Exposure for shooting at night...?

[Cephalectomy]

Ok.
I intend to do some shooting at night for a short film i'm gonna do this summer,
I know that during the day you generally wanna expose the skin for 70-80% on the zebras, but what about at night, should I be aiming for that too, or lower, to me it seems as tho it'd be pretty hard to get the same exposure at night without making things too bright perhaps, i know i can of course just put the f-stop up to block our more light, but should i be aiming at something different for night shooting? Thanks for the help!

 

[Barry_Green]

You don't want skin at 80%, you want the brightest possible highlights to be at maybe 80%. Your overall skin tone should probably be lower, maybe at 60% or so.

Proper exposure is proper exposure. If you underexpose you'll just end up with muddy grainy footage.

 

[dudeguy37]

I agree with you generally Barry, except that I think a cover all statement of saying that the brightest things should be at 80% isn't quite right. I believe that you can still have a perfectly believable night image with small bits of the frame near or even at over-exposure, perhaps headlights on a car or a sharp reflection of the moon on a lake. Obviously, the overall frame will be much lower-key, but if you set your highlights all lower than 80 IRE it could just look like a lower constrast image.
Peace,

-Harry