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Day for Night options (I know Shane might know this one :) )
Greetings, by the titled I know most of you are thinking it’s been asked. I’ve read every article and post I could find on the form here and still have some questions.
1) My first is, “how to shoot day for night?” What specifically do I have to do, I’ve heard shooting in bright light works, I’ve also heard, shoot in the morning, dusk for long shadows and stop the iris down and add a blue effect.
Both of these suggestions seem to contradict each other. Anyone out there with real hands on experience?2) Now, considering I already have shot footage in the day time and want to change it to night time, day for night shot, what are my options? I have magic bullet, and in their bundle they have a day for night filter, but it’s not really realistic. I know there are other plug-ins but if the plug-in I already have doesn’t seem that great, and 3 way color correction doesn’t seem to get the job done, does another plug-in really serve my needs?
Thank you for any expertise and advice you might have to offer.
Sincerely,
Will Keir
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6 Replies
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hmm, you need really big lights(like, really big) to shoot day for night, so you can stop down on the camera, yet still expose faces/people correctly.
its a pretty hard feat to pull off and trick people, and it won’t save you any money….you can also mess with the white balance in the camera, try to whitebalance with different gels, and see what happens….
anyone else, i think the point i am trying to make is that it won’t save you cash at all, and just give you a big headache in editing….
i think if your really gung ho about this, shoot the shots with your actors day for night, closeups, etc, then return at nightand shoot wide shots…..just try not to make it look like batman forever nighttime…..nightime is black, not blue.
check out the movie collateral, that was all shot on HD, at night, with very ambient, small, lighting. looks fantastic, least in my opinion.
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The BEST way to do DfN is to shoot in B&W with a red filter over the lens to darken down the sky. In color, people have used any number of blue, ND or other filters to darken or tint the footage, but it always tends to look fake, even on big budget, A list productions.
If you HAVE to shoot it during the daytime, you might be able to use a good colorist &/or compositor to help sell the effect by darkening down background areas, replacing sky, etc.
Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com -
[Will Keir] “but it’s not really realistic”
Will,
Day for night has never been a “realistic” effect, its always been a compromise. The only secrets are: stop down 3 stops, add a fairly deep blue filter, and most important of all, never shoot the sky, its a dead giveaway every time. You’ll notcie in all the old technicolor westerns, all the angles in the day for night scenes are high angles, shooting downward. Now, you now why…
DRW
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The only other option besides Magic Bullet that I know of is Nattress Film Effects. He has a Day for Nite preset too. And no, day for nite will never look like you actually shot at night. Acutally shooting at night means that you will have direct unaffected lights hitting your actors, and the rest of the screen might fall of into black. Day for Nite will darken ALL LIGHT, making it blue or grey.
I found Magic Bullet to look darn good. Not exactly right, but good. I know that the DP I had shot day for nite with the Varicam, but I do know what settings he used.
Shane
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Digital Film tools 55mm plugins have a nice one too.
https://www.digitalfilmtools.com/55mm/DayforNight.htm
Michael Horton
lafcpug
https://www.lafcpug.org -
Thanks for the advice gentilemen! Much appreciated.
Will Keir
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