Hi,
I'm a director in pre-production of a short film and I have come up against an interesting dilemma. The film is set in and around a forest by a lake during the summer (summer feel is important). The entire film is set at night and the cast are children. No matter how much my producer and I have tried to find loop-holes in the law in terms of working with kids at night we can't really find any ways around it. the law says that the kids will have to be wrapped at 7 in the evening the latest which doesn't even give us the opportunity to extend our shoot days and working only two-three hours in the evenings after it gets dark. We don't have the budget to build a set of a forest indoors and it looks more and more like we are being forced into shooting during the day. The nighttime feel and look is crucial to the entire message of the film. The main inspiration for this film is photography of Bill Henson and that's the look we were aiming for. So I wanted to ask you for advice of how this problem could be solved. Day for night is obviously the first thing that comes to mind but it seems far from the look we're after with it's bluish tones and the lack of any blacks in the picture. Perhaps I'm wrong. The only examples of day for night I've seen look very blue, artificial and you can clearly see that it's shot during the day. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong examples (Chris Cunningham's video, Frozen; scenes out of 'The Beach' for instance). Is there no way of staying close to 'Bill Henson look' in the conditions under which we are forced to work in? If not, what would be the options? How can we stay at least close to that look and feel? Would switching to B&W help maybe?
Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.
cheers,
anastasia