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 . . .

What adapter did they use for 28 days later?
 

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,

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.

28 Days Later (with an XL-H1 instead of an XL1)
 

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.

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.