A rig holding multiple iPhones | Image Credit: Sony
Apple’s iPhone has taken a bite out of Hollywood horror, playing a key role in the visual storytelling of the new “28 Years Later” movie.
If you’re a fan of the zombie genre, chances are you’ve probably seen the 2002 classic “28 Days Later.” The film was famous for its look and feel, and this was largely due to the fact that it had been filmed digitally.
And, that choice wasn’t done on a whim. Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland were aware of the pervasiveness of digital camcorders — had an apocalypse happened 23 years ago, it most certainly would have been captured by one of these devices.
If a zombie uprising would take place in say, the year 2025, there’s no doubt that the event would be captured on smartphones. That’s why the production team chose to shoot “28 Years Later” on iPhone — at least partially.
And they didn’t just use one iPhone, either. Sometimes they used a rig equipped with eight iPhones, another which used ten — and it didn’t stop there, either.
A third rig used 20 iPhones for a single shot. Boyle told IGN that he equated this to “basically a poor man’s bullet time.”
“Wherever, it gives you 180 degrees of vision of an action, and in the editing you can select any choice from it, either a conventional one-camera perspective or make your way instantly around reality, time-slicing the subject, jumping forward or backward for emphasis,” he says.
“As it’s a horror movie, we use it for the violent scenes to emphasize their impact.”
In addition to making the choice to shoot on iPhone, Boyle also has chosen to give the film a 2.76:1 widescreen aspect ratio. A format this wide for standard theater screenings is an an unusual choice, as this tends to be reserved for Imax or Ultra Panavision 70mm epics.
But the extreme widescreen lends a certain level of unease to the film that wouldn’t be possible in narrower formats.
“We used a very widescreen format in this one,” Boyle tells IGN. “We thought we’d benefit from the unease that the first film created about the speed and the velocity, the visceral [aspect] of the way the infected were depicted. “
“If you’re on a widescreen format, they could be anywhere… you have to keep scanning, looking around for them, really.”
“28 Years Later” will release to theaters on June 20.
