Uncorrected Daylight for Moonlight

[Sean Conaty]

I'm shooting day for night at a location with a bunch of windows and tenting all of them is out of the question.

 

Something I'm considering is shooting at 3200k (or maybe 4400k), leaving the daylight more blue, and maybe warm up the tungsten units inside. I'm curious if anyone has tried this and may have examples?

[David Mullen ASC]

Day for night inside works OK when moonlight is the only source for the scene, but it is very hard (and expensive sometimes) to put enough ND on the windows so that they balance with any tungsten practical sources. And once you put that much heavy ND on, it starts to act more like a mirror since the interior becomes brighter than the exterior, so any wrinkles in the ND become an issue.

 

It's almost like you need hard acrylic ND.9 panels that you can double-up. Anyway, it's pain-in-the-a-- unless it's conveniently dark outside, weather-wise.

 

If the scene is moonlit only, it's a lot easier -- you light it more or less like a day interior, except underexposed and bluer.

[Sean Conaty]

Day for night inside works OK when moonlight is the only source for the scene, but it is very hard (and expensive sometimes) to put enough ND on the windows so that they balance with any tungsten practical sources. And once you put that much heavy ND on, it starts to act more like a mirror since the interior becomes brighter than the exterior, so any wrinkles in the ND become an issue.

 

I was concerned about the same thing. Fortunately the majority of the windows are North facing and those windows facing East and West are offscreen so i can block those out. I'm thinking that what light does come in through the North windows will just be an ambient, blue base.

 

I remember Deakins doing this really well for a dusk scene in Revolutionary Road and Prieto as well in Brokeback Mountain, but can't think of an actual day for night scene that executes this well.

[David Williams]

There's a new product from Rosco that might do the job. Never seen it or used it, or know the cost though :) It's a two stage polarizing system, one for the lens, one for the window. Worth a look.

 

http://www.rosco.com/us/video/roscoview.asp

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

Hi Sean,

 

Just met you the other day! How many windows and how big are we talking here? One solution I've found to work good is to flag the window close in but not on, so only a small amount of ambiance comes in. This ambiance will glow some sheers nicely. You can even part the sheers and dust up the window a bit to obscure the black outside. If the set of windows isn't utterly massive then you can get away with dancing a couple of 6 or 8x blacks outside to suite the frame. I've attached a frame that shows a window behind covered by and 8x on rollers about two foot back from the window.

[Ryan Thomas]

Hi Sean,

 

Just met you the other day! How many windows and how big are we talking here? One solution I've found to work good is to flag the window close in but not on, so only a small amount of ambiance comes in.

 

This seems like a great idea, I'll have to give this a shot sometime.

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

I have to give credit to Mr. Mullen for that one. I'm pretty sure he told me that trick on this very forum a few years back.