RED day for night

Philipp Kunzli · June 11, 2010

Hello Everybody

I'm starting on July 4 with a 10 Day shoot. The whole movie plays outdoor at night. Most of the scenes are shot in a old town in Switzerland.

But some parts on a wide field in the Alps and in the forest.

I must admit I haven't done any day for night yet. We do have to possibility to move some days to shoot on a day with overcast.

I'm looking for some recommendations, on what I should keep my eyes, what seams important to you guys and anything spacial shooting day for night on the RED one.

Thank you guys a lot.

I attached a scouting pic to get an Idea.

Bruce Greene · June 12, 2010

Hello Everybody

I'm starting on July 4 with a 10 Day shoot. The whole movie plays outdoor at night. Most of the scenes are shot in a old town in Switzerland.

But some parts on a wide field in the Alps and in the forest.

I must admit I haven't done any day for night yet. We do have to possibility to move some days to shoot on a day with overcast.

I'm looking for some recommendations, on what I should keep my eyes, what seams important to you guys and anything spacial shooting day for night on the RED one.

Thank you guys a lot.

I attached a scouting pic to get an Idea.

I think this is a job for digital post production /efx work. I think you should really do some tests first, especially if you'll be shooting actors day for night on a large field. You should experiment with different angles of sunlight and amounts of fill light (you can do this with a digital still camera if you'd like) and then take the image(s) into photoshop and use only those tools which would apply to a moving image. ie. painting by hand individual frames should be avoided.

A few things to keep in mind:

1. A bright sky is obviously daytime, so you will want to avoid sky in your shots, or shoot in a way that it can be selected and darkened or replaced. An actor in front of a clear blue sky should be easy to mask (like blue screen compositing), but combine bright sky through trees and and intersecting actor and watch out. It will be hard to fix.

2. seeing your example photo, you'll want to think carefully about bright sky reflecting in water surrounded by grass as well as selecting the sky reflection might become very labor intensive.

I've one shot on my website 2/3 into this clip: http://brucealangreene.com/dancingtheater.html that has a day for night desert shot that I "fixed" in photoshop myself :)

I've also done a little work to your sample (took about 10 minutes) where I added a graduated ND to your sky, darkened your sky reflections, added a layer of monochrome blue image overall, tweaked the overall contrast and gamma, and threw in a few stars in the sky...But remember, if actors images had intersected the trees and bright sky, this would not have worked so easily in your example.