Day for Night on B&W footage?

awelgraven

awelgraven

Well-known member
I'm shooting a music video in a few months that's set at night. The director wants it to be black and white. Any suggestions on how to do this?

We're on a limited budget, so we'll probably have about 2500 watts of light to work with, so I'm wondering if it's going to be more effective to shoot during the day (provided there's a convincing way to do Day for Night in black and white)

Or is lighting it at night going to be far superior? And if so... any pointers :p

Thanks for any help.
 
Night for Night is the most convincing, but it does not sound as if you have the lighting equipment
to attempt night for night. So.....
When shooting day for night, it's important to have clear sunlight. The sun effectively becomes the moon.
You'll need to compose your shots so that the sun strikes your subject at about 120 degrees from the lens
position, creating a cross backlight. You must also reduce the brightness of the sky so that it is acceptable
as night(it doesn't have to be totally black). You can use a polarizer if the sky is very blue. You can also use
a graduated ND to darken the sky. If it turns out the sky is still too bright, you can use a higher camera angle
to eliminate the sky completely. You'll need to use ND filters so that you can shoot with an open lens, having
a shallow depth of field. The exposure should be under- about 1 1/2 - 2 stops. Basically, you want a back or
crosslit forground with a dark background, and a shallow depth of field. It's best to do a test
run of the effect you intend to use, if you can.
When using B&W film, a cinematographer may use a yellow or a red filter to darken the sky. Not sure if this
would work with video converted to B&W. The red filter(with B&W film) will alter any red pigment-say the lips of
the actor as well and makes skin look very light, so the polarizer or graduated ND may be the best.
 
bruce southerland said:
When using B&W film, a cinematographer may use a yellow or a red filter to darken the sky. Not sure if this
would work with video converted to B&W. The red filter(with B&W film) will alter any red pigment-say the lips of
the actor as well and makes skin look very light, so the polarizer or graduated ND may be the best.
Click to expand...

You can use the Channel Mixer (or equivalent) of Premiere to get monochrome, and 'mix' with an eye to emulate the B&W filter effects, such as a No. 15 yellow
or No. 25 Wratten filter.

The only B&W filter I ever used was a 25... But event rarely...
 
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