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Does my new DP have a good way of doing night shooting?

He says he would rather shoot at night rather than doing the whole day for night thing, and night looks a lot better and is more convincing. However I plan on doing some chase and fight sequences, in areas of the woods, where not much light, other than the moonlight, is going to be around. He says it would be much better to use the lights I have, and just use a 1.4 lens for it. My previous DP tried using the 1.4 at night for action, but couldn't keep it in focus, saying there was not enough DOP.

So my new DP would have to keep refocusing during the fights and chases. This would have to be done by a second person while my DP operates the steadicam. He said he would have no problem with that and that the motion blur will mask a lot of the noticeable constant refocusing, to the audience. Should I do it all at night?

I also want to do some night scenes in the city, that are continuous, with the woods scenes, just outside the city. I want shots of buildings with the lights inside turned on, as if it were night. Same with the lights of the street, and the lights on the cars, on the streets. So I am thinking I would have to shoot those at night for sure, and either shoot the woods scenes during the day and make it look like night, or during night. So should I do day for night for the woods, and make it match the look of the continuous night scenes in the city, or would it match better if I did it all at night, and just keep constantly refocusing during the fights?
 
Okay thanks. I don't like the shallow focus look but will use it if I have to.

I know Neat Video was recommended to me before and I saw how it was done, by some collaborators of mine who have it. It makes the image look blurry though and wonder if it's any better than a 1.4 since that's blurry too. But at least with a 1.4 you can still follow focus, so why some filmmakers prefer to have a blurry de-noised image instead?
 
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I dont know, why do some filmmakers prefer to have a hectic handheld image you can't see rather than a steadicam shot?

Ive seen multi-thousand dollar noise plugins on ten thousand grading packages and even that had average at best results, so I can't see how a $99 plugin could be any better.
 
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