<<<-- Originally posted by Chris Hurd : Actually it was the XL1, not XL1S.

There was an extensive write-up on this in American Cinematography some time ago. See also all of the various "28 Days Later" threads over in our XL1 / XL1S forum. -->>>

Indeed, I forgot it for a moment.

it was actually shot in 4:3, not 16:9 - read second paragraph in link:

http://www.theasc.com/magazine/july03/sub/page2.html

check out the whole article if you have the time, it's the best i've read on 28 days later.

Someone should contact IMDB, because if they shot on the XL2 it would have ROCKED.

Remember when canon put out all those ads for Steven Sodenberg's next movie because he was using the XL1S, and then when the movie hit, they didnt realize he was going for the crappiest mini-dv look he could muster while still registering an image on the screen? They quitely stopped mention this movie after that. Too bad they didnt get behind promoting 28 Days more, because it was a great film that showed the strength of using these cameras.

Ya kind of a silly topic, but I got into this discussion with several guys in another thread that had nothing to do with it. So I started this thread.

The lowdown . . .

I say it was lame for 28 Days Later to be shot on mini dv if the director had a budget that easily supported 35mm film.

Others disagree.

What's your opinion?

From the little bit of reading I did, it sounded like they needed a large number of cameras rolling at the same time to get certain shots. I.E. for the empty street scenes, they had to hire police to block London streets for a short period of time in the mornings, and roll video from 8 different cameras to get all the shots they needed. That's not to say it couldn't have been done with 35mm, but it would have been costly.

I also heard that there was a lot of post work to correct for irregularities.

I never did hear the bottom line- the cost of making the movie versis the gross earned from box office and rentals.

Jeff Patnaude
P.S.
I just read in an Aug 8th article on CNN.com that says the movie grossed $40.3 million. With a budget of $8 million- thats quite a chunk to put in your pocket.

http://money.cnn.com/2003/08/08/news/companies/28_days_later/

I think we as video people worry way too much about formats, resolutions, and just overall video technical issues.

I watched this movie before I was 'into video' and thought it was great. Me nor did any of my friends thought that something was weird about the way it looked. I think this is the way all of your audience will be except for an elite few who are actually into video or film.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't know their craft well or do the best work they can, but that we may fight over the little issues such as long gop editing versus intraframe compressions and two resolution standards ect ect when none of this even becomes apparent in the final viewing experience to the average person.

Sure the 35mm would have given him a much better picture and probably a better dof than the mini. It also would have entailed probably a cleaner overall production.

We can fight over formats, methods, resolutions, and compressions until we are blue in the face, but that will never change the fact that 99% of our end viewer's experience is based purely on content.

It was shot on MiniDV and I bet nobody in the theatre were thinking - "I wish this had been shot on 35mm".

"I think we as video people worry way too much about formats, resolutions, and just overall video technical issues."

Absolutely.

I read a great quote the other day:

If you know how to light, it doesn't matter what format you shoot on.
If you don't know how to light, it doesn't matter what format you shoot on.


Quality is really reliant on perception much more than raw specs.

Keeping in mind that I never saw it on the big screen, I still thought it looked pretty good. Not as good as say, What Dreams May Come, but better than some of the movies I've watched. It was a better movie than some, because it was put together well, regardless of the format. You need a good story and actors, more than camera format.

I think you might be missing a bigger picture. It shows that a very well recieved movie CAN be shot on miniDV. Ok... maybe not VERY well, but it made some money.

I think the movie was a (little?) hit.
My opinion is the DV look gave it a real distinct look, and I liked it, for that movie.
And also, when I saw it in theaters, I wasn't so very busy with resolution and video, I just knew it had been filmed on digital video, and I, and the others, didn't mind. Some people never noticed it, and found it to be the best movie they ever saw.
That's not my opinion, but it is a proof that if you know how to tell a story, you can do it with minidv, and it gives you maybe other options you wouldn't have if you shot on 35 mm.

But, that also, just my opinion, it's very subjective offcourse :-).

Laurence;

You made the point that you had stolen shots in the streets of Dallas. I'd say that is much harder, really impossible, to do in London, especially with a full shooting crew. Renting and shooting off 8 35mm cameras on a 3 million budget would have been really tough, especially because they new before hand they weren't going to get everything and were going to have to spend a bit of money removing things in post.

I have question, and you probably know the answer but I'm just wondering, can you spot the point in the film where it changes over from being shot on DV to being shot on 35?

"can you spot the point in the film where it changes over from being shot on DV to being shot on 35?"

Interesting question...
Many of the people I saw it with thought the whole thing was made on film. Many didn't realize there was a switch in formats at all.

To me, it was like a punch in the face.
Then again, that was in the theater... I haven't seen it on DVD, but I'm pretty sure the difference would still be just as noticable.

They used a mini35 hooked up to their XL1s, using it to add a film grain look. I also heard they could only use prime lenses with it, so had to do a lot of setups.

<<<-- Originally posted by Joe Carney : They used a mini35 hooked up to their XL1s, using it to add a film grain look. I also heard they could only use prime lenses with it, so had to do a lot of setups. -->>>

Actually it was a different adapter than the mini35, and I believe they used broadcast lenses, but point taken it wasn't shot on stock XL lenses.


Joshua, Yes, I can tell where it switches over to 35mm, but a better question is, did I care? No.


This whole disscussion is quite funny because outside of our miniscule little DV/production world, no one else knows or cares that 28 Days Later wasn't shot on 35mm film. People went to see a scary movie with a good story, and that's what they got. The proof is in the box office receipts.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=28dayslater.htm

$82 million worldwide for a film shot on miniDV?
From that, I interpret that the format doesn't matter.

I don't think it matters either, I don't think it ever did.

I don't think the director was stupid for picking DV even though he had a good budget - I think he had excellent logistical reasons for doing so, and I don't think his choice was a particular bad one.

I think if he had waited a few more years, he would have had the choice and probably would have chosen to shoot it on HD instead. But for the time it was made, I don't think it was a particularly bad choice or hurt the film. I actually quite like the look of it.

Well, I'll be honest and say that I didn't realize it was shot on 35 at all, however, you must keep in mind I saw it on a small screen, and I do remember there were definitely points where I went . . . "now wait a minute, that shot looked pretty good, oh, what? It's crappy again." If I had had my wits about me, I would have realized they were mixing formats, but I was assuming that it was all shot on mini dv. If I had known they were mixing, I'm sure the points at which I recognized the quality difference would have translated into . . . "oh, okay, that's 35, now that's not, that is, that's not." And I also never saw in in a theater, where I'm sure it would have been very obvious.

What you guys might consider too is something I heard Dov Simmens say at one of his notorious "2-day film school" seminars, which was, "You must have good sound. If you don't have good sound, the average audience will tell you they didn't like the movie because the picture was bad, in other words, it will bother them subconciously, because something was ab-normal or not of highest quality. Even if they didn't really know what was wrong, they could sense it." I believe the same thing might be applicable here. You guys say you didn't notice it, and I didn't much either at first, becasue I saw it on a tiny TV and was blown away. Then I saw it on a medium sized TV and wondered what the hell happened. Of course, as you say, the people who will notice it the most art the artists. So perhaps your right and it's due to my seeing things from a filmmaker's point of view. But I can honestly say this. I can remember seeing movies as a child and recognizing something was strange that I didn't like. I couldn't put my finger on it. Then later, making my own home movies and then studying films in college, and eventually actually making features, I figured out why I didn't like them . . . because of bad technical qualities. So even at a young age I would have wondered what was wrong.

Overall, I see here that most people didn't mind, so that's cool. Personally, with 8 mill, I think it could have been done on 35mm. Even with the 8 cameras or whatever. And as I said in the other thread, maybe the distributors would have grabbed it faster or promoted it more if the format was larger.

By the way, was 28 days gross mentioned world wide gross or just u.s.

Only the end was shot on 35mm, the epilogue with the plane.
If that helps you :-)

I loved this film; and if I wanted to scrutinize the image quality; sure, I could say it is not impressive. But this is where "Content is King' comes into play; does it really matter? 5 Minutes into the film as the Monkeys attack and the young activist woman stares at the camera growling with red eyes and it doesnt matter cause I'm already hooked into the film.

Interesting point on the sound Lawrence; The Sound on this picture was excellent and AUDIO is something I concentrate on in my own attemts at filmmaking as I know all to well the importance.

I'll say one thing; when I found out it was shot on DV it reawakened my dream of filmmaking that I had almost completely given up on (I was 32 at the time). It also helped serve the revival of the undead genre; along with Resident Evil games of course.

The question at hand?

I don't think it was lame to shoot Mini DV on this picture. It does seem to work very well for the given subject matter. Sides; I might not have gotten back into filmmaking if it hadn't! ;) :O :)

<<<-- Originally posted by Laurence Maher : By the way, was 28 days gross mentioned world wide gross or just u.s. -->>>

$35m international + $45m US, more or less. The link I posted above has more details.

"Burt Wilson: I thought you said that if we destroyed the brain, it would die.
Frank: It worked in the movie.
Burt Wilson: Well it ain't working now Frank.
Freddy: You mean the movie lied?"

And what movie was this from?? And on a similar topic, I believe Shawn of the Dead was also shot on digital. Either way, it was great!

<<<-- Originally posted by Keith Forman : "Burt Wilson: I thought you said that if we destroyed the brain, it would die.
Frank: It worked in the movie.
Burt Wilson: Well it ain't working now Frank.
Freddy: You mean the movie lied?"

And what movie was this from?? And on a similar topic, I believe Shawn of the Dead was also shot on digital. Either way, it was great! -->>>

Oh too easy! Return Of The Living Dead. :)

That just didn't sound familiar, and I'm pretty sure I saw it.

LOL

One of my guilty pleasures.

SHAUN was shot Arri 35 from what I know?

What was wrong about 28days... being on DV was that they did it to intentionally make the picture quality bad. They say "edgy" - I just call a spade a spade (Anyone here from Yorkshire? - I'm not, but it's a very common saying there) and call it bad.

I've seen DV transferred to 35mm with the intention of making it look as good as possible, and it actually looks quite good. You do a number of things to help, and one of those is turn the sharpness down. In 28days... the sharpness was up full, making each and every pixel stand out on the cinema screen, and each and every character have a black or white halo of "unsharp mask" around them.

As someone who develops software to try and make DV look as good as possible, it pains me to see someone do everything possible to make DV look bad. 28days... was just the worst advert picture quality-wise for anyone wanting to make a DV feature.

Graeme

I havent seen too many example of fine work theatrically when using DV; I am looking forward to NOVEMBER however.

Thought this was interesting...

http://www.imdb.com/SearchTechnical?CAM:Canon%20XL-1S

I saw an interview when the movie came out... I am forgetting now if it was with the director or the DP, but one of them. They said (basically):

"We wanted the look of DV. We had the budget, we could have shot on film if we wanted it to look like film, but we didn't."

What could be lame about that?

To be fair, though, at the time they made the film there wasn't a lot known about the best way to go from DV to Film. They learned a lot of stuff as they went - they made some choices which, in hind sight weren't the best, but seemed like the best choices at the time.


On my 65" TV, the picture looks just fine. It looks like video, but it doesn't look bad. It's well lit, it's well composed, the camera movement is well designed. If it may not have the inherent picture quality of 35, it certainly doesn't suffer from it.

I'd completely disagree that people didn't know how to take DV to film!!! People have been taking SD PAL video to film for ages, especially commercials for cinemas and exactly the same rules apply about not applying objectionable sharpening in the SD video, but uprezzing to HD by a decent algorithm, and then, if necessary adding some sharpening. The look of that movie was intentionally bad.

Graeme

Well it makes sense that it was the ending on 35mm. I DEFINITELY remember the scene coming up and going, "now this has to be a different format," and assumed 35. This was before I saw the commentary and it made me think that they didn't like the ending they origianaly have and re-shot a new one due to test audiences or something.

Barry . . .

You said that they said dv was the preferred look even though they admitted they had the budget to shoot on 35. Then you asked . . .

"What could be lame about that."

Answer:

They shot on dv when they had the budget for 35.

I'm with ya Graeme. I'm with ya.

Laurence,

They made the film look like they wanted it to look.

When you make your films, you can make them look the way you want them to look.

Bono recorded an album using a $95 SM-58 microphone, because he wanted that sound.

People make their artistic choices, and for you to try to assess those choices as "good or bad" is just silly.

Let's hear it for that $95 microphone. Hey, wait a minute . . . they didn't use THAT to record the video for 28 Days Later did they?

:)

. . . I'm still with ya Graeme, I'm still with ya . . .

i think we all agree that that movie looked awesome, especially for a movie shot on XL1s, but what adapter did they use does anyone know? (i hope this wasnt already answered before)

This article http://www.theasc.com/magazine/july03/sub/index.html will answer all of your questions.

Specifically,

MPC believed the best results occurred with footage shot in the 4x3 aspect ratio but matted for 16x9 by the PAL XL1 (625 lines of resolution, 900,000 effective pixels over three 1/3" CCDs) in Frame Movie Mode, its pseudo-progressive-scan method, which is performed electronically within the camera.

Dod Mantle helped matters by securing the higher-resolving Canon EC (6-40mm) and Canon EJ (50-150mm) prime lenses to the camera bodies with Optex adapters.

I saw that movie on the big screen and enjoyed it a lot. However they clearly we not going for a "film look" and they had a big enough budget to have shot it on film if they wanted to. They wanted it to look like DV.

I read in an interview that in order to get the illusion of a shallow depth of field, they moved the camera back as far as physically possible. Great camerawork and great editing in that movie.

Just imagine...
What if Danny Boyle (or you!) could remake the movie 28 Days Later with a bunch of XL-H1's in HDV and cut it in 24p and output that to Film and show it worldwide.

Nothing different. Same Cast, Same Script, Same Crew, Same Shots, EVERYthing the same except for the Camera.

How do you think the movie would look? Any different? And why?

- ShannonRawls.com

Interesting thought. You'd probably notice the extra detail especially in the wide shots, the compositing might have been easier, and they may have gotten this guy Shannon Rawls to help produce the movie. But I don't think the newer technology would have made an appreciable difference to the content of the movie, except to us techno-geeks.

24p would have changed the look of the image, but Danny Boyle made an effort to use the more realistic look of a video camcorder, and further tweaked the look during the film processing, to give it an other-worldly look, half-in / half-out look.

Film cameras might have made a difference, because they wouldn't have been able to get those downtown London shots.

Just imagine...
What if Danny Boyle (or you!) could remake the movie 28 Days Later with a bunch of XL-H1's in HDV and cut it in 24p and output that to Film and show it worldwide.

Nothing different. Same Cast, Same Script, Same Crew, Same Shots, EVERYthing the same except for the Camera.

How do you think the movie would look? Any different? And why?

- ShannonRawls.com

You seem to like this camera!!

I read that he chose the XL-1 because he liked the rough video look. They had a budget of over a million dollars as I recall, and could have afforded to use film or HD.

Apparently, from what I recall, the budget was $15 million. The prevailing wisdom is that they used a very large chunk of that on post-production to bring the imagery up to acceptable quality (acceptable being subjective, obviously).

mg

yea, just think.
the effects i could of created, the color correction i would of been able to do.
the only limit would of been our imagination.
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

I'd guess the shots with the HDV Canon would have been a little less soft than the XL1. Other than that, probably not much difference. But he could have shot with 2/3" chip video cameras if he had wanted a better image. He used what he did for the way it looked, and it contrasted very nicely with the 35mm stuff.

Like they say, he had the money and it's not as if there wasn't anything out there to compete with todays XLH1. The answer might lie in ANOTHER 28 DAYS LATER or, if you prefer, 56 DAYS LATER.

I wonder if Danny Boyle would have still chosen the XL1 even with the XL H1 in production. After all he was going for that video look.

It would look better, not only because of the camera but also improved transfer techniques (I'm assuming). But if Boyle was concerned about image quality he would have moved to film. It would have been cool to have it in super 16mm

I think the point of the movie (look-wise) was to have a harsh video tone, but not be too blurry on the bigscreen. What I saw in the theaters was still pretty blurry, but again, content and sound mattered more. I recorded an HD version of it on Showtime, and it looked better on my home 720p projector 12 ft. wide.

The final scene of the movie was beautiful 35mm, obviously highlighting the triumph of the survivors, and the emergence from the nightmare.

I definitely think it would've been enhanced by shooting H1.

Apparently, from what I recall, the budget was $15 million. The prevailing wisdom is that they used a very large chunk of that on post-production to bring the imagery up to acceptable quality (acceptable being subjective, obviously).

mg


Actually in this case "acceptable" isn't really subjective accept frpm the peanut gallery <g>.

In the real world of film making, budgets, distribution and return on investment, there is no question that his approach was acceptable.
99.999% of the hundreds of thousands of people who paid to see it had absolutely no clue or care as to whether it was shot on an XL1 or 35mm film.

Very true, Jim, I was with friends who didn't care about technology, jusst went to see the movie. They didn't say anything about picture quality, didn't notice anything too.

The period of "legitimate" filmmakers working in the DV medium is mostly on the way out. Starting with the Dogma '95 movement, DV became the "flavor of the month" look for many filmmakers, but like all trends, new things come in to replace it. For many, the compact size of the cameras allowed a certain spontaneity and were minimally invasive to the actors; the same is true of the HDV and upcoming cameras like the HVX200 but obviously without the resolution hit that DV presents on the big screen. There will be exceptions to the rule (David Lynch's upcoming "Inland Empire", shot on PD-150's, for instance) but I think it safe to say that Danny Boyle and his team would likely have selected a different camera than the XL1 if they were making "28 Days" at the current time, considering the hoops that they had to go through back then (stitching multiple camera images together for wide shots to increase resolution, etc).