been around 200 lines! The selection of special lenses from Canon probably helped overcome such low resolution.

I also wonder if the transfer to film process softened the picture up. I've seen some footage from a TRV900 projected straight off video on a similar-sized screen that looked much sharper. That TRV900 footage (a short film called "Phoenix") gave me hope that DV might produce an acceptable picture for the big screen, but "28 Days Later" kind of knocked that hope back down a notch. Oh well. Perhaps the DVX100, in progressive mode, with thin line detail, and the anamorphic adapter, will prove adequate. At least then you'd be getting a full 480 lines, twice what "28 Days Later" got... if that's not good enough, we may have to wait for a useable HDV camera.

The film was fun, and I thought they did something absolutely brilliant in the opening: the very first shots you see are heavily interlaced scan-line-visible shots that are being shot from a TV monitor. The idea seems to be them saying "see, THIS is what video looks like, so when we pull back and show you the rest of the frame, you won't think it looks like video, okay?" Great idea.
vitalforce2 wrote on 7/10/2003, 4:03 PM
Don't have that problem with a Panny DVX100 in 24pA mode. Ahem.
RL wrote on 7/10/2003, 4:57 PM

Yes, It was a fun movie. Nice use of DV. Gives hope for our medium!

farss wrote on 7/10/2003, 5:36 PM
I've shown a few movies from DV in cinemas. Most cinemas have reasonable projectors although they're used mostly for commercial stills.
The trick is to get the projectionist to let you tweak them back down so your video looks OK.

Cinema projection is more forgiving than you might think, in a cinema there is no reference white. The other thing is to have something worth watching. Obviously you can't captivate the audience with brilliant visuals but if you have a good story to tell they'll forgive a lot in the visual department and there's no reason why your sound can't be about as good as what comes off film. Yeah I know DV sound isn't as good as DTS but its still way better than what most people are used to out of their TVs.
videoman69 wrote on 7/10/2003, 8:28 PM
Having been a still Photographer and then a videographer who shot the ocassional video on film, I would be sick if I had an 8 mil budget and had to shoot with DV!
I have the DVX-100, it is fine for most things but really I would at least go to Cine_Alta for a feature. Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids) - like it or not. Owns 2 Cine-Altas and has a company here in Dallas do all the EFX. Thats what I would like to do but I have not won the lottery yet!
decrink wrote on 7/10/2003, 11:50 PM
Anyone know how it was edited? What program or platform?
Arks wrote on 7/11/2003, 9:56 AM
I was wondering that as well; like the flick ALOT; I ahve been a huge danny boyle fan since trainspotting and shallow grave.
rique wrote on 7/11/2003, 1:36 PM
From American Cinematographer magazine article online:

http://theasc.com/magazine/index.htm

"All footage was upconverted to D-1 tapes (125 in all) by Clear Ltd., who also handled the visual effects. D-1 provides YUV 4:4:2 uncompressed PAL images. (The PAL Canon XL1 is 4:2:0.) After editing and conforming, the seven D-1 masters were handed off to MPC, where Dod Mantle spent almost a month in tape-to-tape grading with colorist Jean Clement Sorret, who used a Pogle Platinum and a Cintel DSX with the PiXi secondary color corrector. The graded masters were captured onto a digital disk recorder for treatment on a Linux Shake workstation. Running through MPC's proprietary FilmTel software, the 16x9 images were enhanced and interpolated to 2K files, blown up slightly to 1.85:1, then recorded onto grain-free Kodak Vision Color Intermediate 5242 stock via the Arrilaser. The answer print was created by Technicolor London on Fuji HiCon 3519D. Deluxe handled the release prints on Vision 2383."