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After a long wait, “28 Years Later” is finally being released in cinemas. For the third part of the zombie series, which began in 2002 with “28 Days Later”, director Danny Boyle worked with smartphones instead of film cameras.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- On Thursday, June 19, “28 Years Later” will finally be released in Swiss cinemas after a long wait.
- For the third part of the zombie series, which began in 2002 with “28 Days Later”, filmmaker Danny Boyle used smartphones instead of film cameras during filming.
- Up to 20 iPhones were used simultaneously on special camera tripods.
- “Wherever you are, you get a 180-degree view of the scene thanks to the smartphones,” says Boyle, explaining the advantages.
Fans have been waiting 18 years for the sequel to the horror series around the films “28 Days Later” (2002) and “28 Weeks Later” (2007) – now the time has finally come.
Director Danny Boyle had a budget of more than 75 million US dollars, around 60.8 million Swiss francs, for the third part entitled “28 Years Later”.
And yet he decided to use modified models of the iPhone 15 to shoot his movie. This makes “28 Years Later” the most expensive film of all time to be shot with cell phones.
Film crew signed non-disclosure agreement
This fact was kept secret for a long time; the film crew even had to sign non-disclosure agreements.
But even during filming, a paparazzi photo indicated that Boyle and Anthony Dod Mantle, the film’s cinematographer, were not using ordinary cameras.
The picture shows actress Jodie Comer looking into what at first glance appears to be a normal camera. However, if you zoom in a little, it becomes clear that the telephoto lens is not attached to a movie camera, but to something that could be an iPhone, as a camera operator who did not work on “28 Years Later” explained to the US magazine “Wired”.
Now several people involved in the filming have confirmed to “Wired” that the movie was indeed shot with cell phones, more precisely with the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
“28 Years Later”: viewers are “part of the action”
Technical innovations and daring camera work are part of Boyle and Mantle’s work. “28 Days Later” was one of the first Hollywood films to be shot with a Canon XL-1 camcorder.
One idea at the time, Danny Boyle explains in an interview with “IGN”, was that people would film an apocalypse with camcorders. This gave the film its cold and raw look.
The filmmakers were inspired by this in “28 Years Later”: “You could ignore it, of course, but we wanted to be influenced by it,” the director told “IGN”. What the camcorder was in 2002, the smartphone is today, even if nobody would film zombies with several cell phones at the same time.
Boyle: “You get a 180-degree view of the scene”
Eight, ten or 20 iPhones could be mounted on special camera tripods at the same time. Danny Boyle explains the advantages: “Wherever you are, you get a 180-degree view of the scene.”
He continues: “In the edit, you can then choose all sorts of things: the conventional single camera perspective or different ones, and you can jump back and forth […] to make things clearer. Because it’s a horror film, we use this for violent scenes to emphasize their impact.”
With this technique, the audience is not just watching the scene from the outside for a moment, but “for a moment they are in the middle of it and part of the action”, the director continues.
That’s why he opted for an aspect ratio of 2.76:1. “With a widescreen format, [the zombies] could be anywhere… You actually have to keep an eye out for them the whole time and look for them.”
