Don’t Even Think About Converting Your Daytime Footage to Nighttime Footage
‘Day for night’ may seem like a quick fix to make your daytime footage look like it was shot at night, but it’s not worth it. While some modern cinema examples have pulled off good day for night conversions, most of the time it results in poorly colored footage that lacks cinematic quality. Let’s explore why day for night is a bad idea and offer some creative alternatives.
1. The Sky is a Dead Giveaway
The sky is one of the biggest differences between shooting at night and shooting during the day. During the day, the sky is almost always overexposed, even if you underexpose your subject. This means that if you’re trying to shoot a nighttime scene during the day, you’ll need to avoid the sky. It will be solid white, limiting your creative flexibility. Tinting your footage to tone down the white sky won’t work because a real night sky doesn’t look like that.
At night, the sky is brighter on the horizon and very dark in the actual sky. If you’re shooting day for night, there’s no way to simulate this nighttime occurrence other than doing a lot of post-processing, which will take forever and likely look terrible. We’ll discuss this further below.
2. Shadows Will Look Unnatural
Screenshot from Surfaced Studio Day for Night Tutorial
The shadows are one of the biggest problems with day for night conversions. Shooting in direct sunlight during the day creates unflattering shadows, specifically raccoon eyes. Moonlight doesn’t work like that, and when it does, it looks strange on camera.
Other lighting issues occur during the day that don’t happen at night, like harsh reflections and possible lens flares. On the flip side, you’ll also have to worry about portions of your subject being overexposed. You’ll have to crush the whites in post to fix this, but as you can see above, that solution almost always looks bad.
3. The Color Cast Will Look Awful
Image from Lynda.com
Color is where day for night conversions fall apart. At its core, a day for night conversion is either a dark blue filter that’s put directly in front of the camera or a post-processing technique where you give your footage a dark blue tint.
However, no matter how you do it, dark blue footage is not what nighttime footage looks like. There are many colors at night, not just blue. The example above from Mad Max: Fury Road is a great example of poor day for night conversions in modern cinema, but then again… maybe that’s the point.
4. It Will Take a Lot of Time in Post-Production
A still from Video Copilot’s Day for Night tutorial
Despite all the hurdles mentioned above, the biggest challenge to making day for night footage look convincing is post-processing. A lot of work needs to be done to do a good day for night conversion. A good conversion will:
- Do a blanket color grade/correction
- Track and replace the sky
- Rotoscope various silhouetted elements to avoid awkward edges (See Refuge)
- Selectively track and level distracting elements
- Add the film’s specific cinematic grading features
Even after doing all of this, it’s still hard to make your day for night look convincing. Even the best After Effects teachers out there have a hard time making convincing day for night conversions.
Alternatives to Day for Night
Sony a7S or a7S II
The Sony a7S is an incredible camera that can shoot under moonlight. Don’t believe me? Check out this video shot by the a7S:
While you may have some issues with grain and noise reduction in post, the overall color grading is much more convincing than the typical day for night blue filter.
Light the Scene
A still from The Cabin in the Woods. Where is that harsh light coming from?
Who said you can’t light a nighttime scene? Audiences are easy to trick when it comes to lighting. Most people won’t ask where that soft fill light is coming from. Instead, they’ll focus on the content of the film or video as long as the lighting is close.
By using a dim light and a sensitive camera, you can generally get good cinematic footage at night, even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense. A simple battery-powered LED should do the trick in these situations.
What are your thoughts? Do you like shooting day for night? Share in the comments below.
