Day for Night

[Nick Castronuova]

Hey guys, I'm going to be working on a 16mm production this semester, and was going to shoot the night scenes as day-for-night, this way I would save on the cost of lights for that day (i'm on a VERY tight budget).

 

Can anyone tell me the best way to go about day-for-night? I would guess underexpose two stops, use a DFN filter, and don't show the sky or any lights.

 

Also, does anyone have any day-for-night examples, or any work that they can show? Thanks.

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

(HINT) There's a search function...see it, love it, use it ;)

[JP BEATTIE]

I was facing the same problem recently (although I was using HD video) and I found this.

 

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial.html?id=1

 

I realise you may want to do it all in camera, but it's refreshing to know results as nice as this can be achieved in post.

 

Good luck.

[Scott McClellan]

That's pretty cool. Probably get some good results if you shot the night look in camera and then applied the lights in post. Impressive how fast those effects can be achieved.

[Jeff Scruggs]

Hi,

Now I'm far from having a lot of experience in the field, however I did shot some footage day for night on one of my first projects. I followed the video copilot example plus any other info I could find. I kept the sky out, but was still highly displeased with the results. My findings, if your shot has any depth to it ie, deep background behind the subject, you will find that when you crush it down in post your background will still be too visible when done. If you look around at night, details and brightness fall off very quickly, and your background becomes very dark, unlike the way your footage will wind up even if you step down and nd. Your results may be different with film, but for dv, the bg did not fall off enough for me and did not look convincing enough. When the weather gets a little better here in chicago, which could be in july as its looking right now, I plan on trying something I feel will work better. Light your subject, even during the day, you almost want to blow him out, then step down to give you the exposure you want on your subject. This should cause the bg to fall off and look more realistic. It may take some work to get the lighting right without shadows, and a dolly move should make it real fun, maybe the light following on the dolly. But I feel you have to provide more light on what you want to see and let the ambient to be underexposed to appear more real. Go back and look close at the video copilot example, look at the far bg, looks too clear to me. Just my 2 cents. opinions welcome. Thanks JD