green night

[Delorme Jean-Marie]

you noticed like me that in most of the night effects, low key are green.

is it to obtain better deep blacks or is it some kind of representation of nights that is going to become old fashon in the coming years???

i have nothing against.....i just wonder

[David Mullen ASC]

Some people, tired of "blue" moonlight, are using more of a cyan or turquoise color for moonlight. You see this in Sladomir Idziak's work. In theory, greenish moonlight will make skintones look more monochromatic (green cancelling pink.)

 

Another issue entirely is that underexposed and push-processed film can pick up a green cast in the blacks.

[DavidSloan]

Another issue entirely is that underexposed and push-processed film can pick up a green cast in the blacks.

 

Wow, I had no idea about that. I recently shot some stuff, on Fuji 500t, that was low key, and pushed 1. People have told me it looks like the Matrix...and I added no green, at all! :o It looks good so I'm not really complaining, but that's really good to know!

[Dominic Case]

Some people, tired of "blue" moonlight, are using more of a cyan or turquoise color for moonlight

The human eye is more sensitive to green light than the other colours, in dim (night) light. So green objects appear relatively brighter than they would in full daylight. Green or cyan filtration or colour correction is a good way of simulating that effect. (And as David points out, it tends to desaturate flesh colours, giving a night-time feel).

 

And of course the light source is relevant too, and if it's really moonlight, it isn't blue (well, hardly ever, only once in a blue moon . . . ).

 

Blue lighting for moonlight was only ever a convention, not much based in reality. No reason why it shouldn't be changed.

[Guest fstop]

That whole green tint thing has really come into vogue all over with the proliferation of the kino flo, gratuitous flo practicals in shows like ER as well as the tints of The Matrix and various other Hollywood quoting of Hong Kong cinema. You even see it in 24 and other TV shows now. Going monotone green is so dated and 1990s in my book, unless it's done against convention.

 

David Watkin hates blue as a "night time" colour code, saying it's a crooked, cliched convention. I'd argue that it certainly has it's place if it's in the film at hands overall design pallette. I have FAR more problems with blue filtered day for night sequences dropped into films that have no bold blue in the pallette, yet everyone feels confident to go with blue as oppose to any other colour because it's the traditional, easy convention that will signpost the setting to the audience.

 

My ultimate beef though is snowscapes and icey interiors being colour coded HMI blue, now THAT is uncreative garbage in my book!

[Kevin Zanit]

I like to add like 1/8 green to "moonlight" if that is indeed the only source. I try to avoid night scenes without any practicals, but sometimes that?s what the movie is.

 

I like moonlight to bee neutral white, and then I add that slight bit of green, which to me seems even more neutral. I think this is because it takes some of the saturation out of skin tones.

 

 

Kevin Zanit

[David Mullen ASC]

I like the convention of blue moonlight (another opportunity to use color!); "white" moonlight looks like you've got a big tungsten light on in the scene. And it looks a little like daytime.

 

If I'm going for a "natural" look, I usually use a half-blue effect (i.e. half-orange gel on an HMI) which looks blue-ish but not excessive. "The Lost World" had a nice moonlit look using 1/4 Blue gel on big tungsten units. Since the light from the moon is theoretically 5500K, it should look cooler than tungsten practicals anyway.

 

Actually, I think what would look best is half-blue but using a silver retention process -- you get a cold, silvery feeling then.

 

But screw realism -- do whatever creates the mood you want for the scene. Blue is a visual "signifier" that the scene is at night. I've gone for a heavy blue moonlight effect when it fits with my color palette at that point in the story, more of a psychological effect than realistic.

[Allen Achterberg]

nothing wrong with using blue to exagerate night a little. I agree with david, I mean I've never heard someone who didnt know the difference at the theater complain, if it sets the mood you want use it, or find some other color for your moon.

[Chris Keth]

The human eye is more sensitive to green light than the other colours, in dim (night) light.  So green objects appear relatively brighter than they would in full daylight.  Green or cyan filtration or colour correction is a good way of simulating that effect. (And as David points out, it tends to desaturate flesh colours, giving a night-time feel).

 

And of course the light source is relevant too, and if it's really moonlight, it isn't blue (well, hardly ever, only once in a blue moon . . . ).

 

Blue lighting for moonlight was only ever a convention, not much based in reality. No reason why it shouldn't be changed.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I thought the convention of blue moonlight was based on the Purkinje effect...?

[Ed Nyankori]

Purkinje effect...?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well for those of you whom didn't know??? I trust Im not the only one:

 

Purkinje effect

 

 

The tendency of the peak sensitivity of the human eye to shift toward the blue end of the spectrum at low illumination levels. It can affect visual estimates of variable stars when using comparison stars of different colors, especially if one of the stars is red.

[Chris Keth]

Well for those of you whom didn't know??? I trust Im not the only one:

 

Purkinje effect 

 

 

The tendency of the peak sensitivity of the human eye to shift toward the blue  end of the spectrum at low illumination levels. It can affect visual estimates  of variable stars when using comparison stars of different colors, especially  if one of the stars is red.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

That's the one. The example I was told was that when it was first noticed/studied that (I assume) Mr. Purkinje noticed one very early morning that red flowers in his garden seemed muted while the blue ones seemer brighter.

[Nate Yolles]

I agree with David, even though a colored night is a convention, I like to somehow make night different from day. I was actually just thinking about this yesterday while watching "Grease" there's an interior night scene by a window where white light is hitting the tree outside and I thought it kind of looked like day, most likely because the tree was way too hot. Anyways for night I've used white light, I've used half blue, full blue, doubled full blue, and I enjoy a little green in it. I've seen this blue-green 241 used on a music video, my favorite is Steel Blue and on this last feature I gaffed we even used special lavender as moon light. I do like green in night and in addition to using a blue-green moonllight, I'll use specials with extra green to hit specific parts of the frame.

[DavidSloan]

I think that music video look is definitely finding its way into big Hollywood features and green is a very common color in contemporary music videos. I just saw this rap music video last night with 50 cent and The Game, directed by non other then Mr.Hype Williams. Green, amongst other colors, was a big theme in the video. Why not? try something else for a change...I never liked blue anyway. I think the green/blue combo really works well...even Cyan is interesting. You can sell any color as night, it's not the color its all in the lighting and the amount of fill.

[Laurent Andrieux]

Blue has defenetly a good reason for being used for nights... (the Purkinje effect)

 

Green has had a bad reputation on sets for years, so it wasn't used much before... May be using it is a way of doing something "new".

 

The sort of Cyan dominante that has been seen these last years is certainly of interest, but I think the process is totatly different according to the "day" or "night" effect.

 

I find Cyan interesting for days and blue interesting for nights, myself.

[Ben Schwartz]

Sorry for coming onto this thread so late...

 

Does anyone know how Russell Boyd achieved his moonlight in Master & Commander? I really liked the look of it. I know he used balloon lights. I seem to recall a greenish cast to the night scenes, in particular the scene where the officer drowns himself with the cannonball...the water appeared quite green as he sank into the depths below.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I've added some slight green to HMI's to get that blur-green look at times. I think it looks quite good. I happen to think mercury vapor looks great, so that's the color I try to emulate. To bad there isn't much mercury vapor streetlights left - they're all changing them to sodium.

[David Mullen ASC]

Here's a shot from the "Shadowboxer" shoot in the parking lot of Pat's Steaks in Philadelphia where I used an HMI with Full Plus Green to create a mercury-vapor streetlamp overhead effect. In this photo, the crane has been swung away to light the background and I'm lighting someone sitting in the car with a Kinoflo (daylight plus Full Plus Green) through a frame of Full Grid on the windshield. But as you can see, the real streetlamps are sodium-vapor.

 

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I'm curious as to why you need that enormous condor and that even more enormous HMI to simulate a 200W HTI streetlamp - what was the stock? Sorry, I'm sure you've mentioned that before.

 

What's with all the flaggage on the left?

 

Is the little thingsy a dedo?

 

Phil '20 questions' Rhodes

[David Mullen ASC]

Actually the wide-angle of the digital camera makes the crane look taller...

 

It's like a 40' Condor, which is on the small side actually, just high enough to be parked off-camera to one side and arm over and above the parking lot just above the frame. I think it was a 4K HMI PAR pointed downwards.

 

Because of the diagonal reach of the crane arm for the master, it really only got maybe 25' in the air. If I were going for a big HMI backlight instead, I'd have needed an 80' Condor to get above the frameline because it would be parked in the distance, not to one side. But it was nice to light a street was dead above in a pool of light -- it looked a lot more natural.

 

If you ever get to Pat's Steaks in Philly, you'll see it's very lit-up with fluorescents, and Geno's Steaks in the background is even brighter. Under the awning, it was like f/5.6 at 400 ASA (Fuji F-500T) in available light! So I had to light the parking area across the way to an f/4.0-5.6 split more or less to balance with the storefront.

 

As for the light coming through the front windshield, because it was softened by a 4'x4' frame leaning against the glass, so to reduce the spill into the background and into the camera lens, I had to box in the light on both sides with 4'x4' floppies, sort of tedious because of the angle of the windshield & frame (I probably should have lived with a slightly less soft light and mounted the frame vertically on the hood.)

 

This angle is actually a tight reverse of the wide master shot, so the light on the crane that lit the car from above has been swung over to light the distant street corner instead, since I was only seeing the inside of the car. But since I now lost the hot top light over the car, I used a Dedo with Full Blue / Full Plus Green on a arm to put some toplight on the window sill of the car. I also had a tungsten backlight on the person in the car so that you'd have a warm reference among all the blue-green light. The flos in Pat's Steaks, by the way, were Cool Whites so overall the scene was shot deliberately very cyan-ish.