Day for Night Help/Advice

aravance

aravance

Well-known member
Hey everyone,

I'm shooting an upcoming music video in which the band will be playing on an empty field in the middle of nowhere.
I would like for it to look like night time, and so I'm left with deciding whether to shoot during the day and shoot day for night, or shoot at night.

We will be shooting on the RED camera. Lights will be behind the band in frame and am planning on putting some optical flares in frame as well.

There are advantages/disadvantages to both:

Advantage to shooting during the day:
- More available light (will plan on using silks to cut down any direct sunlight)
- Ability to do a sky replacement
Disadvantage
- Depending on weather, direct sunlight could be an issue
- Not sure how clean of a sky replacement I can do

Shooting at night will give me more of the look I want, but I'm worried about having to bump up the ISO really high because of no available light except for our lights. It'll be pitch black without them.
I'm also wondering if that'll make it look more boring considering everything not lit will just blend into the surrounding darkness.

I've attached some pictures of the location.

Wanted to hear some thoughts as to what would be the best solution: shooting at day or night?

Thanks!

032.jpg 037.jpg
 
I have a few questions too, as shooting at night might not be as bad:
- What RED is it? Does it have the old sensor or the new Mysterium-X. The Mysterium-X has a native ISO of 800, compared to the RED's 320. So if it's one with the M-X sensor, you wouldn't have to worry as much about the ISO.
- What lights do you have?

But I've shot a film Day-for-night. Lots of fun. The first day the weather was completely cloudy, which really helped, but the second day we put up a shelter to avoid sunlight, as it shone through at times. If the weather is cloudy, it won't be too hard usually. But it won't look as natural as shooting during the night (but most people don't think about the "stylized" D-f-N look).
 
It will be with the RED M-X Sensor.

I figure shooting day for night would give us more options in post in terms of doing a sky replacement and making it look more stylized.
But it could also have the possibility to look terrible depending on the weather and sunlight situation.
 
Well, I'd highly recommend you do some test-shots if you can.

What lights would you have during the night?
Day-for-night is a very different look than shooting at night. Watch the day-for-night scenes in Lord of the Rings compared to Escape From New York (which was shot at night with HMI-lights) to see what I mean.
 
Day-for-night tends to work best when simulating moonlight. If the location gets lots of overcast days, then it may be worth a try.

But if you want actors surrounded by darkness, you're better off shooting it for real at night.

Either way, shoot some test footage with your camera and lights at the actual location - at various exposures, shoot a few wide shots, medium shots and close-ups, to give you all the test footage you need to fiddle with in post and see how it looks.
 
I'd agree test-test-test. If you have a cloudy location you're golden, but shooting day for night with a shifting sun on a cloudless sky is a huge pain. Since your avatar says you are based in Seattle, I'm thinking you might get lucky with the clouds!

I was never a fan of day for night, even when its done well you can tell...but the average viewer won't likely notice.
 
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