Turning day to night

[David Bogie]

Easily researched. There have been dozens of threads here on the cow and on hundreds of other filmmaking sites. Adding the filters is a no-brainer compared to the planning of the shots to avoid doing silly stuff that telegraphs “fake.”

bogiesan

[Austin Steele]

Thanks. So would you recommend shooting during a cloudy day or at sunset and risk having the lighting be different in each shot?

Anything else besides the shadows and sun I should avoid when filming? Would using a tripod make it easier in post? Thanks!

[Michael Szalapski]

It is very easy for a day to night shot to look fake, as has been previously mentioned.
I worked on color correction and special effects on a promo for a university that involved a super hero.
Don’t ask. (It actually turned out pretty cool and attracted a bunch more students to the university despite my doubts.)
In it, the director decided he wanted many shots done day for night.

The most riduculous shot, by far, was one that invovled a motorcycle being driven by a stunt guy going 85mph through the center of the campus. Ignoring the fact that the director needed the motorcyle changed from yellow to red, it was still a ridiculous D4N shot. The sky was in it, the camera was moving, there were several buildings with windows, over ten lampposts, and more!
I had well over 100 layers in that comp.
Each lamp required at least five layers: the lamp had to be lit, the pole had to have light hitting it, the ground underneath needed a pool of light, and the light of the lamp itself needed to be on (which also required little lens flares for each lamp).
The motorcycle’s light needed to look like it was on and it needed to be casting light on the ground.
I had to light up several windows in the buildings (which was pretty much a yellow solid with a glow).
I had to replace the sky.
And every single one of these layers needed to be motion-tracked to the camera’s movement. And, for layers that were completely digital (the lens flares, windows, the sky, etc.) I had to match the grain of the original footage.

And that was just one shot.

So, I have some experience and some tips:

Pay close attention to everything the two Daves said. They both have a lot of experience and they mean what they say.

For the love of God/Buddha/Allah/Hare Krishna/your monkey ancestors/the flying spaghetti monster, do your best to avoid shooting the sky. If you do shoot the sky, keep in mind that you’re likely going to have to replace it and when you do, all the edges of everything it touches may have a terrible little inner glow that makes it look fake again. A cloudy sky is still a very bright thing.

If there’s anything that would ordinarily be lit up at night, you’re going to have to light it in post. (Lamps, headlights, windows of a building.) Sometimes (as with the pool of light under a streetlight) you can just put a copy of your footage over the top of the comp and mask where the light should be hitting to add back the light. But don’t forget to light the lamppost itself. And the lightbulb. And anything that might be close to the lamp, such as a bush, tree, or building.

If your camera does move (and I suspect it must since you’re filming a fight scene) remember that anything you’re doing in post will have to match the moving of the camera. So, any sky replacement, pools of light, lens flares, etc. will have to be matched perfectly to the movement of the camera.

My biggest tip is to PLAN!
Storyboard your fight scene very carefully.
Shoot some test footage and practice working with it. Don’t shoot your whole thing (again) and hope it’ll all look alright.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[David Bogie]

Nice experiential rant, Michael, hope this thread comes up often in in future searches.

One of the best examples of the worst D4N work in a feature has got to be “Miami Vice,” many cigarette boat aerials.

bogiesan

[Chris Wright]

sounds like a student project, and if you’re overwelmed by all this, you can always download videocopilot.net preset package for free that has loads of free stuff, including day for night animation preset. Instead of motion tracking, he uses a gradient to fix the sky, blue tints, levels effects, etc. It’s really not that bad looking.

another sky replace option is a custom project I made where you just use the matte adj inner/outer sliders that do fast sky replacements, no roto.
download link below
https://www.megaupload.com/?d=YBEKJSQ3

https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/

[Austin Steele]

Thanks a lot Michael and everyone. Some very good advice. I didn’t think of needing to add streetlights or window lights. I’m going to try a test before we film.

Since I already filmed the scene, I know that most of the shots will have the sky in them. Including the 2 punching shots. But it will all be on a still tripod and the scene is less than a minute long.

Heres a fun edit (not the whole thing) of the scene I already filmed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIid1dw79tU

I don’t have much AE experience (obviously) so I might just try to shoot it a little earlier in the evening when the sun isnt setting so fast.