Shooting Day for Night

Chris Messineo

Chris Messineo

Veteran
I need to learn how to shoot "Day for Night" effectively.

I have no idea how to begin.

Is this something that is done in post?

I assume there are things I can do during shooting that will make this much more effective.

I would appreciate any tips.

Thanks,

Chris
 
A couple tips (you'll do the effect in post):

1. Don't ever let the sky show up in your shot. It'll be a dead giveaway.

2. I guess backlighting your subject helps a great deal.
 
Also, most city/suburban settings will have have shadows going everywhichway from multiple light sources (the Moon, streetlamps, windows, etc), rather than the usual single shadow from the Sun.

Dan
 
We will be shooting most of our day for night in the woods, so the sky should be fairly obscured.

Any special filters or such we should consider using?
 
CMessineo said:
Any special filters or such we should consider using?
Click to expand...
Filter dude, here.
Schneider 4x4 'Day For Night' is pretty nice. I've used one, but I don't own one.

On the post side of things, the free Day For Night plug in by River Rock Studios is superb (FCP-only).
 
Thing to avoid is building exteriors. Reason is homes/ businesses/ downtowns all have lights on at night you can see through the windows. Not particularly relevant for shooting the woods, but it's a dead giveaway of dfn to my eyes. Skies are okay, in moderation. Hard shadows are not, of course. Good luck... and your stuff always impresses me, dude. :)
 
I think it is best to colour correct for day-for-night in post. Give the footage a bit of a blue tint and take down the exposure carefully...ie make sure you can still see what is going on remembering every TV is set up differently.

HOWEVER, when shooting, I would still underexpose slightly, and use zebra pattern to ensure you do not clip any highlights. Clipped highlights can not be realistically dimmed in post. As said above, avoid shooting the sky and any direct light source. I often drop in the odd shot with a superimosed nightsky, to sell the fact that it is at night.

IMO overcast conditions are the best to shoot in. Sunlight makes things very tricky with highlights and it tends to look fake. I also once did some day for night where CGI car headlights were added, and that also helps to sell it if possible. Things like that can get very tricky though.
 
Heres a tip: Wait till it gets night time.


I've yet to see some believeable looking day for night footage! So far, I'm not impressed at all.

word!
 
I've found that setting up a few tungsten lights, gelled blue, for general illumination not only looks better, but is a lot easier than doing a DFN effect in post. And it requires very little skill and time to set up, if you just want a general illumination (which is the effect a Day for Night would give, anyways).

Day for Night scenes always end up looking like "good Day-for-Night scenes", and not "good Night scenes".
 
BLUESPIDER said:
Heres a tip: Wait till it gets night time.


I've yet to see some believeable looking day for night footage! So far, I'm not impressed at all.

word!
Click to expand...


There is some quite good stuff in modern films. Check out Troy and Castaway. They actually look more like nighttime does than lighting scenes at night... IMO
 
DBOZ:

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/download/step2.asp?DID=471

This is a separate download from Sony of the "preset manager", It's a piece of software that lets you install presets into Vegas.

You install the manager, then run it, choose the preset you would like to install to your system....done.

This lets people share effects that they have made. You can save chains of effects into "packages", and share them with anyone who runs Vegas.


Hope that helps a little.

trypto
 
In the super-8 days, we did night scenes (for horror shorts -- usually involving zombies) with a blue filter over the lens (tungsten to daylight film conversion filter which came with the camera).

The room would be brightly and evenly lit, and a single VERY BRIGHT light (1000W -- which back in the mid '80's was as powerful as you could get) shining through the window to simulate the moon.

The camera would be stopped down -- very difficult in Super-8 without a light-meter. I had to calculate and print-up a bunch of charts. The shot should look dark, but you should still be able to see everything. The "moonlight" served to reinforce the illusion by providing highlights for a high-contrast look.

These shots looked excellent. We also did outdoor day-for-night with the same blue filter over the lens, and smoke from a bonfire to simulate mist with the same excellent results.
 
I would suggest to go shooting without any filter.
I assume you are not able to bring artificial lighting in the woods.

as somebody said, the key to this effect is backlight. therefore i would try to use the sun as a mere backlight and underexpose until the background on screen gets dark enough. if in this way even the actors get too dark use a reflecting panel to keep their faces a little lit (not too much since your key light is the backlight).

blue filter may help tp give the idea.

Andrea
 
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