Day to Night??

petelms

petelms

Well-known member
Is it possible to change a day footage to the night? Sorry, if this is a stupid and newbie question but I'm just intrested and heard from one Making The Movie that "Yeah, we shoot this at the day time and change it later to the night..."

If this is possible, can I do it in After Effects or what do I need?

Thanks. :)
 
sure, you would just use the color corrector(s) in AE. Ive shot a couple things day for night, but the correction was done in my NLE in its color corrector. I wouldnt say you realy need AE to do that sort of thing.
 
I have read and had limited success using a blaze orange poster board and setting the white balance to that. I say "limited" because it works somewhat, but once the footage is shot, your outta luck if you don't like it. The best way to to shoot for a night scene it to find a day where there is good/heavy cloud cover. Night still produces shadows somewhat, but they are very difuse. Shoot on a clear day, and you will have hard and defined shadows which will be a dead giveaway.

Otherwise, get the best footage you can with diffuse shadowing, and tweak the hell out of it in AE. Try using differently colored solids at different blending modes (or even combinations of blending modes on multiple layers like soft light, overlay, multiply, ect), as well as altering the gamma (gray) arrow the Levels. One good way is to simply take a notpad with you and sit outside for a short time, and just write down what you see. What do the normally highlighted areas look like? What color is it? how much light is coming from behind clouds or from cities in the distance?

Another important issue is sound. Listen closely to what sounds are around you. Things are very different at night.

When I am outside at night, I have a tendency to look quickly at a new noise, because I guess instinctivly being primarily daytime animals, we tend to get startled easier and try to determine the source of the noise differently (like moving your head back and forth to use your ears to pinpoint location) than during the day. What does this mean? It means new camera/filming techniques to more accurately reflect how we truly respond to the night.

Color is always a problem, epsecially where you live. Live close to a city? You are going to have some bleed over of the cities lights adding to any lights coming from clouds. What kind of moon is it? Full moon with no clouds? Well, then you are going to have a rare instance wher hard shadows will be seen? Full moon with clouds? Well, what kind of clouds are they and how will they affect light.

Didn't mean to get into such a long winded explination, but the MOST important thing you do when shooting day for night is to get your video shot the proper way as if it were nighttime, and then color grading it later. After Effects should be the least of y our concerns. Play with some color overlays, tweak the gama in Levels or even play with Curves, use different blending modes or combos, maybe add noise to simulate low light, that's the easy part. Setting up and shooting properly in daylight is the hard part.

Hope that helps.
 
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