Clever way 28 Days Later director filmed in London to make it look completely deserted

Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later has cemented itself as a post-apocalyptic classic, holding its own against bigger budget productions.

Released in 2002, the film written by Ex Machina’s Alex Garland and stars Peaky Blinders’ Cillian Murphy. Murphy plays a bike courier who awakens from a coma to find society has collapsed after a highly contagious virus has been accidentally released. The virus, he learns, induces those infected to attack others in zombie-esque showdowns.

One of the most powerful images of the film sees Murphy’s character Jim walking along a deserted London, with the camera lingering on haunting shots of a vacant Westminster Bridge and other central landmarks.

As a new trilogy of films is in the works from director and producer Boyle, writer Garland and filmmaker Nia DaCosta (Candyman), let’s have a look at how Boyle achieved those brilliant shots on a low-budget project.

You've never seen such an empty Westminster Bridge. (Columbia Pictures)

"In order to film these scenes, the director Danny Boyle had to get creative, especially with the low budget of the film,” TikToker @ban.man_ said in a video, explaining the crew utilised a few techniques to pull off those mind-blowing scenes.

According to an interview with protagonist Cillian Murphy, all the shots of London were ‘exclusively filmed on Sundays and in the early hours of the morning’ to keep the rush hour traffic of central London out of frame.

The crew had ‘impeccably short windows to complete these shots’, with some shots being completed in ‘as little as ten minutes’.

The cameras used were significantly smaller than traditional film cameras, with the Canon XL1, which was a digital video camera, being the main equipment on location.

"These cameras don’t involve nearly as much logistics to use," @ban.man_ said. "This meant the team were ablate have multiple cameras recording different shots simultaneously."

Murphy would only have to walk down the street once, whilst the several cameras would get an array of different shots. Of course, this was less time-consuming than having to set up larger cameras in multiple locations.

The film ended up grossing more than ten times its budget. (Columbia Pictures)

The use of the XL1 camera is also the reason why the film’s photography has that distinctive, grainy quality and feel. The picture quality achievable on an XL1 is considerably lower than that achievable with other, more expensive, bigger equipment.

While it may have initially been a response to working with a smaller budget, all those tricks remain a testament to Boyle’s filmmaking craft -- and they paid off. 28 Days Later was made with a budget of $8 million ($13 million adjusted for inflation) and grossed more than $82.7 million worldwide, becoming one of the most profitable horrors of 2002.

Meanwhile, Boyle stays committed to experimenting with new equipment as the hotly-anticipated sequel to 28 Days Later, titled 28 Years Later, has reportedly been filmed on several adapted iPhone 15s with a $75 million budget.

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