Lighting night scenes? (help / advice needed)

Randall_Oelerich

Randall_Oelerich

Veteran
I am writing an indie horror, many scenes would work best shot at night. Most of the night shots would be at a farm, farmhouse, inside and outside the farmhouse and barn, woods behind the farmhouse, maybe a few in the adjacent cornfield but right near the house/barn meaning AC power would be available for the lighting with long extension cords. Or of course I could shoot day for night. But if I wanted to shoot and light night scenes, can anybody explain how costly this would be, what equipment would be needed, how it is done? Is there a good book or thread on this?

Related-- doing day for night shots inside the farmhouse, how would I create the illusion of it being night outside when a window is in the scene, or an actor is looking out the window? Just put black whatever over the outside of the window pane? Greenscreen the window so I could make it black or even GS some scenery over the window?


FWIW I just did try searching for threads on this here at dvxuser but got server errors returned (Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 320288 bytes) in /home/dvxuser/public_html/V6/search.php on line 1160).
randall
 
Doing night for night is expensive. Even for the Hollywood guys. To make it convincing, you've got to get a light up in the sky at an angle similar to moonlight. That's about 70-80 degrees. So you're either going to be floating a balloon or on some tall stands (20-25ft). And trying to build up enough light level in a cornfield with 25' high instruments is NO JOKE. Do the photometrics on that. If *I* was trying to do it, and be convincing, I'd be looking at probably $1k a day in rentals for the lights, stands, grip, and generator. And that's for a modest setup.

As for doing day for night from inside, the trick is lighting ratios. You want inside to be a LOT brighter than outside, just like in real life. So you can bring the window levels down with ND, mesh, organza, or other fabrics. You can greenscreen it also if you wan to, but I wouldn't go that route unless you have sophisticated tools and/or a static camera.

I've done some day for night work, and it's not easy to get right. With practice, and patience, you can get some good looks though.
 
Do day for night. When shooing inside, put scrims or ND on the windows and make it as dark as possible. I might even put a blue gel too to make the outsider bluer than inside (giving the idea of night) When shooting outside, underexpose so there are no highlights. Be careful on how you see the sky. Thats where it would give the trick away.

Take a look at this: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=212913
 
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Thanks. That info is going to help me seriously rethink my scenes, sluglines, go more for daylight rather than night. Even overcast twilight and dusk would be better than night, and do day for night. My indie horror is slasher, and that makes me think of Scream where most of the scenes were daylight. I just need to be strategic for the storyline, scenes.
 
Joe Calabrese said:
Do day for night. When shooing inside, put scrims or ND on the windows and make it as dark as possible. I might even put a blue gel too to make the outsider bluer than inside (giving the idea of night) When shooting outside, underexpose so there are no highlights. Be careful on how you see the sky. Thats where it would give the trick away.

Take a look at this: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=212913
Click to expand...


Great tips and suggestions, thank you so much.
:) randall
 
get a hard light, and use backlight, 3/4 rim light, sidelight, and silouette ( the background is lit, not the subject) as much as you can, For example:

In your day interiors, if you shoot towards and --expose for the brightness outside---, the camera will be forced to leave the inside dark. You can get great silloutte and near-siloutte (contre-jour) effects this way; look at this scene from the Godfather- Its blazing light outside and yet everyones in silo.... (they called it backlighting, - theyre wrong- dont get confused not the same as hittiing the subject with light)

http://www.depauw.edu/acad/film/Dictionary.asp

you can do this outside under trees or other shade as well, exageratting the darkness of the shade.

writing some scenes for day sounds like an option, but dont be eager to throw away night, which is vital for horror movies.

It sounds like you should also try to shoot night time interiors when you can, closing blinds, etc. and using indoor (restricted) lighting to make it "night". Back/rim light to emulate moonlight coming from a window (blue), or light from below to emulate a low lamp (good for horror).

Light DIRECTION is a magical tool....

Add day-for-night to these techniques, and you got a lil library of options....
 
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