Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 11

Thread: day for/as night technique?

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    Los Angeles
    Posts
    523

    day for/as night technique?

    Heya,

    So if anyone's seen the most recent zombie movie 28 Weeks Later you'll notice some hella awesome day for night scenes. TOTALLY RAD' and BEAUTIFUL!

    I understand the basic idea of underexposing to make things darker (or blue filter and polarizer when shooting color) but I'm wondering if there might be more of a technique than just underexposure. e.g. does it make more sense to expose normally and under develop (maybe n-2) or to under expose and develop normally? etc.


    Thanks

    T

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Aug 2001
    Location
    VA
    Posts
    113

    Re: day for/as night technique?

    2 stops down is what we were taught in film school. But it depends on the film stock and the situation. The film can be pushed and flashed to bring out more detail. But you lose contrast when you flash.


    Mike

  3. #3
    Donald Qualls's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    North Carolina
    Posts
    1,092

    Re: day for/as night technique?

    Underexposing will make the image dark, but with normal contrast. Underdeveloping will make the image somewhat dark, but reduce contrast.

    If you look carefully at real night lighting, you'll see it's usually high contrast -- there'll be a light source, and there'll be very deep, black darkness, with many stops of difference between. Reducing development won't yield the high contrast typical of night images; in fact, you might consider increasing development to N+1 or even N+2, and reducing exposure that much more, so you get empty or nearly empty shadows while keeping the contrast with the (still dimly) lit mid tones and letting the brightest areas (reflections, light sources) almost block up.
    If a contact print at arm's length is too small to see, you need a bigger camera. :D

  4. #4

    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    Spain
    Posts
    154

    Re: day for/as night technique?

    At school we used a high contrast setting (under a large tree with midday sun for example) and 2 screw-in polarizers.

  5. #5

    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Northern Virginia
    Posts
    5

    Re: day for/as night technique?

    What I do is I overexpose the film and pull process or underdevelop. What this does is it puts more info on the shadow areas. Sure the highlights will get more exposure but its going to be blown anyway. This technique decreases the contrast but as Donald said, night scenes are very high in contrast. see my night photos www.danchungphoto.com

  6. #6
    Donald Qualls's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    North Carolina
    Posts
    1,092

    Re: day for/as night technique?

    Dan, "Day for night" technique is used to make an exposure that looks like a night shot, but do it in daylight (sunlight becomes moonlight, give or take). What you're doing sounds like real night photography, an entirely different bag of tricks.
    If a contact print at arm's length is too small to see, you need a bigger camera. :D

  7. #7

    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    San Joaquin Valley, California
    Posts
    9,599

    Re: day for/as night technique?

    Dan,
    I took a gander at your website and all I can say is WOW! I think your nocturnals are wonderful! Thanks for posting the link.

    I've never made a "day for night shot" on purpose but the technique was used quite frequently on old b&w western films---most likely any chase scenes or ambushes that happen at "night" never did.
    "I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White

  8. #8

    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    New York
    Posts
    2,673

    Re: day for/as night technique?

    T,

    There is good information about day for night on cinematography.com. Here are a couple of recent threads, including a couple of posts from a member of the American Society of Cinematographers:

    http://www.cinematography.com/forum2...=day+for+night

    http://www.cinematography.com/forum2...=day+for+night

    If you do a search on that site, you will find additional threads, some dealing with film and some with high definition video. I suspect that you will have to register to do a search. If you don't want to do that, you can probably use Google to search the site if you use the right search terms.

    There are also discussions about day for night, including technical guidance, in Nestor Almendros's A Man with A Camera. See, especially, the chapters on Francois Truffaut's The Wild Child (1970) and Terrence Malik's Days of Heaven (1976, for which Almendros won an Academy Award). The book is out of print, but can be obtained via the on-line second hand books sites, such as abebooks.com. It is a wonderful book. If you want, I could scan the relevant pages from Almendros and send them to you.

    It's kind of interesting to compare Almendros's day for night in Days of Heaven with Rodrigo Prieto's approach to day for night in Brokeback Mountain (2005). Coincidentally, Days of Heaven was shot in rural Alberta, as were Brokeback Mountain's more stunning sequences. Note David Mullen's comments, in one of the above threads, about the relative appropriateness of day for night in urban and rural areas. Mullen is best known for his work on the Polish Brothers films, especially Northfork (2003), a film that was shot in colour, but heavily desaturated.

    Truffaut's wonderful film Day for Night (1973, La Nuit americaine in French) takes its title from the technique.

    Cheers
    Last edited by r.e.; 31-May-2007 at 09:33.

  9. #9

    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    New York
    Posts
    2,673

    Re: day for/as night technique?

    In my post above, the second thread has a link to a show reel called Day for Night from the website of this Vancouver post production house: http://www.nwfx.com/reels.htm

    I just had a look at the sequence. Quite a cool demonstration of doing day for night in post.

    The American Cinematographer articles referred to are in the January 2006 (Brokeback Mountain) and May 2006 (The Proposition) issues. The quote from the article on The Proposition is in the thread. About Brokeback, Prieto told American Cinematographer:

    "We had to shoot one long dialogue scene that was set at dusk in the middle of the day. I created a fire effect on the actors' faces that was really, really bright to compete with the daylight in the background. I used an 81D filter plus heavy NDs on the lens so the background would look slightly blue and soft-focus, as though the day was about to end. We blocked the daylight from the actors with a black 12-by-12 overhead frame, and I brought up the exposure of the firelight effect on their faces to the same level as the background daylight, then underexposed everything to make it feel like dusk."
    Last edited by r.e.; 31-May-2007 at 11:47.

  10. #10

    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    New York
    Posts
    2,673

    Re: day for/as night technique?

    Funny that this comes up now.

    A few days ago, I was channel flipping and hit on The Day the Earth Stood Still. In that film, there are a lot of scenes at night, and I was thinking, these must have been shot day for night. They have a certain look, which I like aesthetically.

    There's also some pretty interesting editing in the film that violates some basic rules to good effect.

Similar Threads

  1. Metering at Night time
    By brian steinberger in forum Darkroom: Film, Processing & Printing
    Replies: 5
    Last Post: 28-Jan-2007, 19:11
  2. Night Vision DBI and TMax 400
    By Arthur Nichols in forum Darkroom: Film, Processing & Printing
    Replies: 10
    Last Post: 18-Jan-2006, 06:30
  3. Night Exposures
    By Steve Bell in forum Style & Technique
    Replies: 18
    Last Post: 17-Sep-2005, 09:12
  4. Labor Day weekend shooting in the back yard
    By John Cook in forum Location & Travel
    Replies: 41
    Last Post: 4-Sep-2005, 11:52
  5. Developer for Night Photography
    By Enrique Vila in forum Darkroom: Film, Processing & Printing
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 5-Jan-2002, 23:37

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •