'Day for Night'

And I forgot to post the link. Excellent.

Prior to the suggestions of the technique, I believe there is threads similar, that will suggest suitable cheap lighting equipment, that may just swing it for you.

Yet, my question is, is it vital to the story that it would be 3am? Perhaps the sun is just rising at 4am-or the given time, in relation to your shoot date-. With this, you have enough light to shoot, it doesn't harm your story, nor do you take the chance with a relatively limited effect, authenticity wise. But then again, we are creating the illusion...

Jckmn said:

offer their opinion as to whether this still looks '3am' enough

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Looks good enough for me. I'd buy that, sure, assuming that frame is represenative of the rest of the footage.

tips on how to do it better.

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Don't use wildley contrasting colours - such as that white undershirt the fellow is wearing. Sticks out like a sore thumb.

...and lots of other tips in the many threads already here.

Good luck.

Not the best, you can see daylight holes peeking through the tree. Not bad though. Sound helps pull it off too. Throw some crickets in there and start the scene on something totally believable and you will set the evening mood.

Whenever I have to do day for night, I avoid as much as possible shots of the sky for exactly the reason Indie Talk points out. Shoot down from a high angle, sell it with sound and be as brief as possible.

Papertwinproductions said:

Prior to the suggestions...

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The time is pretty integral to the plot, and actually filming at 3am is obviously problematic in that time simply refuses to stand still for my shoot. Of course earlier in the evening can stand in for, say, a Winter's 3am, but, again, lighting is a problem. I just think if this can be done well, it would be the most cost-effective (my being unemployed is certainly a decisive factor).

Zensteve said:

Don't use wildley contrasting colours...

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indietalk said:

you can see daylight holes peeking through the tree... Sound helps pull it off too...

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Uranium City said:

avoid as much as possible shots of the sky... Shoot down from a high angle, sell it with sound and be as brief as possible.

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Cheers guys, I'll definitely take all this on board!

Here's tips for processing the shot you've got. If you use a luma matte on that shot you can select just those hilight dots, feathered by blurring the matte slightly and pull them down to the same green as the leaves around it... I would bleed even a smidgen more color out via reducing saturation, darken the mids and shadows more so that there are defined shadows as well. I've been up and walking around outside frequently of late (renaissance festival time - WOOT!) and the shadows are more widespread and deeply colored, the eyes compensate for the lack of light by using the non-color receiving cones and the hilights seem brighter than the mids due to the fact that the range of the hilights overwhelms the mids - leaving them closer to the shadows.

Like this:
2 layers
- bottom, main color correction for the face
- top, face and shirt garbage matted out (need to expand the bottom a little, the shirt is burning a little. CC3 applied with a luma limiter to catch only the glints of light, highlights, mids and darks dropped to 0. Second CC3 copied from bottom layer to correct the rest to the same points as the bottom layer.

Do a 'day for night' on a cloudy day. You need the diffusion. That's the main thing to remember. You don't want hard-edged shadows...even on a full moon which is the closest thing that will allow you to get away with it.

Sky shots break it completely, but ALWAYS since your budget is low try to write out that scene that's the smartest thing you can do. Why can't the zombies attack them IN the house? Always ask yourself this! If it doesn't have to happen at 3am outside don't bother with it. If you do slap an ND4 filter on the camera and white balance on a yellow card (makes everything horror-blue, great for getting rid of the whiteness of sun light =) This will help with the light leaks from trees in post because most of this crap that you don't want seen will be nearly completely in bokeh and once you jog colors in post it will look much more night-y. What you are really replicating here is the human eye's tendency to have poor night vision anything else you can bounce in your editor. Basically, this combats that super-sharpness that you would get otherwise. You will have to figure out how to stop down your camera the right way, but basically you are trying to get most of the non-subject bits in the background out of focus in the extreme. You cannot replicate THAT effect with color balancing.

You can do actual night shots, but you need a 1.2, 1.4, or 1.8 lens and some rechargable work lights strategically placed. My problem has always been that free actors like to party at these hours, so never got a chance to play this way. If you do this you of course want the lights to indirectly light the subjects with nearly ambient light. Of course, just enough to see the actors and get the shot. Try to use garage lights, and street lights or even lights from passing cars as these are natural nights that do not seem like you are artificiality lighting the scene. The viewers subconscious will just ignore any flags at that point and assume the light comes from the supposed source.

I like the last night footage posted above but it is FAR too clear for a night shot remember how the human eye works our photo-recepteors are dismal at night causing everything not directly in light to blur substantially. The dark is good, but you have to get the blur on the camera since you want the subject in focus but the other garbage appropriately blurred out. And, if you have some homemade zombies you may actually want them to be in the blur somewhat.

Here is what helped me on this issue. Film Riot on youtube, check it out. They show you just how to do this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE-hUAoqtqs