Shot for night by at midday... howto?

A

AlexGg

Active member
Gents,

What is the best trick to get a pretty nice shoot in a daylight, but actually it should looks like a dark night with a stared sky which makes some cold light...
I need it shot in sunny day, b/c I need to key the sky afterward.
My only one idea is to use a dark-blue filter... and then in NLE to add proper FX.
 
If you're doing keying, you can "blow out" the sky for ease. I use a strong backlight on a subject to substitute moonlight.

Normally, I would not advise shooting the sky for the "day for night" effect.

Hope this works out!
 
I don't agree with blowout as the best solution, only because it makes for rough edges that don't look right since the window frames will have excess lighting on them as well.

I'd go with greenscreen and then shoot the same window at night.
 
I am not paying an attention on the sky keying, etc - I am wondering about how to shot, what sort of filters or without them I have to use? Do you have any tips how to apply FX?
 
Ok, do you have any recommendations how-to do the night shot with dvx100a? Settings, etc. Please.
 
How to shoot at night? Is that what you're asking in your last post? LOTS of light and good color correction in post. Drop the master ped. in the DVX while shooting and again, lots of light.
 
Walter_Graff said:
show me a diagram?
Click to expand...
:thumbsup:
Walter
I am in full agreement on the fact that to GO the old film with blue filter idea wont work here (due to codec limitations ) in the dvx100a .
What if the gentleman who asked does the following .
1)Good Nd filtration just short of black supression.
2)Master ped increase or not ? TEST
3)Chose time of day with good side or cross light and
4)Keep the Sun OUT OF THE SHOT
5)Get the blue effect in his chosen NLE.....call it" a day "
that is" a day for night .. "
?????????
I think there is a possiblity here with the use of a good eye and meticulous location scouting and video testing on location .
Your feedback and advise is always appreciated .
Bruce
:thumbsup:
 
You can do day for night, but only in overcast situations or at magic hour, otherwise you get too harsh a light and contrast that won't look right as night. If the shot is tight enough you can fly a 20x20 silk overhead. Most people that shoot day for night avoid the sky alltogether.

One of your biggest problems with shooting day for night is that if there is any light in the scene it won't look right, for example a flashlight coming through the forrest is impossible to achieve during day.

you're best off shooting at night if you need night sky, catch is you need a lot of lights and skill to shoot night, not to mention power source.

the other option is to have insanely good post guy that can composite or rotoscope you sky - expensive and time consuming.

too many people in begining stages of filmmaking waste too much time trying to figure out how to do something they should never be trying to do in the first place. In the low budget world you should start with rewriting the script into a cost effect and practical shoot based on the ability of you production budget.
 
The easiest way to shoot day for night, is to shoot at 1 to 3 stops underexposed, either through the use of the F-Stop, or by using Neutral Density filters. I would suggest using a .9 ND so that you can retain a narrow Depth of Field. This is key, as most night scenes in any movie that you see have narrow DoF because lighting night on 35mm, even with tons of light, is not easy. I would suggest either doing you color work in your NLE system or taking it to a profession post production house and supervising a color timing session. I've successfully done day for night in five or six films, some on MiniDV, some on Super16 and mostly on 35mm. The reason I suggest playing with the color in post is that MiniDV color is not as forgiving as Film, and if you over saturate your image with blue, it will look terrible when you dump it into the digital format. I've seen this happen with scenes that were lit with only one color of gel, and I can only image that it would be even worse with filtration. If you are confidant that your post people can swap out your sky for you, than you are as good as gold, but I would suggest staying away from using any mist of soft effects filters - these will give you some glow at the edge of your skyline that would not exist at night. If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask.
 
If you don't plan on moving the camera durring the shot, you could always creat a matte painting in Adobe Photo Shop. :)

Just make sure you have even lighting on your Original Plate!
 
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