RED and Day for Night

[Roberto Lequeux]

That tree red-blue swap would work very well for my scene, I would have never thought of doing that. However the skin tones on that last picture say "warning". I know you threw them together, and they were not intended for this effect, but I am very worried about the post now.

I have five actors in the scene. It is about 4-6 pages. It is our story's midpoint.

Otherwise we'd have a potentially huge project for post..? And I'd be petrified of having to re-shoot all the way till we get it done..? I don't know... maybe I don't realize, just don't see how much more can be achieved with make up and the proper workflow?

The upside is that we'd only see their faces and their hands. The down side would be turning the collars of their parkas blue. Though we could shoot this scene at the very end of our schedule or throw a bit more money into wardrobe, perhaps get colors that with the swap would end up mimicking the original wardrobes. Those aren't huge problems, but I can't say I would have the make up team to accomplish this... I suppose there is more to it than dipping your talent into a tub of smurf colored paint. Also, I bet the blue could be pushed quite hard toward skin tones, but it just seems like too big of a grading load to add to our post...

I think we might be leaning the wrong way but I am thinking of getting a few heated tents, keeping our 15 passenger van running right next to us, and waiting for "warm" nights. Also adding a few more big HMIs, hopefully a Genie or whatever can move on the snow, and an other genny. Just for about week, and hope we get some warm-ish nights... then I can shoot up, shoot wides, do whatever...

I want to shoot rough steady + hand held anyway so we'd move relatively fast. I might be able to leave stands in place and only wrap the heads. Hopefully we shoot it in 2 nights just like we need it to look, despite the cold. And have a 3rd and 4th nights available in case...

Sorry about the rant, but I though if I layed it all out you guys might be able to help me make a better decision.

 

[conrad gaunt]

Mind you, if you are an After Effects genius like Andrew Kramer then not all of the above applies!!!

Look at this awesome video tutorial and be amazed.

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/day_to_night_conversion/

Not being defensive, but I spent less than a minute in Photoshop

 

[conrad gaunt]

That tree red-blue swap would work very well for my scene, I would have never thought of doing that. However the skin tones on that last picture say "warning". I know you threw them together, and they were not intended for this effect, but I am very worried about the post now.

I have five actors in the scene. It is about 4-6 pages. It is our story's midpoint.

Otherwise we'd have a potentially huge project for post..? And I'd be petrified of having to re-shoot all the way till we get it done..? I don't know... maybe I don't realize, just don't see how much more can be achieved with make up and the proper workflow?

The upside is that we'd only see their faces and their hands. The down side would be turning the collars of their parkas blue. Though we could shoot this scene at the very end of our schedule or throw a bit more money into wardrobe, perhaps get colors that with the swap would end up mimicking the original wardrobes. Those aren't huge problems, but I can't say I would have the make up team to accomplish this... I suppose there is more to it than dipping your talent into a tub of smurf colored paint. Also, I bet the blue could be pushed quite hard toward skin tones, but it just seems like too big of a grading load to add to our post...

I think we might be leaning the wrong way but I am thinking of getting a few heated tents, keeping our 15 passenger van running right next to us, and waiting for "warm" nights. Also adding a few more big HMIs, hopefully a Genie or whatever can move on the snow, and an other genny. Just for about week, and hope we get some warm-ish nights... then I can shoot up, shoot wides, do whatever...

I want to shoot rough steady + hand held anyway so we'd move relatively fast. I might be able to leave stands in place and only wrap the heads. Hopefully we shoot it in 2 nights just like we need it to look, despite the cold. And have a 3rd and 4th nights available in case...

Sorry about the rant, but I though if I layed it all out you guys might be able to help me make a better decision.

Sure, I was just playing, though makeup isn't such a problem on the small stylized shoots I've done, with one or two people, which were mostly shot on DV years ago (dealing with the blue channel is fun, not!) I actually used it to simulate "Dream time", rather than night.

Its always worth shooting some night footage and examining it to find what psychological characteristics you want, until you get the right "moonlight". Also ask the question, why don't I just shoot at night with fast glass also.

Early mornings are also good times to shoot.

One of the most important elements, whatever method you use IMO, is lowering the contrast the correct amount, and not clipping your highlights to start with, as this best simulates the effect of darkness on the eyes.

That reminds me, I have a set of glow-in-the-dark sunglasses I bought somewhere just waiting to fullfill their destiny

Good luck

 

[Stephen Williams]

Hi,

Is that supposed to be night?

Stephen

These are just Photoshop "knockups". Four ingredients are missing:

1) Shots not taken with Hollywood Night in mind, especially the sky
2) Make-up (it can be subtle)
3) My custom tools, which are not compiled as I tend to change them as I need them. Luminance locking is important, so swapped pixels have the same luminance. Don't know how to do that in Photoshop..
4) Time and care

..but here's a quicky (60sec of post) ps No green bottles were harmed in this shot, it just kept landing on me for some reason so I put it in an arm lock
Fly wrestler Day..

Nocturnalized..

With a little blue dusting (makeup), you can control the skins blue tone. That bit is actually quite easy, choosing blue makeup that comes off is the trick. Girls tend to be good at this sort of thing.

Test shots are what you need, and planning. The sky should be Red when you first swap channels, then you adjust it. These skies were very pale to start with, so came out orange. Also, I started with 8bit images.

You shouldn't be scared of the sky, psychologically it can be very powerful to leave it in. Red sky at night, sheppards delight, as they say. Just watch out for wolves..

It probably more of a "pop video" look than a "realistic" effect. "Realistic" is for documentaries

 

[Rudi Herbert]

This follows a similar path to what I do to create DFN in post, except that the image is very compressed and was breaking too easily, so I had to skip a few important steps. It's all done manipulating contrast, brightness, lightness and gamma of the RGB master, its individual components and compressing the curves on the shadows and highlights. It should have been darker for my taste still, but there are high contrast areas in the picture that don't survive much manipulation in 8bits...

 

[Florian Stadler]

Don't clip a single highlight. Use the sun as backlight. Warm up your frontal bounce on talent. Warm up the makeup (don't put blue as suggested in another post, you want a blue greyish bg not blue skintones). Avoid the sky. Shoot wides & scenes involving city/car lights dusk for night and light talent with tungsten (1/4-1/2 blue) motivated by those very sources. Desaturate in post. Use windows in post to separate actors from bg, create contrast & maintain skintones. Good luck.

 

[Stephen Williams]

Shooting fairly wide open is also important IMO

 

[conrad gaunt]

Hi,

Is that supposed to be night?

Stephen

Er, no, its supposed to show skin tones after a Red/Blue swap, the first stage in one of my "stylized" Hollywood Night techniques, as requested, as my original example only had foliage present.

As I explained before, you need luminance locking to control overall contrast (a function many of you won't have access to btw in many post tools) as a starting point ideally, and blue makeup on hands and faces to red'n skin after the swap, which isn't present here, coz its just a random daytime shot. I already explained this..

This should demonstrate why the makeup is needed on skin, whilst demonstrating the cooling effect on sunlight (once contrast is lowered). I only used brightness, contrast and a channel swap.

The point is, this stylized approach will get you to a point where you can shoot daytime, and leave the sky in for a dusk feel.

After that you grade it, using fairly common filters/curves.

I agree though, I think I better post a full-on example when I get a chance so noone else asks that question because it is slightly irritating when people miss the point, although I asked for it inch:

Don't clip a single highlight. Use the sun as backlight. Warm up your frontal bounce on talent. Warm up the makeup (don't put blue as suggested in another post, you want a blue greyish bg not blue skintones). Avoid the sky. Shoot wides & scenes involving city/car lights dusk for night and light talent with tungsten (1/4-1/2 blue) motivated by those very sources. Desaturate in post. Use windows in post to separate actors from bg, create contrast & maintain skintones. Good luck.

With all due respect, I explained a "stylized" technique.

If you don't apply blue make-up, you can't swap the r<->b channels, which means you don't get the stylized backgrounds, and so you don't get the "red dusk skies" (unless you avoid skies??..), and skin will appear blue, as in the above example. I didn't have a shot of an actor with blue shading at hand, so I think your confused.. we're both describing completely different approaches.

The effect your after can be achieved another way..

.. shoot at night with fast glass and use reflective boards to bounce available moonlight. Skies will look amazing..

 

[conrad gaunt]

..moved above, I must learn how to multi-quote

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

Ronx, thanks for trying to spell this stuff out. I hope you do end up posting a full on example if you get around to it.

Rudi, that looks way better but I guess without enough information on the shadows, and the lack of fill it would be impossible to fix through lowering the contrast even if it were a 12-bit RAW.

I do understand grading quite well, obviously no pro at it, but I have graded several personal projects and learned lots in the process. It would seem to me that there is nothing you could do about the sky, short of adding a lot of composting work which would really hurt small VFX budgets.

Personally, the snow on the ground might add headaches for our horizon, and the thousands of bare trees would make sky replacement quite heavy of a work load to dial in properly... an upside however would be that getting a heavily overcast day wouldn't be tough for us... quite the opposite... and that would help immensely in terms of shadows... I would imagine that a little strong bump up on the blue channel in the mids and highs, together with setting the ISO down a bunch in Redcine might turn out something VERY decent starting point. A little more tweaking and it might have something quite spectacular so long as we find a way to make the sky believable.

However I am not sure if a DoP would like such a big and soft fill, it may sound perfect, but it might be to similar to our overcast day stuff ... then again it would only follow about 20 pages or so later, and the audience would be ready to forgive or have completely forgotten... so it might work perfectly... still, I have little clue as to what he would needed to have available or how he would light with it to make it interesting... If there is one thing I know WAY too little about is lighting. So I ask, is there an issue here that escapes me? Or are we perfect candidates for Day for Night if we solve the sky issue? Would we be good to go with our little 1.2 par HMIs, 2.5k fresnel HMIs and such being the biggest? Should we make bigger guns available? I would guess we are good to go but I am very hesitant to assume that anything about the lighting aspect...

So... I am unable to make an informed decision on this and hope you guys keep this thread going, until all options are exhausted and their pros and cons are weighed (and explained in simple terms )... the only thing I am sure of is that I don't know enough about this yet.

Again, sorry if it feels to you that I beat every single dead horse I can find. Hope you can excuse my endless ranting if it bothers you.

 

[conrad gaunt]

You can use blue lights instead of makeup btw

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

We certainly wouldn't use tungsten for the night stuff at all aside from a slight spill from the house and an augmented practical that would be above them from a bell tower they would be standing next to.

I am actually hoping to compose our electric package of 75% daylight knowing that Red prefers 5000k

I am just concerned with making sure that out night stuff doesn't look like all the horribly fake stuff I see on TV late at night where they shot late at night and didn't even try to silk their "moon light" at all...

of course I will have a DP, but it would be nice to learn some of the intricacies myself so as to make an informed decision as to which way to go about it with the film's best interest in mind

 

[Tim Sutherland]

Okay, finally got a break in the weather on a weekend when I had time to
do some location scouting. So I went out to test a cool day for night filter, a
Red 23A (in case we went black and white) and my Gamma and Density
color chart. I strapped the filters onto my mini-Dslr style camera (old
enough that it actually has less resolution than the RED, go figure) to see
what I could get.

I was actually surprised that the Cool Day for Night filter actually yielded
decent results, so I didn't rule it out immediately and for a while thought we
might shoot with the filter.

I also shot some tests of my chart both unfiltered and with the Day for Night
filter, with the idea of using G&D's 3cP to create a digital preset for the filter.

Here you can see the two versions of the chart, both shot with the same camera settings (ISO320 at f3.1):

Unfiltered-

Filtered Cool Day for Night-

So then in 3cP I loaded in the filtered chart as my reference image, and
adjusted the Gain, gamma, and lift of the 3 channels to match the look of
the clean chart to the filtered one. I then applied the preset to another
image I took, and generated this report:

I took nearly the same shot with the filter, which looked like this:

I'm quite happy with this image, and I think I actually like the post look
more than the actual image. On images that are a little brighter, it doesn't
look quite as good, so I think I'll plan on under-exposing by just a bit beyond
saving the highlights, using a bit of bounce for faces in CU, and doing the
DFN look in post if we do decide to go with a Day for Night shoot.

I didn't include the Red 23a filter results because the filter didn't cut down
the luminance of the sky quite enough to make it viable. Plus, we were
fairly certain we didn't want to do grayscale shooting, so this was easy to throw out.

Anyways, thanks to everyone for their imput on this. My last task is to
shoot some test footage on the RED and see if I actually need to under-
expose the image, or if changing the exposure or ISO settings in post
(assuming I save my highlights) will work well enough. I'm hoping we can
shoot it clean and if the DFN looks terrible, we can have it shot as a good-
looking day-for-day.

(and man, my camera looks old with the terrible quality of jpegs I got out if it)

 

[Charles Angus]

Isn't it a yellow filter that blackens the sky? Yellow is the complement of blue...

I wouldn't ever underexpose on a digital camera if colour correction is possible, unless you want a noisy image.

Good luck, interested to see how it turns out.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Technically it isn't "underexposed" if you leave it dark, it is "correctly" exposed for the look you want.

Let's say you have a fully-lit room and then someone in the scene switches the lights off -- does the room suddenly get a lot noisier because the scene is now darker? Technically, the noise level should be the same as long as you didn't make any color-correction adjustments after the lights went out.

Of course, the same noise level may be more visible depending on what in the frame shows off the noise better.

Yes, there will be less noise if you end up in post darkening a normally exposed image, but the question is whether there would be more noise if you underexposed an image... and that just depends on the base noise level before you decided to underexpose to make it darker, and then whether you ended up having to brighten it later in post.

The safe thing is generally to expose for the look you want, but conservatively, play it safe. If the final look needs to be two-stops under to look like night, then perhaps expose one-stop under and finish the darkening in post to give yourself some flexibility. But I don't really agree with the notion that day for night should just be shot normally for day and completely corrected in post, unless there is a chance that someone will change their mind and want to make it day again. Looking at the example of the guy's face against the trees, there is some mild highlight clipping on the hottest parts of the skin that end up looking odd when the image is crushed down to look like night (plus there is way too much depth of field for a night scene.)

Remember that most true night photography will probably be shot near wide-open, so shooting day work at f/11, for example, and turning it into night in post is going to look a little odd.

 

[Tim Sutherland]

Thanks for your advice David. I was also thinking along the lines of shooting one stop or so under instead of 2, and using ND to keep the DOF shallow. We're going to be shooting 2K which means that we'll want to open up as much as possible anyway so that we retain some shallower DOF.

This test was shot with a terrible camera in a hurry, and I know that the over-exposed highlights are killing it. That's why I was thinking to shoot darker in camera, but not quite as far as we want to go. It's an action short, so if it ends up looking a bit noisy, that's probably okay. I'll have to shoot a few tests with the RED to make sure we get it right, but I think we're getting there.

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

I still have no idea how to deal with the sky. The yellow filter might work if you shoot for B&W but we are not... I guess it is one of those things where you are SOL and you'll need to either shoot night or spend $$$ in post.

 

[Eki Halkka]

I still have no idea how to deal with the sky. The yellow filter might work if you shoot for B&W but we are not... I guess it is one of those things where you are SOL and you'll need to either shoot night or spend $$$ in post.

Darkening the sky is relatively simple, as long as the sky is blue, not overcast. The following techniques are explained using After Effects / Photoshop terminology...

The key is to play with channels - one method i've found works pretty well, is to substract blue channel from mixed red-green channels, and use the result for luminosity (use channel mixer, start i.e. with 50 R, 50 G, -50 B, Monochrome). Apply effected layer over the original in luminosity mode. Adjusting how much each of the channels contributes gives quite a lot of control over the effect - the overall strength of the effect can be adjusted with layer transparency. This is rather similar to how bluescreen keyers work to create the mask, BTW.

Another similar method is to replace the blue channel with a 50-50 blend of red and green (channel mixer again), then apply this over the original in darken mode. The resulting image will have otherwise more or less normal colors, but nothing will be blue - all blue stuff will be gray, and darker than before (pure blue will actually become black). To continue the keying analogy, this is pretty much how spill suppression works in bluescreen keyers.

Both of the above can naturally be combined for even more control...

The adjusted images from these methods can then be color corrected with some saturation reduction and regular levels / curves controls, to tint the whole image strongly towards blue. This way, the blues will not be overemphasized and neon-like after the image is being tinted.

I'd post some examples, but gotta run now...

PS. Not sure if others have mentioned this - using a polarizing filter when shooting will also allow you to darken the blue skies somewhat, might be a good idea to use one...

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

Please do, I'd like to see those examples when you get a chance. Not sure I follow but then again I need to get some sleep.

About the polarizer, I was planning on using a polarizer for most of the exteriors due to the snow anyway.

 

[Eki Halkka]

Please do, I'd like to see those examples when you get a chance.

Okay, here we go - these are quick & dirty, not finetuned. I used a "crossing the line" still from RED site.

If the image had been shot with day for night in mind, the sky was clearer blue and/or more tweaking was done, the results would naturally be better - but these examples should show how the technique works.

Here's the original:

I copied it to a new layer, applied channel mixer with 100 R, 50 G, -100 B, set to monochrome (similar to bluescreen key's mask, though naturally with less contrast):

Applied to original in luminosity mode:

Reduced saturosity to 50%

(Continues in next page...)