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Question about getting the moonlight effect.

H

harmonica44

Shooting at night is tough when you don't have permission, cause then you can't light it. So I was thinking I would shoot for the day, then substitute for night. I want to achieve the blue moonlight effect. So I was thinking instead of putting blue gel over lights, I could put blue gel over the ND filter of the camera, and let the sun shine in and do the work. However it doesn't quite look the same.

I have been using blue cellophane, since I can't find any blue gel in stores, but it doesn't have enough blue, and the sun makes it teal. What if I just use more sheets of cellophane, but then that gets in the way of the lens being able to capture a clear enough picture. I could make it blue in post but I haven't found a feature in After Effects, that can add color without taking away shadow. Although maybe in daylight there isn't enough shadow, to achieve the night effect, anyway. Thoughts?
 
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One thing you can do in-camera is set your white balance to give a blue tint to the whole thing. You do this by setting the white balance so that orange looks white in your camera (or as close as you can get it).
 
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Shooting day for night can work.
Avoid bright skies (or use heavy dark gradients to 'kill the sun')

Adjusting white balanse to get blue images is a first good step.
Clever use of angles while you shoot and curves (to crush black, darken the mid, but preserve tuned down highlights), gradients (to darken skies when needed) in post can really help to make is believable.
Another thing you can do when you are not happy about the colors is first desaturate the shot a little bit and then add more blue. This makes blue more dominant without very profound knowledge about grading.

Good luck!
 
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Okay thanks. Shooting in the early sun rise morning is best for night, cause then there is not so many people around. I have to figure out that white balance thing on my camera. This night scene I want to do for my short might come up again soon. I had to keep delaying cause of finding a replacement actor. So any tips for my camera specifically in case it comes up soon? I have the Canon T2i.
 
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You'll have more information captured to deal with if you set your camera to the outdoor preset, then color it in post... otherwise, your in camera color correction will shove all of your information onto the blue channel and there will be next to no information in the red and green channels... give yourself as much to work with in the footage coming out of the camera, then dial in your look later... you'll be happier with the results.
 
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knightly said:
You'll have more information captured to deal with if you set your camera to the outdoor preset, then color it in post... otherwise, your in camera color correction will shove all of your information onto the blue channel and there will be next to no information in the red and green channels... give yourself as much to work with in the footage coming out of the camera, then dial in your look later... you'll be happier with the results.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with this, just answering how to haha.
 
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Here some examples, note that when the color is applied, the red and green channels dim greatly compared to the originals... the details are perceived in the eye by the green receptors, therefore these get alot of priority in the compression algorithm... removing that information before it even hits the compression makes for really muddy images with no detail, and no possibility of recovering that information.

The color is basically stored as a series of black and white images, so we'll show that here. The greatest amount of detail you can capture will cause the individual color channels (R,G,B) to extend all the way from Black to White without any of the blacks going below 0% nor any of the whites going above 100%... so throwing light into the shadows on set will get you the best information in each of the channels.

Color diagrams are:
Code: 
Color Red
Green Blue

Screen shot 2011-12-15 at 4.22.12 PM.jpg Screen shot 2011-12-15 at 4.22.27 PM.png

Screen shot 2011-12-15 at 4.22.57 PM.jpg Screen shot 2011-12-15 at 4.23.15 PM.png
 
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