Shooting day for night?

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pirate40

Well-known member
I have an outdoor scene we are shooting this weekend, and can't get everyone's schedule arranged to do it in the evening. It takes place in a park, it is a very short scene of two men sneaking across the park, stealing the volleyball net and running away.

We are using a DVX100a, I know I can adjust the iris and use ND filters, but is there any other tips that might help us make this look it's best. This is not the way I wanted to do it, but looks like we may not have a choice.

We are shooting an adventure comedy, if that helps. Not sure if it will be shaded or in the bright sunlight. I plan to do some practice on Wednesday and Friday so any advice would be helpful.
 
Day for night can look very convincing if done right. 30 days of night was shot during the day if you have ever seen it.

I would check out videocopilot.net they have a great tutorial on how to make it look good. Just look around online for day for night tutorials and test it out.

I'm about wrap a feature where I have to do same thing so I'm with you. But I would not do anything in camera, make sure your image is right there then adjust everything else in post. I'm not an expert, but it may help.
 
Thanks Richard

Thanks Richard

I'm so caught up in shooting, I forgot all about post, I will check out the link you posted. By the way, I am editing with vegas pro 8.
 
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You can use the d4n effect that Vegas comes with, then tweak it from there. It looks pretty good. One of the things to keep in mind while shooting though is to keep the sky out of the frame.
 
I have the same scenario coming up... I'm shooting a pilot series coming in 2 weeks. The way I would do it is to use the power of the sun as backlight and reflect light back for key or fill. If background is blown out add a black screen directly behind the subject, just make sure that the screen gets blurry. And if you need to have a little of the sky in the shot just make sure you use a soft edge graduating ND filter as to not blow out the sky when exposing for subjects. Then bring it down in post.. Hope that helps.
 
Thanks El Director, but I'm afraid I'm a little new to the editing software. Could you explain how I get to the d4n effect and I can probably figure it out from there.
 
I did it just this Saturday. Here's what I did:

Used hard lighting, slightly under-exposed, then in post, pushed everything towards a dark blue. If you have a practicals in your footage, I don't recommend my color correction technique, cause then it will make it blue, in that cause, push the blacks toward blue and pull the highlights in the opposite direction until skin tones look right.
 
It's in the "color curves" section of your video effects. I believe the actual effect is just called night.
Just drag, drop, and tweak!
 
Thanks everyone, I'm feeling better about the shoot already. I played with the n4d on Vegas and think I can make it look alright. Still not the way I wanted to do it, but that's life as an indie film maker. Also thanks to this site for allowing me to gain the knowledge of people more experienced then myself.
 
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