Low-light cameras like the Sony A7S and Canon C300 offer incredible possibilities for photographing nighttime exteriors without any lights. But day-night shooting still has some huge advantages that make it an ideal choice for many filmmakers. So, for those who want to go this route, this article will detail how to do it correctly.
Day-night shooting (for those who don’t know) is actually the practice of shooting during the day to make your footage look like it was shot at night. There is no precise scientific basis for this process, and there are several different methods that can be used to achieve the day-night effect. This technique is often used on films of all shapes and sizes, and has been one of Hollywood’s favorite tricks for years. Movies like “Castaway,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” and countless others have been able to nail down realistic day-to-night effects without the audience guessing.
Before the advent of digital color grading platforms and compositing tools, many day and night sequences were captured on camera. A combination of filters (usually an ND, polarizer and day/night filter) will be used to underexpose the image while also giving it a slight color cast to help sell the effect. More specifically, ND filters simply reduce exposure, while polarizers help manage hot spots, reflections, and other surfaces in the sky that can give away information. The Day For Night filter is often used as a means of cutting out certain colors (particularly reds) so that the footage will shift to a cooler palette, more consistent with moonlight.
Today, the cameras and software available to us make it easier than ever to capture day and night scenes. Some of the basic principles haven’t changed at all (such as backlighting your subject, and other techniques we’ll cover below), but the way we use them has changed in some ways.
Here’s a simple example of a day-night shoot I recently shot on a small music video shoot. The grade on the bottom shot isn’t final, but it should still give you an idea of what you can achieve with just a few quick tweaks in the editing room:
Without further ado, here are my top 5 tips for shooting nighttime movies during the day:
1. Provide backlight for the subject
Now that we’re able to do so much in post, our life on set has become much easier for daytime night shots. Even so, subject lighting is still the first variable to pay attention to on set, and it can easily determine the success or failure of your shoot.
If you shoot in mid-day sun, you may get very hard shadows on your subject’s face. This is always the Achilles’ heel of daylight for night shots, as moonlight doesn’t typically cast these types of shadows. That doesn’t mean you can’t shoot in daylight, but it does mean you need to have your actors’ backs to the sun so you can avoid those pesky shadows. By backlighting them you can effectively create a nice rim light on the actor, which can easily be tricked into looking like moonlight once the shot is color graded.
2. Shoot during golden hour
While you always have the option of backlighting your subject when shooting at noon, a better option is to shoot during the golden hour or blue hour (one hour before sunset and half an hour after sunset). The light quality is almost perfect for night shots at this time of day, and is very soft and flattering. Not to mention, you don’t have to worry about fighting those harsh shadows that cast upon your talents.
Another benefit of shooting during golden hour is that practical light sources (such as headlights, street lights, etc.) can be captured well on camera. This means that even if you dim your footage in post, these functional lights will still stand out and help add realism to the overall look.
Color grading golden hour footage to look like nighttime footage is usually much simpler than color grading full daylight footage, but it does come with a few caveats. First, since the sun is so low on the horizon, you still need to work around it when composing your shot so you don’t accidentally capture it in the frame. Secondly, low light will cast long shadows on the ground around your talent, which you may or may not like… which is actually not a problem in my book (since moonlight can also cast long shadows) , but some people don’t like that look as much as others. If you fall into the latter camp, be sure to pay attention to how you compose your shot to avoid long shadows on the ground.
3. Use polarizer
While you no longer really need a day/night filter (or even an ND) to capture daytime night shots, I still recommend using a polarizer. As I mentioned before, any time you catch a glimpse of a reflection in the sky, water, or many other surfaces, you’ll want to use a polarizer to eliminate reflection glare, giving you a more realistic nighttime scene.
Simply attach the polarizer to your lens and leave it on during shooting. It will never harm your footage, it will only help eliminate unnecessary glare that can disrupt your daytime due to nighttime effects. It will also help reduce your exposure, requiring only a light touch and causing no harm. Generally, I don’t recommend overexposing in camera (as you can pull the levels down in post), but it’s still a good practice to underexpose your shot just a little bit to prevent any highlight clipping from affecting your talent. This in turn may leak the effect.
4. Know when to show the sky
In the past, many filmmakers have strongly advised against showing the sky when shooting at night during daylight hours, but I personally don’t think you always have to hide it. There are some obvious situations where this will be a killer leak (like when the sun is actually in the shot, or when the sky is completely blown out), but in many cases you can actually see through the display A little sky to escape.
The key is knowing when and where to get away with it, and having some solid abilities in your color kit (more on that below). Generally, during the blue hour you are very safe because the color and brightness of the sky is already very close to that of night. The same goes for cloudy days, as your talents may not be too far removed from your background in terms of exposure. The real problem arises when the sky is much brighter than you’re gifted with, making it obvious that you’re photographing night during the day. In these extreme situations, just frame the sky or choose to shoot at an earlier or later time of day, and you’ll be fine.
5. Get ready for intense color levels
Achieving realistic day and night effects depends heavily on the post-production/color grading of your footage. In fact, that last bullet point could be an entire article in itself, but for the purposes of this article, I’ll just touch on the basics.
When color grading daytime nighttime footage, I always take four main steps:
1. Before doing any other color work, I always adjust the exposure levels and lower the highlights as much as possible. Usually I bring my highlights down to where the skin tone is just visible so you don’t have to strain to see the actor. From there, I might boost the midtones to restore some of the shadow detail that is inevitably lost when reducing highlights. This will get the majority of my exposures right, but will sometimes leave me with an image that’s a little too flat for me. If that’s the case, I’ll crush the shadow a little to bring back some contrast.
2. My next step is to adjust the color and saturation. The details of this step vary from shot to shot, but 90% of the time it will involve pushing blue/magenta into the highlights and shadows, and then desaturating the entire image. Now, this will leave me with a nice and cool image, but not so saturated that it looks too vibrant. Cool tones tend to work well with underexposed shots, and after this step the images start to really come together and look semi-realistic.
3. At this stage I will be using multiple power windows to help re-light the shots in post. If there is any bit of sky present, I will create a gradient/power window that will significantly reduce the exposure of the sky. Generally speaking, the background is the same even if there is no sky. It’s very common for one power window to leave an undesirable effect on another part of the image (e.g. a power window on the sky can bleed into the talent), so in this case I’ll use another power window to fix the problem. As you can see in the screenshot below, I used motorized windows to bring back some detail in the talent, as motorized windows on the background are very powerful.
4. Once all the viewports are in place and the levels/colors are dialed in, I move on to the final step – Film Simulation. Just like compositing in After Effects, I feel like adding an “adjustment layer” or in this case some film simulation can help a lot in bringing everything together. Any differences in color, exposure, viewports, etc. are quickly mitigated once everything is blended together using Film Simulation. Personally, I love using Film Convert because it’s one of the easiest and most powerful tools I use to achieve beautiful and realistic film simulations.
While I usually shade complex daytime shots shot at night in DaVinci Resolve, sometimes out of necessity (usually due to lack of time) I’ll use FCP X or Premiere and shade directly in software. In the example at the top of this article, I used FCP X.
final thoughts
Day and night are still an extremely relevant choice when making night scenes. While it might be tempting to simply pick up the A7S and shoot under real moonlight, doing so isn’t always ideal. First, there’s something to be said about shooting during the day and keeping the cast/crew happy. But even on a technical level, you can usually get great results by shooting night footage during the day, rather than cranking up the ISO to ridiculous levels… at least in my opinion. During the day and night, you don’t have to worry about excessive noise/grain in your footage, your colors don’t look overly synthetic, and you can access locations that would otherwise be inaccessible at night.
There is a time and place for daytime photography at night, just as there is a time and place for using a high-sensitivity camera at night. Neither option can replace actually shooting at night with the proper lighting settings, but when you’re in a pinch, it’s best to know your options.
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