Very difficult day-for-night shots

M

Mike@AF

Veteran
I have some shots that I need to make look like they're at night. These were shot during magic hour, but the background is way too bright. Now I know I should shoot these with the background darker than the foreground next time.

I've tried multiple color correcting filters on top of each other with keying and get something somewhat decent, but it's still not good enough. Here is a link to one of the original shots. One of the issues with this shot is dark spots showing below her eyes and on her chin when she turns toward the camera. One thing I've been able to do in the timeline to help with this is scale the shot so I can cut out the van in the background behind her head.

http://www.ascentiafilms.com/ccshot1.mov

Can anyone help me with this color correction for day-for-night? Thanks!


-Mike
 
There is a whole chapter on this in the "Apple Pro Training Series; Encyclopedia Of Color Correction". You really need to get the book. It shows various ways to do this treatment professionally with really nice results. It's not just one simple trick.
 
I already have that book and it did help with basic color correcting, but no with something like this. This is a very extreme case of day-for-night.

-Mike
 
flmmkr said:
This is a very extreme case of day-for-night.
Click to expand...

To me that would indiciate you might want to mask out sections of the frame and actually do this whole thing in pieces rather than one blanket effect. Also, how much play did you give to blending modes (screen, overlay, etc.)? I just messed around with a couple of Joe's filters on it and some composite modes and seemed to be okay. But really not sure of what "acceptable" vs "good" etc is for you. For amazing I'd definitely do it in pieces with masks and such, and maybe use a compositing application. Anyway, good luck.

cheers.
 
VaricamLife said:
To me that would indiciate you might want to mask out sections of the frame and actually do this whole thing in pieces rather than one blanket effect. Also, how much play did you give to blending modes (screen, overlay, etc.)? I just messed around with a couple of Joe's filters on it and some composite modes and seemed to be okay. But really not sure of what "acceptable" vs "good" etc is for you. For amazing I'd definitely do it in pieces with masks and such, and maybe use a compositing application. Anyway, good luck.

cheers.
Click to expand...

Where I'm having the most trouble is the edge of the face when she's facing forward. The get that edge the best I can it create black spots on her face. How can I make it so those black spots don't show? I thought of doing it in section and have that part of the frame with feathering, but when she turns her head to look at the camera you can tell there a break in the frame.

Which Joe's filter should I be using for this? Which composite modes did you use? I'm new to compositing and not totally sure how it all works. Thanks!


-Mike
 
Nattress filters have two DAY FOR NIGHT plugins...film effects I believe. Demo available for download too. Magic Bullet does too, but Nattress is cheaper and looks fine.
 
Shane Ross said:
Nattress filters have two DAY FOR NIGHT plugins...film effects I believe. Demo available for download too. Magic Bullet does too, but Nattress is cheaper and looks fine.
Click to expand...

I checked out the Natress site and don't see any day-for-night plugins. Which plugins are they because there's two packages? Would I be better off doing this in FCP or in Shake? I have Shake, but find the color correction and keying within Shake to be very difficult right now because I haven't spent the time to learn it yet.

-Mike
 
Actually, I am now looking at Colorista. Seems that it's pretty powerful with the ability to correct only certain areas of the frame and you can use multiple instances. Will that work for this?
 
Colorista will work. So will the built in 3-way corrector. But, you need to know what do to and futz around a bit. I suggested the Nattress filters because they are preset, and you just need to make small adjustments.

FILM EFFECTS...that is the package you need.
 
I just spent over 6 hours fiddling with the 3-way color corrector and even tried Shake and have had no luck getting the results I'm looking for. The problem I'm running into is the background is too bright. Doing a normal day-for-night process on it (I've done this with many other shots in the movie) produced an image that doesn't look like night because the background is so bright. Also the colors are too similar to her face, so when I try any kind of limiting or keying I end up affecting her face and hair also. To solve this I've tried stacking about 10 copies of the clip on top of each other and cropping them so only various parts are affected by the color corrector 3-way, but I get a lot of pixel moving about when she moves. The keying isn't exact enough.

I downloaded the Nattress Film Effects demo and it doesn't seem to do much better. I've never used it before, and I must say I am impressed by what it can do just from the one day-for-night preset options, but it doesn't seem to be solving my problem.

Does anyone know of any way I can make the background darker than the foreground? That's all I need to do and then I can finish the day-for-night color grading and move on.

Thanks for all the help you guys have offered so far.


-Mike
 
flmmkr said:
I have some shots that I need to make look like they're at night. These were shot during magic hour, but the background is way too bright. Now I know I should shoot these with the background darker than the foreground next time.

I've tried multiple color correcting filters on top of each other with keying and get something somewhat decent, but it's still not good enough. Here is a link to one of the original shots. One of the issues with this shot is dark spots showing below her eyes and on her chin when she turns toward the camera. One thing I've been able to do in the timeline to help with this is scale the shot so I can cut out the van in the background behind her head.

http://www.ascentiafilms.com/ccshot1.mov

Can anyone help me with this color correction for day-for-night? Thanks!


-Mike
Click to expand...
you can goto photoshop and make a masked alpha channel and make the right night u want, bring the down 10 to 20 precent exort it as a alpha channel into you editing timeline on a upper track over your clip then adjust the lower clip with a little more exert for midtown.use a film dissolve from day to night clips or vesversa! or you can do it in after effects
 
I had a go straight through FCP using mattes. Only had a minute or two. Came off a little too dark, but with a layer adjustments could be better. Buggest area of issue in mine is the hair colour, its hard to bring it down comparative to other things, makes the light seem unnatural. Seriously you might need to consider AE or shake to get this perfect.

1173701089.jpg
 
Thanks for the advice and help everyone. I didn't sleep at all last night and worked on it for about 16 hours straight between Shake and FCP for all the various shots in this scene. It's not perfect, but I think it works really well. I used a combination of 6 copies of the clip stacked up in the timeline cropped at different parts of the frame to hide the bad keying areas. Then I used a combination of 3 or 4 Color Corrector 3-way filters and Colorista on each instance. There was A LOT of trial and error.

Here's a clip if you'd like to see what I was able to do: http://www.ascentiafilms.com/dfnshot.mov As you'll see I was going for a real night look, plus I had to make it darker in order to hide all the artifacting from the keying, her movements, and her reflection on the window was causing some issues.

Fortunately the other angle was a lot easier and took only an hour or so. Again, thanks for the help and advice.


-Mike
 
I agree...looks very nightish. The halo around her face and nose almost looks like there is a car behind her with the headlights on so it actually works with the pesky green screen halo effect. Good job.
 
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