How is a very dark movie scene filmed?
For instance, if you are filming a thief snooping around or in a house in the dark of night and you want to portray close to pitch black what sort of lighting is used. Do you have any video examples? Thanks
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9 Answers
Special filters on your camera will give the appearance of a night scene when in fact there is enough light with which to see.
If using film (I’m not sure about digital) then just keep the normal lights on, but don’t use any movie lights. Don’t film any bulbs, though, keep them out-of-shot.
If there is enough resources, how about patterns of window lighting timely hitting the subject. Either that or using lighting and under expose the film.
Movies typically use blue light to indicate darkness. Maybe light half the face, and a little of the background. There is no one way to do this. You have to decided if the facial expressions are important, if not, maybe leave everything as silhouettes.
Don’t shoot with normal lights and try to darken it, in my experience this never works well.
I think there was a scene in crocadile dundee where somoone is getting into a tree around a house they’re breaking into. Maybe one in hudson hawk. Examples of night scenes anyone?
There is a feature film by Truffaut called “Day for Night” which shows this technique being used.
C-SPAN films thieves snooping around and bloviating out loud all the time in the House of Representatives. I know that their viewership is down, but they’d love to answer this question.
But as for movies, that’s done with filters.
You just use your camera without any lights in the background. If there are lights, turn em offf. simple as that(:
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