Filmmakers Used 20 iPhones at Once to Shoot '28 Years Later'

[nfl46]

Was the first movie filmed with blackberries?

I asked ChatGPT.

28 Days Later (2002), directed by Danny Boyle, has a notably grainy and gritty visual style, and that was very intentional. Here’s why it looked that way:

1. Shot on DV (Digital Video) Instead of Film

The movie was primarily shot using Canon XL1 digital video cameras, which are standard-definition (SD) consumer-grade cameras by today’s standards. This was a bold choice at the time when most films were still shot on 35mm film.

Why? It allowed Boyle and his team to shoot quickly and discreetly in real locations—especially in places like a deserted London—without requiring large crews or extensive permits.

• Effect: This resulted in a grainy, lo-fi, almost documentary-style aesthetic that gave the film a raw, urgent, and unsettling atmosphere

 

[AND411]

Missed opportunity. Movie should've been called 26 years later (shot on iOS 26).

the first two films were called 28 days later and 28 weeks later…..

 

[GioGiusi]

I'm not sure I understand the point. It sounds like something Apple would do just to promote its own product. I can see getting a unique action shot, like what is shown in the hero image, with all the phones mounted close together in a semi circle. But the entire film? And since they have to add tons of extra hardware into the mix to make it work, why not just use a real camera at that point?

 

[OGdrknight]

Did they buy AppleCare for every iPhone used in a film? I’m asking for my friend Tim.

 

[DougieS]

I'm not sure I understand the point. It sounds like something Apple would do just to promote its own product. I can see getting a unique action shot, like what is shown in the hero image, with all the phones mounted close together in a semi circle. But the entire film? And since they have to add tons of extra hardware into the mix to make it work, why not just use a real camera at that point?

Did you read the article?

The unique shot-on-digital aesthetic subsequently became an iconic part of the movie, so the use of iPhones to shoot the latest addition to the series pays homage to the original film's use of camcorders.

 

[Corefile]

The zombies don't stagger about docile like. They run faster than you can.

 

[ericinboston]

Essentially the iPhones are storage devices in these setups. The iPhones sit behind tens of thousands of dollars of external lens. It's really misleading to say "...28 Years Later will become the first major blockbuster movie to be shot on iPhone"

 

[wigby]

How incredibly gimmicky.

Looks like an affordable bullet time rig to me. Gimmicky to some but some also describe films like Matrix as a new paradigm in visual storytelling.

 

[wigby]

Canon XL-1 was NOT a consumer grade camera. More "prosumer" to professional. It's not something you would have normally shot a movie with, but it sure as hell wasn't something Pops filmed Jimmy's baseball game with either.

View attachment 2514949

It was a pretty big staple of wedding/events videographers of the day.

Doesn't matter how great the glass is or features on it...SD resolutions scaled up and projected on movie screens hurt my eyes then and hurt my eyes now too.

 

[thebart]

Did Apple pay them to do this? If not it seems pretty stupid. Unless you're making an ultra low budget movie the cost of camera rental is relatively small. I don't know what the point of this is. Soderberg has made a couple of movies shot on iPhone. They look like crap IMO

 

[svish]

Interesting to see the number of iPhones used as cameras for the film. Might see this film!

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

iPhones 26

 

[4k78]

The zombies don't stagger about docile like. They run faster than you can.

Spoiler!!

Seriously, I need to watch the movies.

 

[Baseiseough]

Not impressed. Last time I went to a wedding they used 75 iPhones to film it.

 

[Baseiseough]

Missed opportunity. Movie should've been called 26 years later (shot on iOS 26).

Better yet: 20 iPhones later.

 

[hortod1]

Seems a little premature to call it a “major blockbuster movie” given that it’s still in production

 

[urnotl33t]

Come on guys, this is impressive, despite the accessories and being a marketing stunt.
Pros will notice but it'll probably look like a regular movie for most people.
More and more young artists start with a phone nowadays, which is way better than what previous generations used to have. And now we're at this level: the sensor that can shoot a full mainstream movie is in your pockets.
Don't be cynical, for once.

Finally…. Someone who “gets it”.

 

[Reason077]

the movie is ambitiously still in full 2.76:1 widescreen–which is typically reserved for IMAX or Ultra Panavision 70mm

IMAX is actually 1.43:1 for the classic full-scale IMAX, although 1.90:1 is more common for modern digital IMAX releases.

IMAX presentations are known for being extra tall (ie: expanded vertical field of view), not wide!

 

[ksec]

I really really dislike the modern Apple's direction of thinking iPhone Pro being good enough for Movie making. Old Apple used to celebrate high quality equipment being used for high quality movies.

Now it is mostly marketing gimmick.

 

[fathergll]

The unique shot-on-digital aesthetic subsequently became an iconic part of the movie, so the use of iPhones to shoot the latest addition to the series pays homage to the original film's use of camcorders.

If they wanted to actually pay homage to the original film they would have shot the movie with a modern 'camcorder' .... something equivalent to what that Canon was back in the day(in that semipro-pro area) not a smartphone rigged up with probably $50-100k worth of gear to the point they had to get Apple to help engineer the thing.


Thats why it's a gimmick. The original movie shot on XL1s instead of film for actual technical reasons to make things easier/faster for guerilla filmmaking. This is literally the opposite. On the surface level if you just read the headlines yes it sounds like its easier but anyone with even a passing knowledge of cinema cameras knows this did the opposite. Filming with an iPhone makes the production much harder so its more of an engineering feat so a $75 million budget helps. This was obviously done for marketing reasons to create buzz which is their choice and it is working since people will talk about the iPhone headline. "hEy i hAvE aN iPhonE!"

 

[Stevenyo]

We used iPhone 16 Pros to shoot some scenes of a TV series and the quality is very good when shooting ProRes, much better than a GoPro or similar small cameras. We shot alongside Alexa Minis and if the lighting is not some crazy dark or high contrast scene, the two can be graded to look very similar. You can fit the phone behind a laptop or in tiny spaces, it can be mirrored to a Mac for real time viewing, etc... So it's quite nice to shoot with. The BlackMagic camera app is incredible and totally free, and lets you change all the exposure parameters and shoot in various ProRes codecs.

What sucks is how incredibly painfully slow it is to offload 200 GB of footage (which is not that much) even via a fast USB-C cable. No clue why it's so damn slow but I can't imagine how annoying it must be to offload 20 iPhones multiple times a day.

But there isn't much reason to shoot with an iPhone in most cases. It's just good to have it as an option.

They really are great little cameras when you use them properly -- would love for a version with internal CFexpress slot instead of a cell modem lol -- but in the meantime would it be feasible on the shoots you do to record to external SSDs -- no need to "offload" then, just swap to a new SSD and transfer footage off the old one at full speed. Based on the images that's what they did for 28 years later

 

[Stevenyo]

Essentially the iPhones are storage devices in these setups. The iPhones sit behind tens of thousands of dollars of external lens. It's really misleading to say "...28 Years Later will become the first major blockbuster movie to be shot on iPhone"

Not misleading, the iPhone is the camera being used. With lots of accessories and often with lenses other than the built in ones -- but that's true of literally every cinema camera rig -- you don't pull an Arri Alexa out of a box and just shoot with it -- you use it as the "camera" part, the sensor and recording logic, of an entire rig that often includes lenses and monitors and follow focus devices and stabilizers and time code sync and so much more. Oh and BTW, the iphones are not being used as storage devices, there are SSDs attached to every phone in the behind the scenes shots -- thank god, actually getting footage stored internally off all those phones would be so frustrating! (part of why no one did this before the iPhone 15 Pro finally got 21st century I/O speeds (Seriously the USB 2 speed of Lightning was slower in practice than the firewire ports on my 1999 Macs)

 

[iLLUMI]

28 Years Later - A story about Apple AI finally arriving, where Siri can finally answer a question without referring you to a website.

 

[Bodhitree]

I think this is really cool, a feature film shot on iPhones. Awesome to see what the devices in our pockets are capable of. And probably quite cost effective compared to the camera rigs usually used for cinema.

 

[videotastic]

So many curmudgeons on this site, my god. They’re trying something new, who cares? If you think it’s such a terrible idea, why don’t YOU direct a multi million budget zombie movie and get back to us on how easy it is 😂