Day-for-night
Day-for-Night (“day as night”), often simply “American night” , describes a process in film art in which the viewer is given the impression of a night shot from film scenes recorded during the day or at dusk. This can already be done on the film set by a certain light guidance - mostly punctual, spot-like lighting or highlights , always with very large light units (in broad daylight) - and additional technical manipulations on the camera such as underexposure by 1½ to 2 f-stops, use of lens filters as can also be done additionally in post-processing through color matching . In both processes, the general brightness is lowered, the contrast or the gamma increased, whereby the point lighting of the scene due to the now much steeper range of contrast due to the "drowning" of the dark parts of the image to what appears to be black, has such a concise effect that the optical illusion of a night arises; In addition, the blue tones are often overemphasized ( "moonlight effect" ).
The film scenes appear mostly artificial, especially due to the remaining hard shadows or other features of a daytime recording such as B. Visible clouds. This technique was often used in US television series productions; one therefore also speaks of "American Night".
In the case of a simple DV camcorder , however, this principle can also be useful, since night recordings are not easily possible with non-professional digital cameras and thus a “day-for-night” recording often looks more real than a noisy recording in the semi-dark.
Because they look much more realistic, night shots are increasingly being shot at night; this is called "Night-for-Night". In very rare cases (re-shooting, lack of time), recordings have to be made at night that should look like day in the film. These are often just close-ups and are then logically referred to as “night-for-day” .
See also
- The American Night (Original title: La Nuit Américaine) is an Oscar-winning French feature film about the production of a feature film. Here u. a. some film techniques, including the eponymous one, are presented en passant.