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RED and Day for Night

Tim Sutherland

Tim Sutherland

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Has anyone had experience with shooting Day for Night on the RED? I'm contemplating it, and though the project is not locked into shooting day for night, I was looking for some advice on how to do it. So far in searching I've come up with filter options, using the sun as a backlight and bouncing for key/fill, and under-exposing by about 2 stops. Does that sound about right? Any other helpful advice?
 
I would say expose properly (shoot day for day) and do all of the corrections in post, just to ensure that you have the best image possible to adjust later. Final Cut's Color can do some amazing stuff.
 
Does anybody have any example node trees from color? I haven't had that much experience combining those yet, and now I'm considering just doing it all in post, maybe use ND grads to keep the sky down, but I was thinking of doing a lot of handheld, so that makes it difficult.
 
The best tip I can give is to pick your moments in the script/production-wise to attempt day for night. By that I mean, day for night is at its best when you can stage your shots to avoid the sky, or as much sky whenever possible. Not just on RED. This applies to film shoots as well. Wooded areas. Hillsides. If you have to be at the beach, try and minimize your angles above the horizon line. Urban exteriors late day. Ideally with practicals lit. The sky is what kills the cheat.

Good luck.
Joel
 
Just like Stevenson said, expose properly.. expose histogram to the right (ETTR) right before it clipped.

It will only work properly if the sun is shining bright, and avoid the sun on the frame obviously =)



José
 
Jose Poernomo said:
.... and avoid the sun on the frame obviously =)



José
Click to expand...

Shoot "with" the sun and not "against" it. Try to get the bluest and cleanest sky possible.
If you shoot post us some picts. Will be interesting to watch.
 
Tim Sutherland said:
I am also considering doing B&W to be able to use a red filter to get the sky dark. I'll do some tests this weekend and post.
Click to expand...

This last post went over my head completely. Could you please explain this technique?

I am also contemplating shooting day for night. I would love to get at least a few wides with the sky in the shot, also shoot up on one of the character's coverage, but I would require some additional post work as our ground would also be white from the snow. It is an especially tough decision when nights would be particularly unbearable up north, I wonder if that's also your case Tim or if you are shooting in town?
 
I'm planning on shooting in the woods, so it's a pretty good case for day-for night.

What I was saying is that if you shoot black and white, you can use an old red filter, which will render the blue sky as dark grey, which makes for fairly easy day-for-night if you're okay with a black and white image. I'll take some filters with me when I scout and post the results.
 
I don't think red filter works on digital as in negative B&W.

Expose it correctly is the only thing you need to do, just hope for the sun is in a good mood :)

I've done it quite many time with different digital camera and also with RED recently. Just don't use it for close up shots (add 4K HMI fill in is better for my taste)


José
 
Day for Night...

Day for Night...

In the "old days" they had a IR film stock for shooting Day for Night shots for black and white movies.

You should be able to get an exposure on the RED ONE sensor if you shoot through a Wratten #87 IR pass filter,

http://www.x-raycameras.com/kodak_wratten_87_range.htm

This link has some example images that sort of look Day for Night, you could do better with more gamma adjustments, and curves etc. like my CC has,

http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/photography/IR/

It will cut many stops, but if you need to shoot at T/1.3 in Daylight that will look more like night shooting DOF, and you can get a black sky. From what others have posted the sensor does pick up IR, otherwise the IR cut filters would not make any change in the color etc.

After you matrix out a monochrome image from the Bayer data, you can adjust the red, green, and blue gammas to give the shot a "midnight blue" cast and gamma down the shadows to give it a more "underexposed" foot of the curve look.

Anyway, you can try it and see if you like the result. If you need help with the CC on a test frame you can let me know and I will see what can be done. Always do full start to end tests before you shoot for real, I knew someone who got some old high speed EI 3200 film and shot, and shot, and shot with actors, then sent all the film out for processing. Much to his horror the results were mostly "clear" film and fog with ghostly images in course grain, so any time you try anything new, don't do it during a production.
 
Jose Poernomo said:
I don't think red filter works on digital as in negative B&W.
Click to expand...

Of course it does.

Blue has almost no red component to it, so anything which is blue, when viewed through a red filter, will appear dark. Deep blue skies can be made almost black.

This is NOT dependent upon whether you are using film vs digital. It is a feature of the frequencies of light.
 
Antony is dead right, of course.

However... If you can expose to get a nice deep blue (clear) sky and still hold your foreground exposure acceptably - as you would need to for a red filter to work (and remember that you will be pulling the effective stop down considerably when applying the DFN effect in post) then another possibility is doing a sky replacement (essentially chroma-keying the sky off and replacing it with a black or dark blue night sky). This method does not require that you post for B&W of course.

Also remember that with a digital post route the red filtration can be applied in post rather than optically in camera, so you could try both routes, A/B them and decide what you wanted to do (sky replace vs red filter, B&W vs colour) after the fact, keeping your options open (not that I'm against making a decision in principal photography, you understand!).

For either technique you need a well exposed blue sky, preferably without clouds in it, although with a sky replace you can create a garbage matte to deal with clouds as long as they are away from the horizon.

Just a thought or two...
Dom.
 
A reason to under-expose is you will darken it in post anyway, and you want to be absolutely certain the highlights don't clip anywhere; not even a dot of sun reflecting off someone's forehead that would be fine for a day shot. The moon never clips, so you have to mimic that.

If you end up doing a red filter/B&W (preferably in post), you can then give the grade a blue cast. Night looks nearly B&W to our eyes, so people may not even think of that shot as being B&W.
 
If its a stylized look your after, here's my basic method..

1) I swap the Red and Blue channels

The effects is that Blue skies have a Red sunset tinge, and skin has blue hues. It does nice things to foliage too.

2) Then I grade it, adjust brightness etc (which will require contrast to be lowered also, this bit is key IMO)

Psychologically it works for me. Stylistically speaking, it works for me. You can add to the recipe of course, add your own secret source, as I do.

If you want a tool that swaps Red and Blue channels, whilst locking the original pixel luminance (my starting point), I can provide one that processes Redcine TIFFs, just PM me I call the filter Nocturnal, but I have variants such as Netherwurlde and Mr Blue which are all different starting points.

I like to shoot in the UK summer, while its still light, but everyone is in bed, guerilla style.

The secret is taking test shots at the right time, and seeing how they look after the basic Red/Blue swap. Basically, plan and test..

The bluer the sky, the Red'r it becomes..

Moonlight shadows look good, psychologically, so create some for effect if necessary, using the sun or whatever :)

If skin looks too blue after filter tests, apply blue tinge using makeup to actors faces, hands etc

Another name for Day 4 Night, is Hollywood Night btw, which I personally prefer

Here's a basic example I just knocked up, without luminance locking, to give a general idea..the sky is a little orange rather than red, but this was shot by a client in daylight to test the camera, er, in daylight..
Day..
2958_1233691981.jpg

Nocturnalized
2958_1233691805.jpg


edit: I should add, these jpegs are only 100k, not the 200k allowed by reduser. Shooting 4k and downsampling to 2k will make your Blue channel "robust" to work with. Choose your downsampler carefully, these were Photoshop'd, and its downsampling is c**p!..
 
mail4joeg said:
That "Nocturnalized" image is pretty wild. Can you show us how faces come out?

Personally, with my limited experience, if I was going to attempt DFN, I would eliminate the sky altogether. Use high camera, aimed at a lower angle. Use hills and the terrain to mask the sky. But that's me.
Click to expand...
That's certainly the safest way to do it, and therefore good advice...

That "Nocturnalized" look certainly is wild - not sure it's my cup of tea (again, would be interested in seeing some skin tones), but it certainly is out there! Slightly reminds me of IR stock DFN, bizarrely, although it doesn't actually look anything like that!
 
Contacts and makeup?

Contacts and makeup?

mail4joeg said:
That "Nocturnalized" image is pretty wild. Can you show us how faces come out?
Click to expand...

It might help to use contact lenses with the right "pre-color" to come out right after the red-blue swap, as well as to use blueish lip stick and makeup, so the actors match their daylight colors.

If you pick costumes that are gray, black, and white tones the swap would not be an issue, but if someone has a red jacket, you would need to swap it for a blue one, and you do not want faded blue jeans turning pink, so the actors need to wear pink jeans and blue lipstick :ohmy:
 
mail4joeg said:
That "Nocturnalized" image is pretty wild. Can you show us how faces come out?

Personally, with my limited experience, if I was going to attempt DFN, I would eliminate the sky altogether. Use high camera, aimed at a lower angle. Use hills and the terrain to mask the sky. But that's me.
Click to expand...

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..
2958_1233694495.jpg

Nocturnalized..
2958_1233694342.jpg


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 :)
 
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