The film 28 Days Later is a mishmash of influences (Omega Man, George Romero's zombie trilogy, John Wyndham's "cozy catastrophes"*), but it still packs a wallop. As fellow PreReviewer Sally McKay says in an email: The fear in this film (Danny Boyle is director, from Trainspotting, etc.) is really contemporary. Globalization protest is an undercurrent, the main character is a bike courier, and the plot is a viral plague. All this content is punched home by the fact that it's shot with consumer-technology cameras. Sort of an open-source feel to the whole thing. The use of MiniDV is discussed in this article on Anthony Dod Mantle, the cinematographer, and the gritty, grainy texture of the video and the filmmakers' keen eye for composition & detail make an unbeatable combination. Seeing the movie a second time you become more aware of how artful (not arty) some of the images are (semi-spoilers): the eerie scenes of a completely depopulated daytime London (the Dod Mantle article explains how this was done); hundreds of colored plastic rain-collecting buckets spread like a Tony Cragg piece on the roof of Brendan Gleeson's flat; the Constructivist vortex of high tension wires outside the bike messengers's parents' home (in the extreme foreground of the shot); the weirdly Photoshopped rows of flowers on the road to Manchester; the heavy sheets of rain at the military checkpoint in the last reel; the messenger's view of the jet contrail through a tangle of silhouetted branches. Many of these shots would have been effective if done on regular film stock, but the video gives the movie a documentary urgency, so the best compositions seem accidental, which is even better.
*So called because, although apocalyptic, the action is largely confined to the British Isles and the protagonists never see the worst of it. Most germane here is the book Day of the Triffids. Giant ambulatory plants, offspring of crossbreeding experiments, are slow moving, responsive to sound, and lethal to humans--killing with a deadly stinger and feeding on the carrion. They aren't actually much of a threat until a strange meteor shower, watched all over the globe, strikes most of the population inexplicably blind. Recuperating from eye surgery perfomed before the meteors fell, a man removes the bandages from his eyes in a strangely empty hospital, and discovers a changed world...
It looked to me like they were using much higher resolution cameras/recording medium by the last reel. Guess I should read the article.
That article is for the serious photogeek. All the talk about filters and stopping down and focus pulling makes my brain hurt.
I enjoyed the article, very informative. I'm looking at getting a feature off the ground and am currently debating the film or video question. The look they accomplished in that last reel is very impressive. I'll have to see the film again. BTW, did you see the alternate ending?
I didn't. Here's an email I sent on that subject a few days ago:
Right after I sent my email to you I read a New York Times article saying that they're putting in an "alternate ending" for the film, starting today. I posted the text of the article here. Apparently they show the happy ending (with the earlier shot of the jet passing over removed) and then follow it with a 4 minute "but what if?" segment in which Jim dies and Selena must soldier on. But removing the earlier shot of the jet means you have no warning that the
virus is only confined to England, making the re-edited happy ending seem even hokier and more tacked on than it already does. Anyway, this is all a ruse to get people back in the theatres and I kind of resent the marketing aspect. Filmmakers need to just make up their f%*!! minds.
I'll bet the director wanted the creepy ending but the target audience/focus group prefered the one that made it to the theatres first.
Which is pretty much what happened with Blade Runner. But now we don't have to wait 10 years for the director's cut--just 28 days! Actually it's the "showing both endings/what if" part that bothers me. Just do one or the other and live with it!
Oh, and speaking of alternative endings and indecisiveness, here's a paragraph I left out of my main post. I guess it's worth mentioning in the comments. This came right after I talked about the film's aesthetics: The film's racial politics are something else again. The black woman hacking someone up with a machete (the "other," the "force of nature") then eventually mellowing and making out with the white guy after he demonstrates Rambo-like powers; the black guy chained up in the back yard and left to starve, before going on a murderous white-killing rampage. Yes, I know the woman was killing a zombie and the chained-up man was a zombie, and I hate to reduce everything to the pc level. Maybe it's enough to say that, in terms of casting choices and subtext, Pittsburgh's resident genius George Romero, with his sympathetic black protagonists and equal opportunity zombification, was (and is) way out there ahead of Boyle.
Haven't seen 28D yet but hope to soon. Boyle's debut Shallow Grave was a neat little noir number, a Scottish yuppie Blood Simple. Sure, the alternate-ending thing is all hype, but the focus-group theory of its origin sounds right to me. Some asshole from marketing said "Americans won't be able to take anything this bleak"...and you've got pc, Hollywood-style.
And the same goes for race: some of zombies are played by black actors, therefore 28D is peddling some retrograde racial-political agenda? Isn't that a bit bizarre? We're in an age when Denzel can win an Oscar for playing an thoroughly evil LA cop, and Halle Berry for playing a complex warts-and-all character, and we still need to worry about zombie demographics?
Let's have this discussion after you see the movie. I did a quick google search and found that Armond White raises some of the same issues. A disturbing exploitation occurs when Harris' Selena is sequestered for a gang-bang by renegade white soldiers; a filmmaker as savvy as Boyle must know he's pushing buttons but this ploy sends a chill through the urban audience I saw the movie with. They also expressed distaste for Boyle's repeated shots of a black male zombie chained to a wall and vomiting blood like a post-apocalyptic Renfield. It's as if Boyle's affirmative action revisionism only applied to black women. We're not talking brilliant, handsome (but bad) Denzel here--this is a blood-spewing, rage-filled near-animal. Also, he's the "lead zombie," not "some zombies." White's analysis of the Selena character is really thoughtful, particularly the compare-and-contrast to her predecessor in Omega Man.
Just saw 28 Days Later. I'm glad I read the American Cinemaphotographer (linked above) after seeing the movie.
I went in without knowing it was shot with digital video, but I recognized the look of video. I agree with this quote from the article. ...
"I saw an artistic, logical justification for shooting this film on this format because it was a very violent script - very disturbing, gritty and anarchic," Dod Mantle observes.
The odd combination of washed out colors, enhanced edges, and unnatural shutter speeds add to the despair and alienation.
I would not have guessed this film was achieved with pro-sumer standard def. equipment. While I could tell it was video, it seemed to be higher res. Credit goes to the folks doing post for extracting full potential of the captured video. For a video nerd, the article is a fascinating tutorial on video-to-film techniques.
can anybody tell me the name of the main, irish actor in 28 Days later? please? he is very very very very hot
|
The film 28 Days Later is a mishmash of influences (Omega Man, George Romero's zombie trilogy, John Wyndham's "cozy catastrophes"*), but it still packs a wallop. As fellow PreReviewer Sally McKay says in an email: The use of MiniDV is discussed in this article on Anthony Dod Mantle, the cinematographer, and the gritty, grainy texture of the video and the filmmakers' keen eye for composition & detail make an unbeatable combination. Seeing the movie a second time you become more aware of how artful (not arty) some of the images are (semi-spoilers): the eerie scenes of a completely depopulated daytime London (the Dod Mantle article explains how this was done); hundreds of colored plastic rain-collecting buckets spread like a Tony Cragg piece on the roof of Brendan Gleeson's flat; the Constructivist vortex of high tension wires outside the bike messengers's parents' home (in the extreme foreground of the shot); the weirdly Photoshopped rows of flowers on the road to Manchester; the heavy sheets of rain at the military checkpoint in the last reel; the messenger's view of the jet contrail through a tangle of silhouetted branches. Many of these shots would have been effective if done on regular film stock, but the video gives the movie a documentary urgency, so the best compositions seem accidental, which is even better.
*So called because, although apocalyptic, the action is largely confined to the British Isles and the protagonists never see the worst of it. Most germane here is the book Day of the Triffids. Giant ambulatory plants, offspring of crossbreeding experiments, are slow moving, responsive to sound, and lethal to humans--killing with a deadly stinger and feeding on the carrion. They aren't actually much of a threat until a strange meteor shower, watched all over the globe, strikes most of the population inexplicably blind. Recuperating from eye surgery perfomed before the meteors fell, a man removes the bandages from his eyes in a strangely empty hospital, and discovers a changed world...
- tom moody 7-24-2003 9:58 am
It looked to me like they were using much higher resolution cameras/recording medium by the last reel. Guess I should read the article.
- steve 7-26-2003 7:15 pm
That article is for the serious photogeek. All the talk about filters and stopping down and focus pulling makes my brain hurt.
- tom moody 7-26-2003 7:30 pm
I enjoyed the article, very informative. I'm looking at getting a feature off the ground and am currently debating the film or video question. The look they accomplished in that last reel is very impressive. I'll have to see the film again. BTW, did you see the alternate ending?
- steve 7-28-2003 3:59 am
I didn't. Here's an email I sent on that subject a few days ago:
- tom moody 7-28-2003 5:52 pm
I'll bet the director wanted the creepy ending but the target audience/focus group prefered the one that made it to the theatres first.
- steve 7-28-2003 6:52 pm
Which is pretty much what happened with Blade Runner. But now we don't have to wait 10 years for the director's cut--just 28 days! Actually it's the "showing both endings/what if" part that bothers me. Just do one or the other and live with it!
- tom moody 7-28-2003 7:22 pm
Oh, and speaking of alternative endings and indecisiveness, here's a paragraph I left out of my main post. I guess it's worth mentioning in the comments. This came right after I talked about the film's aesthetics:
- tom moody 7-28-2003 7:27 pm
Haven't seen 28D yet but hope to soon. Boyle's debut Shallow Grave was a neat little noir number, a Scottish yuppie Blood Simple. Sure, the alternate-ending thing is all hype, but the focus-group theory of its origin sounds right to me. Some asshole from marketing said "Americans won't be able to take anything this bleak"...and you've got pc, Hollywood-style.
And the same goes for race: some of zombies are played by black actors, therefore 28D is peddling some retrograde racial-political agenda? Isn't that a bit bizarre? We're in an age when Denzel can win an Oscar for playing an thoroughly evil LA cop, and Halle Berry for playing a complex warts-and-all character, and we still need to worry about zombie demographics?
- bruno 7-28-2003 8:49 pm
Let's have this discussion after you see the movie. I did a quick google search and found that Armond White raises some of the same issues.
We're not talking brilliant, handsome (but bad) Denzel here--this is a blood-spewing, rage-filled near-animal. Also, he's the "lead zombie," not "some zombies." White's analysis of the Selena character is really thoughtful, particularly the compare-and-contrast to her predecessor in Omega Man.- tom moody 7-28-2003 9:33 pm
Just saw 28 Days Later. I'm glad I read the American Cinemaphotographer (linked above) after seeing the movie.
The odd combination of washed out colors, enhanced edges, and unnatural shutter speeds add to the despair and alienation.I went in without knowing it was shot with digital video, but I recognized the look of video. I agree with this quote from the article. ...
I would not have guessed this film was achieved with pro-sumer standard def. equipment. While I could tell it was video, it seemed to be higher res. Credit goes to the folks doing post for extracting full potential of the captured video. For a video nerd, the article is a fascinating tutorial on video-to-film techniques.
- mark 8-11-2003 10:18 am
can anybody tell me the name of the main, irish actor in 28 Days later? please? he is very very very very hot
- snork 7-14-2005 6:41 pm