28 Days Later...

nycineaste

nycineaste

Well-known member
..doesn't look "video-ey" to me, at least not in regards to it's DOF characteristics (it may have resolution/artifact issues). The medium shots don't look like dinky, "too much DOF" DV. Can anybody tell me why this is?

EDIT: nevermind, I think they used an adaptor with prime lenses...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEkJAaGhJhQ






 
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because its lit well and has good art department and wardrobe. Film look doesn't come from shallow DOF. Also the res and artifacts are from the crappy upload...this is no indictment on the film. I also THINK (not sure) that only the london street scenes used the canon video camera ( for speed of set up and the amount of footage they could shoot ) and the rest of the film is shot on film. I could be wrong on that though.
 
Good cinematography, good lighting, lots of effort put into production, production design, good acting, etc. These are the things that make a movie look good. Anthony Dod Mantle was the director of photography if I'm not mistaken. He certainly knows what he is doing.
 
jambredz said:
I also THINK (not sure) that only the london street scenes used the canon video camera ( for speed of set up and the amount of footage they could shoot ) and the rest of the film is shot on film. I could be wrong on that though.
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35mm was only used for the final scene in the film.
 
jambredz said:
because its lit well and has good art department and wardrobe. Film look doesn't come from shallow DOF. Also the res and artifacts are from the crappy upload...this is no indictment on the film. I also THINK (not sure) that only the london street scenes used the canon video camera ( for speed of set up and the amount of footage they could shoot ) and the rest of the film is shot on film. I could be wrong on that though.
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Amen brother. Depth of field can mask terrible lighting only slightly and bland sets and stuff, your mind thinks it looks good shot naturally with an Alexa, but compare it to a lit shot with a Canon xf305 and theres a huge difference

Sometimes I wish DSLRs never got video :/ The film maker's standard has changed from better to worse
 
RickyC said:
Amen brother. Depth of field can mask terrible lighting only slightly and bland sets and stuff, your mind thinks it looks good shot naturally with an Alexa, but compare it to a lit shot with a Canon xf305 and theres a huge difference

Sometimes I wish DSLRs never got video :/ The film maker's standard has changed from better to worse
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It is what it is. There is a LOT more complete garbage out there that makes the good stuff almost a needle in a haystack, but overall a positive change (the low cost entry point to film making).
 
I remember reading from AC that 28 Days Later was shot with Canon XL-1 cameras and T1.3 lenses shot wide open for the whole picture to achieve shallow depth of field. Super 16 was used for the end sequence (though not the original ending). The 25F/50i, 4:3 DV footage was uprezzed to 2K onto D1 tape IIRC and certain shots were digital composites to get a properly exposed sky that wasn't blown out. I considered buying the Blu-ray then thought it would be pointless; the reviews online did nothing for me either.

As far as the film itself I think it's fantastic.
 
Why would blu-ray add anything (over DVD) to a film that was shot in standard-def?

Anyway, yes, 28 Days Later was shot on Canon XL1 cameras, using "frame mode" at 25fps. The lenses used were Canon EJ primes, and there was *not* a DOF adapter. They were using an adapter to mount the EJ primes to the 1/3" Canon, but the DOF you experience in the film is that of a 1/3" camera. T1.3 (and using long lenses) is about the only way there's any shallow DOF in that film.

I remember them saying they used 35mm, not Super16, for the end sequence...
 
Barry_Green said:
Why would blu-ray add anything (over DVD) to a film that was shot in standard-def?

Anyway, yes, 28 Days Later was shot on Canon XL1 cameras, using "frame mode" at 25fps. The lenses used were Canon EJ primes, and there was *not* a DOF adapter. They were using an adapter to mount the EJ primes to the 1/3" Canon, but the DOF you experience in the film is that of a 1/3" camera. T1.3 (and using long lenses) is about the only way there's any shallow DOF in that film.

I remember them saying they used 35mm, not Super16, for the end sequence...
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Well the SD was transferred to 35mm film I believe. I saw it in the cinema and it looked pretty amazing when it was projected on the big screen. Presumably the BluRay has been mastered from the 35mm prints, not the SD video.
 
simonpwood said:
Presumably the BluRay has been mastered from the 35mm prints, not the SD video.
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Doesn't matter. The resolution is still 480 lines as opposed to film's natural 4k-ish. Probably a good blow up given the resources involved, but still a blow-up nevertheless.
 
It's not 480 lines, ultimately. In theory it started as 576, but that's interlaced, so the effective resolution would be around 440 considering the Kell factor, etc. And that's just going from PAL DV specs, not the actual resolution the camera recorded.

Then they used Frame mode, which wasn't true progressive, but an interpolation from the 50i interlaced capture, further lowering the resolution by as much as half.

Then, of course, it was cropped to widescreen.

I suspect the Blu-ray is pretty awful. :)
 
simonpwood said:
Well the SD was transferred to 35mm film I believe.
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It was, yes.

I saw it in the cinema and it looked pretty amazing when it was projected on the big screen.
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I also saw it in the theater, and I thought it looked awful. A large part of that would depend on where you're sitting, of course. If you were towards the front (I was around 6th row), it looked blockly, low-res, and full of edge enhancement. If you sat towards the back, it probably looked really good. I've seen DVX100 footage transferred to 35mm and found that where you sat in the theater made a huge difference in how you perceived how good the image looked...
 
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