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28 Years Later Was Actually Filmed Using iPhones – Danny Boyle Explains Why
28 Years Later director Danny Boyle has opened up about his decision to shoot much of the film using an iPhone camera.
The horror sequel was released last week, and has already proven to be a big success with both critics and cinemagoers.
Danny previously helmed the original movie 28 Days Later, shot on hand-held cameras, giving the film the effect of looking like found footage, and his new offering used similarly lo-fi techniques.
In a new interview with YouTuber Matti Haapoja's How They Filmed That series, Danny explained his motivations for using iPhone cameras (although it's worth pointing out he didn't just rifle in his pocket for his phone and start shooting, these were souped-up iPhones with impressive enhancements, with some shots requiring as many as 20 at a time to film) to record 28 Years Later.
'[Using iPhones] allowed us to be very light, in our footprint, in areas of the country that we wanted to suggest hadn't been touched for 28 years,' Danny said. 'Now, a crew coming in with the normal equipment level, it's going to make a big footprint.
'We used drones a lot, as well, so we could film sequences that cameras couldn't possibly [achieve] without terribly disrupting the landscape, and making it look like a herd of elephants had gone through.'
Danny added that the use of multiple iPhones and drones in 'arrays' allowed 'certain visceral moments of the film' to be even more impactful, allowing viewers to 'push inside' the two-dimensional shot in front of them before being 'thrown back out again'.
Similarly, he told Wired: 'Filming with iPhones allowed us to move without huge amounts of equipment.
'A lot of Northumbria [where 28 Years Later was shot] looks like it would have looked 1,000 years ago. So we were able to move quickly and lightly to areas of the countryside that we wanted to retain their lack of human imprint.'
During a separate interview with IGN, he also conceded that the iPhone-quality filming felt like something of a callback to 28 Days Later's shooting techniques.
'We decided to carry it as an influence,' he explained.
It's not just the use of iPhones as filming equipment that has generated conversation around 28 Years Later, though.
The movie's dramatic climax has also raised plenty of eyebrows – with Danny having recently explained the meaning behind those perplexing final scenes.
28 Years Later is in cinemas now, with its sequel currently slated for release in January.
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