night filming

E

enrico

Well-known member
I live in Toronto and want to shoot the skyline city lights at night as an extreme long shot overlooking the city. Is this possible with the camera?
 
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Yep. Try it and show us your results. You might do better to set it at a slow shutter speed to get more light in (esp if you're gonna do 24p), and then you can do that cliche'd warp-speed fast motion effect in post.
 
Thanks, I'll try that. I am shooting in 24p advanced, and actually, the scene I'm prepping for is to simulate a power out (blackout) over the city from the lit skyline at night. Any suggestions about how to create that?
 
aftereffects should be of good resource. you can garbage matt over each window/light, and then tint the picture to get rid of the street light glow.
 
With JUST FCP? That'd be tough. If the shot is static, you could use Photoshop to 'paint' some new layers overtop of the lights, and then bring those layers into FCP.
 
FCP has a 3-way color corrector. The bottom of the tool is a Limiter. It is hidden at first, you have to pull it down to see it. If all of the lights you want to 'dim' are relatively the same color in your footage, you can use the 'Limiter' to constrict the color range for the 3-way corrector. There's even an eyedropper tool to point to the color range you want in your footage. Then, slide the desaturate slider down until your 'blackout' looks real! Or use the color corrector for whites, etc. to darken the whites. It will all be limited to the range you specify in the LIMITER!
 
There's a great book of tips and shortcuts called "Final Cut Pro: On the Spot" by Richard Harrington. It's full of stuff like that.
 
Try these settings for shooting in the city at night:

Detail -3
Chroma Level -3
Chroma Phase -3
Color Temp -4
Master Ped -4
A. Iris - zero
Gamma - Cinelike
Skin tone - off
MAtrix - Cinelike
Thin
24p

I have shot some stuff in and around Philly at night with those settings
 
thanks for the details! I'll be trying them out this weekend...and I actually have that book, On The Spot...I should check it out. Is it also possible to shoot stars as such, with any good resolution?
 
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