Shooting City Scape Sequence into Night

[finklefilms]

Hi,

The opening sequence of my new film is a montage of shots showing the various textures of the city. It takes place in a highly smoggy Asian metropolis so it's really hard to get crisp clean shots. The sequence starts at sundown and transitions into night as the city lights up.

Any suggestions for shooting city scapes at night? Any advice on shooting during the day and making it look like sundown? Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[puredrifting]

To me, I think you should throw in a little timelapse. The 2fps frame rate hack with the 350d shutter gies an interesting look. I have been shooting sunrise and sunset cityscapes of LA for a project for the past few weeks. I also shot 48fps handheld riding a train into downtown. Beautiful orange/gold backlight of downtown LA with palm trees and the lights in the skyscrapers flickering on.

I have also been shooting car mount cameras facing up toward the skyscrapers at sunset with a fisheye lens, looks mighty cool. Shoot some ultra closeups, slow motion, fast motion, timelapse, smeary shutter, rack focus on signs, neon, rain, etc. To me, the amazing thing about large cities are that there are so many things going on all at once. Your montage needs to compare and contrast that with many various different styles.

Did you look at Philip Blooms amazing London footage? http://www.philipbloom.net/
Click on the page at the top that is labeled "EX-1 and Letus Extreme" for some really nice-looking cityscape.

Choose a color palette, shoot a lot and edit well and you will have something of beauty.

Dan