make daylight scene look like night

bakerja wrote on 11/18/2002, 1:43 PM

Does anyone have any tips for making a scene shot in daylight look like a night scene? I have been tasked with editing some footage shot during the day in a side lit barn. It is a childrens musical for Christmas. (manger scene). The lightning is distinctively daylight, and every manger scene I have every scene is at night. I thought I would play around with some brightness/contrast settings, but thoguht I would throw the question to you in hopes of help.

thanks,
JAB

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 11/18/2002, 3:13 PM

Try this:

Get rid of of the brigtness and contrast filter.

Instead drop in the Levels filter. To begin, start out with setting the Gamma to about 750 and push up Input start to about 100. Adjust as you see fit.

Now if you want to get a little more fancy add a overlay track. Drop in the solid black box, stretch to be the same length of your video. Drop down the opacity on the overlay track to about 50%. Just move your mouse over the top of the track until it turns into a hand, grap on to the line that appears and drag it down while holding down your mouse.

Next right click on the overlay track, select edit generated media. For night lighting start with keying in R66 G0 B118. Now play with the alpha channel to get the effect you want. Readjust the levels control. That should get you started.

kkolbo wrote on 11/18/2002, 3:54 PM

The key to looking like night is as was said with the level filter to ge the contrast and shadows that you want. I also found that the key emotional factor is often to get that shaft of light coming in to be a bit bluish while you create some form of other light source inside to be a bit orangish. Folks recognize the difference in color tempature and asumme it to be because of moonlight. It is not easiy to do with overlays and I usually do it while shooting, by white balencing to incandesant light and making sure I have a tungstun light somewhere in the wide shot, but you can do it with overlays and color balencing in post if you have the time and guts.

BillyBoy wrote on 11/18/2002, 4:44 PM

Without seeing the actual video one can only imagine. If your project has the traditional Christmas Nativity scenes and they don't do it with actual lighting which would be better, you can simulate the aura of glory (halo) by using the LensFlare filter when Jesus is born.

Drop in on the overlay layer adjust the size, position and intensity. Move the circle in the work area over the center crosshairs to make a single lens effect or play around the Sunburst preset. Use keyframes if you need to move it. In a similar way you could have a blue white light on the shepherds in the field as they hear about the Christ child from the angel. Again, I don't know how elobrate your play is going to be.

bakerja wrote on 11/18/2002, 6:37 PM

Thanks for the tips. I am printing them now and will post back with results.

I really appreciate the input!

JAB

bakerja wrote on 11/20/2002, 9:09 AM

Well guys I'm not getting the results that I had hoped for. The levels filter does work to a degree, but the faces darken to much in the process. The problem is that the lighting is sooo harsh to begin with that I think I'm stuck. I am playing with the glow filter,luminance setting, using black as color. That actually is helping some but the effect degrades the overall look so much that I may just leave it daylight.

Thanks for the tips.

craigunderhill wrote on 11/20/2002, 1:05 PM

hey, billyboy-

the light rays filter could be very cool too, if they have a dead-on shot of the baby in the manger.

-craig

musicvid10 wrote on 11/21/2002, 12:09 AM

The way filmmakers traditionally have achieved this is to reduce the exposure (brightness) to a just-recognizable level and add blue-cyan masking to simulate night time lighting.

BillyBoy wrote on 11/21/2002, 9:46 AM

I thought you wanted a night time look. Of course the details are drastically reduced the more you drop levels. I don't think they had street lights in Jesus' time.

vx2000b wrote on 11/21/2002, 9:58 AM

Using the blue, will give you the appearance of moon lit.

Sr_C wrote on 11/21/2002, 11:02 AM

JAB,
Could you pull a still from your raw footage that you are trying to adjust? I and I'm sure others would be willing to take a few minutes to play around with it and share what we find. It's hard to suggest specfics without having the actual footage to play around with. -Shon