cinematography Night Filming

TLMAlexGro

TLMAlexGro

I was wondering if anyone has some tips/tricks to night filming. I have an upcoming shoot, and I know it's silly, but don't really have any experience filming at night outdoors.

I'll be using two cameras. A Panasonic AD-DVC 7 and a Sony DSR-250. In a few days I'm going to do some site shooting and editing for practice. I would appreciate any help so I don't look like to much of a fool in front of my crew :).

This is going to be a night-for-night shoot. I'm just grasping for basics and noodling around google not getting much help.

Thanks in advance! And I'll post my pitfalls/successes after the shoot.
 
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Don't worry, Will. You made your point well, and I'm in complete agreement with you. Sputterwall is still trying to defy physics, but we should not discourage him, because this is how many of us learn.

Speaking of "nightshot", I don't believe you ever get something for nothing. Less light means more gain, and a poor signal to noise ratio. If the noise doesn't matter to the producer, then it's his perogative.

For those of you who want optimal quality from your video/film cameras, light is your paintbrush ... good, strong light means bright, clean images. Just like with audio, you want your signal to be well above the background noise level.

Sputterwall: Your DOS/GUI analogy doesn't really work. I, for one, am not stuck in the old ways. I've done many experiments like you are doing. I don't wish to discourage your research, but some of the people on this forum speak from a wealth of invaluable experience. You may not want to discount them too quickly.
 
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It is about using nightvision because it responds to light more like the human eye at lower levels
Click to expand...
Sorry, but I have to disagree here. The light sources are all severly burnt out because the camera is exposing for the shadows. The same rules apply here as in normal shooting modes. The entire problem, as I described earlier, is the disparity between light sources and shadow that our eyes deal with independantly. My vision is nothing like your test shots. Aside from sensitivity to infrared, your test shots look just like images shot with ultra high gain, or super high speed film. The infrared sensitivity just adds another source of hotspots and more deviation from human vision.
 
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Thank you oakstreet.. I'm glad you understood my point.

As an aside, I'm all for breaking the "rules" of film making.. BUT firmly believe that you must understand the rules before you can choose to break them (for creative reasons). Know what those rules are and why they exist, so that you can break them purposefully for a valid reason. But that's another discussion altogether.
 
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Shoot at night. Nothing wrong with a night shot where you can't see anything... it's night! Use it to your advantage. The sound is 50% of the film. Sticks cracking as they walk, etc... build the scene with sound.
 
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I have clearly asked twice if anyone else has had experience using nightshot. So far, I am the only one who has said they have any experience working with it. I have over ten hours of nightshot footage
Click to expand...

Just to clarify, I have hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of night shooting.

My final advice is shoot night at night, unless it's a few very carefully composed and controled shots. There's a whole different feel to footage shot in darkness as opposed to day for night.

Scott
 
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Sputterwall,

Thanks for the clarifications. Sorry for the misunderstanding and thanks for posting those stills. They can be valueable to doc shooters who have to make the most of availlable lighting.

Scott
 
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I just wanted to give a quick update. We've doubled out light power thanks to you guys and we're going to give it our best go Saturday night. I'll be sure to post pics/clips as soon as I can and let everyone know what issues/successes I had. I haven't run the tests I wanted to, just some small ones, and now I've run out of time :).

Thanks again!
 
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Here's some shots. The first two are from the Sony DSR-200A and the last one is from a Panasonic AG-DVC7.

screenshot.jpeg


screenshot2.jpeg


screenshot3.jpeg


I took some of the worse shots to show what went wrong. First the lighting was more over powering from the right side as you can see by the shadows. We had limited power and tripped the breakers once so I was gun shy about trying to get more on.

It would have also been better if we were shooting mostly with the lighting at our backs. Also, these were the less expensive Home Depot lights, but I have to say, I'm not really sure the price for the real lights is worth the quality for the point we're at yet.

In use: 3 X 500 Watt, and 2 X 250 Watt

Should have had some more, but I'm happy with how it came out. Any comments are fine, you can be brutal :). Any questions I'll try and answer the best I can. I also post a clip update when I can.
 
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It would be easier to trick your audience, if you kept the pseudo light sources out of the picture. It's really tricky to get the lighting to look right, when the fictional light sources are in the frame.

If there is a next time, you might try framing your shots tighter to leave out the lanterns, then set your key light from the lanterns POV. Set up your wide shots with less light so the lanterns appear as light sources, and keep them brief. This really is a tricky business. I think one could do about 10-20 practice runs and still find areas for improvement. Then, of course, when it came time to do the real thing, it would rain. :(

p.s. I still those campfire clips if you want to superimpose some flames in the foreground. I'll mail you a DVD, if you can use them.
 
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You have lit the darkness there...I would have stopped down just a smidge...some of your highlights are blown out.

You may have considered putting one of the larger ones up higher somehow with some blue in front of it to simulate moonlight streaming down. Then placing a lower wattage light in front of them to illuminate the talent (practicals are visible in the shot). And a couple more behind to illuminate the trees behind as if falloff from the lanterns (no, real lanterns can't throw that much light), hidden by the talent.
 
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I would agree with what the previous two posts suggest (if and when there's a next time).. However, with what you did get, I'd say it's probably still workable as is.. maybe drop the gamma a bit to darken it up a little more, a subtle blueish "night" filter correction might help too, but probably wouldn't be needed..

I'll mess around with 'em in premiere a bit later tonight and post a couple alternatives with details of what I did to 'em if I can find a better look.. but for your first try, without doing test shots previously it's pretty nifty :)

Good job!
 
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Thanks for the tips guys. I watched the "Monster are due on Maple Street" twilight zone right before shooting. When it gets dark, the lead character carries around a lantern once it gets dark. Even though if you look at it from our perspective you can tell the lighting isn't coming off the lantern, I thought it looked okay.

I didn't realize at the time how much effort goes into creating that. It was a last second decision to put the lanterns in the shot, made a mistake :). I don't think I'm going to need/have time for the fire, but I really appreciate it.
 
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Simple

If you have access to power you can do it with three basic 650 Open Face lights...
1- Bacic bounce (camera position) for ambiance
2- Key simulating fire (amber gel) - Low Angle
3- Back Light

If you have a fourth light - Blue gel and drop it on the background
 
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Here's a quick alteration of one of your clips..

The settings I used looked decent for all of them, but the first screenshot is all blown out and does look a little weird regardless of how we tweak settings.

Anyway.. this is the combination of 4 video effect layers in Premiere Pro, from first applied to last applied here they are with the settings (Default levels unless for all settings not listed):

ProcAmp

Brightness 15.0
Contrast 75.0
Hue 0.0
Saturation 65.0​
Levels

RGB Black Input 0
RGB White Input 255
RGB Black Output 0
RGB White Output 252
RGB Gamma 90
(The rest at default levels)​
RGB Color Correction

RGB:

Red Gamma 0.90
Red Gain 0.90
Green Gamma 0.90
Green Gain 0.90
Blue Gamma 1.30
Blue Gain 1.00
​
Brightness & Contrast

Brightness -17.0​

Original:
screenshot3.jpeg

Retouched:
attachment.php


Obviously more tweaking could still be done, but parts of the footage is definitely workable. :)
 

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The final product finally :). We didn't make it like you guys, but it was fun and I learned alot. Hopefully sometime soon I'll be able to take as good of shots as you guys:

Markham Horror

Hope you enjoy and don't loose your ears to the crickets. I put a thanks to everyone who posted to this thread. It would have been much worse without you guys :). We added a little bit of tint to each shot. I'm going to also post this in the debut forum. Let me know if that's okay, just wanted to close this out and say thanks once again...

Right in the middle my work sent me to California, my cars got towed, the package didn't arrive in England in time, and I was living on 1 hour sleep a night. What a great hobby!
 
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