10 Reasons Movie Scenes Turned Out THAT WAY
5. The Blatant Day-For-Night - 28 Weeks Later
Roughly half-way through 28 Weeks Later, the survivors find themselves running through the streets of London in the middle of the night while attempting to escape District One before it's firebombed by the U.S. Air Force.
The scene is very clearly shot day-for-night, meaning that it was filmed during the day and then colour-graded in post to more closely resemble nighttime.
This technique is commonly employed on lower budget productions to avoid renting expensive lighting equipment needed to capture scenes filmed at night, but even with 28 Weeks Later rocking a tight $15 million budget, that should've been plenty to shoot at night for real.
As it turns out, there were two other concerns.
First and foremost, actor Mackintosh Muggleton, who plays Don's (Robert Carlyle) son Andy, was only 12 years old during shooting, and because child labour laws limited how much he could film at night, it simply wasn't practical to shoot his scenes that way.
Secondly, because London is supposed to be powered-down during the sequence, filming at night for real would've needed the production to paint out countless illuminated windows which would be visible while shooting in the evening, adding considerable VFX costs.
By filming the scene during the day and altering the colours in post, they didn't need to worry about Muggleton's schedule or having to digitally remove lights, because few buildings would have their lights on during the day.