Filter to make day look night

abzeleney

abzeleney

Active member
I know you can mess with the white balance, I thought I would get that out irst. I plan on shooting a small fight soon, but worried about light. I was thinkng about shooting in the day, and changing/dding effects to make it seam more grungy with a night look.

If I were to white balance on soft blue or red, would that really mess with flesh tone, and general colours on faces. The sky shouldn't be in the shot at all, but one can never be sure untill production starts.

I am getting FCP in a few weeks, so I just want to know what I am capable of doing before I begin shooting.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts towards this.

Andrei
 
Is this an exterior or an interior?

First, don't rely on FCP to this effect for you. I've tried it. It's much easier to get decent results by getting the effect in camera. What you want to do is done all the time, but the key to pulling it off is your lighting choices.

I assume that, because you say you're worried about light, that you plan on shooting this with no extra lighting. You're going to need some extra lighting. Figure out a realistic source for light at night (car headlight, streetlight, etc) and buy some cheap work lights. You can also use the lights as motivated sources not present during the day, such as street or porch lights, which will help sell the scene as being shot at night.

I wouldn't go to crazy with the white balance. Just balance it on whatever light you're going to use, then maybe adjust the color temperature and chroma level in the camera to get the color to look like night. I would bring the chroma all the way down and color temp to +4 after white balancing.

Sorry this doesn't really tell you anything in regards to FCP. You could always adjust the levels (bring down the highs) and shift the midrange hue (to something blue-ish) using the 3-way color corrector. You could apply multiple color corrections, and limit one of them using the eyedropper, etc. But these tools should be used for minor alterations. Turning day into night is not one.
 
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I would try and do it in the camera, but I have never shot with the AG-DVX100b. I plan on testing it out for an hour or 2 before I start shooting with it, to see what effects I can pull off. I was planning on using 250 watt work lights and bouncing them off a white bristal board to creat some nice fill.

Maybe someone could offer waht suggestions I should use for the camera?
Or another alternative.
I could shoot at night, but I'm not sure if my schedule will allow that.

Andrei
 
ohhh, sh*t! why haven't I read this topic till now? On Sunday I shot an exterior during the day, hoping to obtein something in FCP (day for night I mean)... what should I do now? any suggestions?
 
OmaR said:
ohhh, sh*t! why haven't I read this topic till now? On Sunday I shot an exterior during the day, hoping to obtein something in FCP (day for night I mean)... what should I do now? any suggestions?
Click to expand...

I think I may just end up shooting at night and force the crew to stay up late, Or I may make the camera seem blue, to give at darker effect; I jsut don't know if it will flow with the video, I have to start to thinking
 
What kind of shots will be in this scene? What is the location like?

When I read your first post, I envisioned an exterior shot, out in the open, with plenty of angles where the absence of night would be obvious.

However, if you were to shoot in an area like a parking garage, you might be able to pull it off.

But still, make things easy on yourself. If you want a night shot, the simplest solution would be to shoot it at night.
 
I think CHV has a night for day plug-in that works really nice.

I've done a lot of camp fire type chat shots. I like to get them late evening, when there's enough daylight to balance it all out. White balance as normal, do my color grading in FCP, it's very powerful (if you actually take the time to learn it).

If the fire is the right size, it'll give you really nice light. But you will want to suppliment it, don't rely on it by itself.

I'm assuming that you're not building fires indoors...
 
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