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28 days later
“When you do a film that features monsters of some kind or other,” he says, “you have to have a very clear idea about how you’re going to manifest them on the screen. I’d always wanted the monsters - the ‘infected’ - to be moving at almost inhuman speed. I’d already made a couple of digital films for television in Manchester, and I kind of uncovered this way that the camera works, which is a particular way of recording fast motion. Digital cameras snatch at this information in a slightly unnerving way. It isn’t fluid in the way that you expect film to be: it gives a staccato effect, yet it’s not like step-printed film - it’s half-way in between.”
DOWN THESE EMPTY STREETS... Jim (Cillian Murphy) thinks he is alone in London before meeting up with Selina (Naomi Harris).
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In order to achieve this notion of the infected closing in on their prey at breakneck speed, the director cast mainly athletes in the roles. “When you watch an athlete actually perform, you realise that they are doing things that you should be able to do but that you know you’ll never be capable of,” he explains. “I thought if that became an aggressive thing - if an athlete turned on you - that would be genuinely frightening.”
The film was shot mainly in London (it has a very urban feel) in the early autumn of last year, but some of the empty-London scenes were shot slightly earlier - in July - because that was when it was easiest to get deserted city streets in daylight.
Boyle (seated) on set with DOP Anthony Dod Mantle (standing, right).
| “The filming of the London sequences was absolutely fantastic,” says Macdonald. “Before we started the main shoot, we took a week in July, beginning each day at three or four every morning, and would wait for the sun to come up. We were able to shoot for an hour or so before the city got too busy for us to hold back the traffic. It was very exciting; when you see the whole of Westminster Bridge and the embankment all closed for you and the traffic stopped and you can’t hear anything… it was thrilling, but strange as well.”
Although 28 Days Later is entirely fictional, Boyle reckons that the virus scenario is well within the bounds of possibility - and has become frighteningly more so since they started work on the film on September 1, 2001.
“A virus is something that you cannot necessarily put up a defence against,” he says. “This particular virus was to be something so virulent as to be uncontrollable - something that can’t be defended against because it’s actually part of us: rage.
“At the present moment, there’s no such thing as a psychological virus, but who knows what can happen? Just recently, two German scientists were able to create a totally synthetic polio virus within a matter of years with materials bought over the internet. Whilst polio has a relatively simple genetic structure, the knowledge is there to be able to create a more complex virus - smallpox, for instance. It’s more a matter of time rather than of technical capability.”
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28 DAYS LATER
Fox Searchlight Pictures with
DNA Films and
The Film Council
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Prod: Andrew Macdonald; Dir: Danny Boyle; Scr: Alex Garland; Ph: Anthony Dod Mantle; Prod des: Mark Tildesley; Cost des: Rachael Fleming; M-up des: Sallie Jaye; Ed: Chris Gill; Casting: Gail Stevens; Mus: John Murphy.
With : Cillian Murphy (Jim), Naomie Harris (Selina), Christopher Eccleston (Major Henry West), Megan Burns (Hannah), Brendan Gleeson (Frank), Leo Bill (Jones), Ricci Harnett (Mitchell), Stuart McQuarrie (Farrell), Marvin Campbell (Mailer), Sanjay Rambaruth (Davis), Ray Panthaki (Bedford), Junior Laniyan (Bell), Luke Mably (Clifton).
International distribution:Twentieth Century Fox.
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