turn day into night?

New_Zealand

New_Zealand

Veteran
To have a clean night scene in the forest I was wondering what others do - shoot in the day and during edit give it a night look OR shoot at night?
 
I did day for night once because the director liked the look.

I haven't used the A7S, but I'd rent one with an external recorder and try that out at night with a few lights. Just kinda depends on the project (budget) and what style you want. I don't think there's a correct answer.
 
Day for night is the best results for quality, otherwise, having a lot of lights to shoot at night is the best looking solution.
I've done some test for Day-for-Night. Can be achieved without much plugins. Levels, Hue/saturation and some Curves and you're done.
 
Definitely seek out a few tutorials if you want the results to look like night. Keep the sky out of the shot, unless you plan on replacing it. The sky will be lighter than the land, which is not possible at night, where it's reversed.
 
Is there supposed to be fire or artificial light in the scene? If so, maybe shoot at night with movie lights. Otherwise, day-for-night: Underexpose 1.5 or 2 stops, with the color saturation turned way down, and maybe a slight blue tint if you like. As an amateur astronomer, I've been out in the country on a moonless night; and people are just black silhouettes against a dark gray sky glow.
BTW, in the November 2014 American Cinematographer, Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC talks about shooting night scenes for the movie "The Homesman".
 
New_Zealand said:
To have a clean night scene in the forest I was wondering what others do - shoot in the day and during edit give it a night look OR shoot at night?
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You can do it either way. Which ever way you choose, be sure to feed your sensor enough light. Shooting in the dark is the path to noise, and for some cameras I should say NOISE. Give the sensor enough light, then adjust your result in post (that is, crush the blacks, desaturate, increase contrast, color shift it blue, etc.).

A previous poster commented on the sky, and of course if you need sky in your shot, shooting during the day is problematic.
 
Shooting Day for Night you want to (as mentioned) avoid getting the sky in the frame and making sure you have a strong key light (eg. the sun). An overcast day won't give you anything that remotely resembles an actual night scene; It'll just be a mush.
The easiest solution (in terms of getting a realistic night scene) is to rent a couple of 575's and some generators and light the actual forest at night.
 
Besides keeping the sky out of the shot, it also helps to keep grass and green plants out when possible, or alter the color of them later. The green looks conspicuous at night.
 
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