Shooting scenes at night can be prohibitively expensive due to the additional lighting and logistical requirements, but “day shoot night” technology offers an alternative solution.
The idea is simple: shoot all your footage during the day and then simply color grade it to make it look like it was shot at night.
While the look will never be exactly like an actual night shot, you can get a very close result by following some basic steps when grading.
It’s important to note that executing realistic day and night effects is as important in production as it is in post.
I wrote an entire article about Day For Night production notes, which you can read here as a starting point.
In short, you need to compose and light your shots very carefully so as not to give away the effect. Everything from harsh shadows on an actor’s face (those cast by the sun) to glimpses of bright blue sky in the background can make the final image look entirely synthetic.
But assuming you follow all the right protocols in production, achieving a day-to-night effect in post is actually pretty simple.
In fact, I’ve even released a free Day For Night LUT that you can download from my website www.cinecolor.io Color grading websites can help automate this process.
For those of you who want to build a look from scratch and have additional control over your image, you’ll want to follow the steps outlined in my video tutorial below.
The video briefly outlines the 6 main steps I include in my post-production process every time I need to perform a day or night shoot. I’ve also included some written cheat sheets below the video for easy reference.
Keep in mind that this movie was demonstrated in DaVinci Resolve, but the techniques are completely universal. No matter what software you use, you can apply the same workflow, it’s just that the tools will change, not the process.
here we go!
Day to night memo
Step 1 – Neutralize the image
As with any color workflow, you always want to start the process by neutralizing the image. Address any obvious issues with balance, contrast, or color temperature before making style changes.
In some cases (as shown in the example below), the adjustments at this stage may be very minor.
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Step 2 – Reduce brightness and contrast
Next, we’ll prepare for the more dramatic changes to come by lowering the brightness (brightness) and contrast. I like to start by pulling down the midtones and then the highlights. Finally, I often mention shadows a little bit. This helps restore some detail in darker areas while reducing contrast.
Step 3 – cool color balance
Again, I like to start this step by focusing on the mid-tones – pushing them into a cooler, slightly magenta zone. Once the mids have done most of the heavy lifting, I’ll adjust the highlights and shadows a bit to cool down the image further. If the color of the shadow looks too saturated at this point, I will just desaturate the shadow area to make it feel more natural.
Step 4 – Regrade
At this point the image looks very different from the original image. To help subtly blend some of the changes I’ve made so far, I like to adjust the contrast and brightness levels again, this time optimizing them for the new color palette created in the previous step. In this particular example, the visible changes in this step are very small.
Step 5 – Customized masks
In some cases, this step is not necessary. However, if you’re working on a shot with specific problem areas (such as the shot in this tutorial showing bright white clouds), you’ll need to adjust those areas individually. This is usually best accomplished by isolating the problem area using masks or electric windows.
Step 6 – final adjustments
Now that all the heavy lifting is done, I recommend making final color adjustments to help everything blend together more seamlessly. By slightly re-adjusting contrast and color balance, all the subtle visual differences we created throughout the process will start to disappear. We are left with the final image.
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Be sure to download my free Day For Night LUT to automate this process: www.cinecolor.io
I also just launched 100 brand new color grading LUTs, which you can check out here!
For those looking for more advanced color techniques, be sure to check out my Color grading masterclass.
Happy coloring!
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