28 Years Later wasn't just filmed with an iPhone – it was shot with 20 of them

Image: Sony Last year, Wired reported that 28 Years Later, the upcoming sequel to the classic zombie flick 28 Days Later, was being filmed using an iPhone 15 Pro Max. A new IGN interview with the film's director, Danny Boyle, now confirms that at least some parts of the movie were shot with the phone and sheds even more light on that process. Apparently, several iPhone shooting rigs were used on the production. According to IGN, there was one that held eight phones, one that held ten, and one that held up to 20, which could be used to create what Boyle calls "basically a poor man’s bullet time." The phone rigs could be attached to cranes or carried by people.Photo: Sony He also says that having so much coverage also provided options in post. "It gives you 180 degrees of vision of an action, and in the editing you can select any choice from it, either a conventional one-camera perspective or make your way instantly around reality, time-slicing the subject, jumping forward or backward for emphasis." Boyle also called it "a wonderful tool" to keep the actors on their toes. "They get to know where the cameras are and they get to know lenses and they get to know what they're doing. But [the multi-camera rig] throws them." As for why Boyle decided to use iPhones at all for the production, he says it's a callback to the vibe of the original. IGN points out that when 28 Days Later came out footage of an apocalyptic event would've been shot on cheap digital camcorders, similar to the ones they used to make the movie. Nowadays, such an event would be recorded on smartphones. With that said, it's hard to say that the footage from the trailer looks like phone video. With some movies shot on iPhone, like Sean Baker's Tangerine or Steven Soderbergh's Unsane, the shot-on-a-cell-phone aesthetic is strong, but, to my eye, 28 Years Later just looks like a movie. That's not necessarily a surprise, though – on-set photos from Sony show the crew using full-blown cinema lenses in front of the phone's built-in cameras. If you're at all interested in the movie, the full interview is well worth the read. It goes into how Boyle and his team use the widescreen 2.76:1 aspect ratio to put the audience on edge, and how the movie's story (penned by Alex Garland, like the original) was inspired by major events over the past two decades, such as Brexit. 28 Years Later is set to hit theaters on June 20.

May 31, 2025 - 05:35

28 Years Later wasn't just filmed with an iPhone – it was shot with 20 of them

Image: Sony

Last year, Wired reported that 28 Years Later, the upcoming sequel to the classic zombie flick 28 Days Later, was being filmed using an iPhone 15 Pro Max. A new IGN interview with the film's director, Danny Boyle, now confirms that at least some parts of the movie were shot with the phone and sheds even more light on that process.

Apparently, several iPhone shooting rigs were used on the production. According to IGN, there was one that held eight phones, one that held ten, and one that held up to 20, which could be used to create what Boyle calls "basically a poor man’s bullet time."

28-years-later-multiple-phone-rig-on-crane

The phone rigs could be attached to cranes or carried by people.
Photo: Sony

He also says that having so much coverage also provided options in post. "It gives you 180 degrees of vision of an action, and in the editing you can select any choice from it, either a conventional one-camera perspective or make your way instantly around reality, time-slicing the subject, jumping forward or backward for emphasis." Boyle also called it "a wonderful tool" to keep the actors on their toes. "They get to know where the cameras are and they get to know lenses and they get to know what they're doing. But [the multi-camera rig] throws them."

As for why Boyle decided to use iPhones at all for the production, he says it's a callback to the vibe of the original. IGN points out that when 28 Days Later came out footage of an apocalyptic event would've been shot on cheap digital camcorders, similar to the ones they used to make the movie. Nowadays, such an event would be recorded on smartphones.

With that said, it's hard to say that the footage from the trailer looks like phone video. With some movies shot on iPhone, like Sean Baker's Tangerine or Steven Soderbergh's Unsane, the shot-on-a-cell-phone aesthetic is strong, but, to my eye, 28 Years Later just looks like a movie. That's not necessarily a surprise, though – on-set photos from Sony show the crew using full-blown cinema lenses in front of the phone's built-in cameras.

If you're at all interested in the movie, the full interview is well worth the read. It goes into how Boyle and his team use the widescreen 2.76:1 aspect ratio to put the audience on edge, and how the movie's story (penned by Alex Garland, like the original) was inspired by major events over the past two decades, such as Brexit. 28 Years Later is set to hit theaters on June 20.