F55: "day for night" frame grab - short war film

starcentral

starcentral

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It's going to be a long while until before any footage is even out for this project I DP'd since its going directly to film festival circuit, for now all I can do is share some frames from it. Right now its in editing but once it gets through grading I'll have more frames to post.

Here is a frame from the opening scene shot in the middle of the daytime using pretty normal exposure and the rest done in Adobe After Effects. This is not final, but in progress of what I've been working on.

 
Was there any particular reason for opting for day for night rather than lighting the scene at night?
 
Hi Grug, there were a couple reasons mainly we only had the actors during the day at a pretty remote location, also the entire film was going to be further processed for "night" look anyway so what was one more scene to play around with. :happy: Also there are plans to pull a moon into the shot as well.

I won't lie. I'm having some hard time to figure out the right balance between too dark and too bright. Especially when I switch from PC to MAC and MAC's just seem to have darker gamma to begin with so its been a bit trying!

If anyone is reading this, let me know which ones look "good" to you. Cheers.


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Here is the original:

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Hi Liam, thanks for taking a peek. I can tame down the stars for sure and make a larger percentage fainter, or reduce the number of them all together, etc..

The video version of this looks pretty sweet and does help to detract from all the "fakeness" going on. The shot is a low jib shot that pans towards the soldiers walking into the frame and towards the barn.

Were any of these images too dark to view on your monitor? Particularly the first one on post #4?

Cheers,
 
The second shot looks the most realistic of the three, if you are going to put a moon in there. The stars do need to be tweaked though. Stars are at different brightness levels, all of those in the shot are the same brightness. I also think the brightness behind the barn is too bright, unless there is a street light back there.
 
First one is too bright for me. Other point is that night is NOT blue, that's a Hollywood convention from the early days of colour.

Go outside on a clear night with little artificial light, let your eyes become accustomed, and you won't see the conventional "blueness". You'll actually see it looks "cold" (not blue), no details in the shadows, and very little colour at all.

A few weeks ago I did a lot of timelapse photography at night, with each exposure several seconds. What surprised me was how the photographs revealed bright colours that just weren't obvious to the naked eye. It's because in low light levels the eye only uses the rod receptors, not the cones which are used for colour perception.

I agree the second is probably best of the three, but think it would be far better still by lowering the saturation quite a lot. Make it look "cold" rather than blue.
 
The second one is definitely the pick of the bunch IMO.

I'd agree with pulling out some of the blue from it (keeping a little of the green from the grass and bushes). I also think the illumination of the sky would look a little more realistic if it were more evenly balanced from edge to edge, the vignette is helpful in making the barn stand out, but I think it's a little stronger than you need.
 
I appreciate all the feedback and suggestions. This is where its heading now but I still definitely want to bring some green back into the foreground, its just makes it look a bit more real instead of monochromatic.

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Take the blue out of the sky, shift the brighter parts of the foreground less blue and more toward the moon color
 
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