DAY FOR NIGHT TECHNIQUE
Fury Road relying heavily on the method. John Seale, AM, ASC, ACS shot the film’s nighttime sequences in broad daylight and relied on post-production to alter them to night. Simon Duggan, ASC, ACS later employed some of the same visual techniques for Furiosa . “I remember, as a camera assistant, working with a DOP shooting day for night using black & white film,” claims Duggan. “He used a red filter, which increased the contrast, blackened the blue skies and
lightened the skin tones. He added a lot of light to brighten faces further, although it gave a great, surreal nighttime look.” Duggan explains that the day-for- night approach for Mad Max was actually established on Fury Road with help from the post-production supervisor Andrew Jackson. “He worked alongside John Seale and director George Miller to find a way to shoot day for night once they’d realised it was impossible to light the vast desert locations at night.”
Different from the expected approach of underexposing the original image, Jackson did tests overexposing the footage by a couple of stops to capture all the shadow detail, yet avoid clipping the highlights. “From there, he brought down the whole image to create this nighttime feel. As there was still plenty of shadow detail rather than crushed black shadows, it was very convincing,” adds Duggan. “If you go outside in moonlight, it is surprising how much detail there is in the shadows. We were also careful to keep the sun out of the frame. The skies were then selected separately so they could either be pulled right down in exposure or otherwise replaced with a new night sky full of stars.” As with Fury Road , George Miller also added a blue tint to the day-for- night sequences in Furiosa for a more theatrical feel. Duggan captured the film primarily with the ARRI ALEXA 65 and ARRI Prime DNA lenses. “We also used RED V-RAPTORs and KOMODOs when we needed lightweight cameras for high speed, Steadicam, handheld and tight rigs on the picture vehicles. With those cameras, we used a mixture of Angénieux, Canon and ZEISS glass.” Duggan found that three-quarter backlight and cross light worked best.
LIGHT IN THE DARK Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (above) was primarily shot on ARRI ALEXA 65 with Prime DNAs; an innovative rig (below right) helped the ambitious shots in Nope come to life
ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH
W hile practical techniques never really go out of style, advanced camera sensors have made day-for- night shooting much simpler. Models like Sony’s VENICE 2 and the Extension System Mini see infrared wavelengths, capturing details that a traditional camera – which often filters out IR – might not. Plus, they colour-correct in real time rather than forcing the colourist to fix it in post. “In Nope , DOP Hoyte van Hoytema, ASC, FSF, NSC combined an infrared digital camera with a visible light film camera for the day-for-night scenes,” describes Will Newman, cine business development and Digital Media Production Centre manager at Sony. By designing a parallel stereo set-up and later combining both images, Hoytema produced a ’much more realistic day-
for-night experience‘ than if he’d used a single device. Though counter-intuitive, “having a camera that performs well in low light” – such as the VENICE 2 – “is essential,” argues Newman. “The image can get quite dark, depending on the infrared light levels. Many things affect how a camera sees IR light, and it’s not always what people think,” he adds, encouraging filmmakers to test their lenses on location. According to Daiki Yamoto, content creation business development manager at Sony, there is no ‘correct exposure’ for IR shooting across the board. “The choice of ND filters is important,” he stresses, as some can appear almost transparent in the IR range. Like Newman, Yamoto reiterates that repeated testing is critical in getting day for night right.
Beyond that, filmmakers should, as much as possible, control for exposure in their scene. “The sky is often much brighter than the ground during the day,” says Newman, while ‘that’s not the case in natural nighttime’. Similarly, moonlight is cooler than sunlight, and the sun’s shadows are stronger than the moon’s. Accounting for these differences – and doing what needs to be done in post – can ‘make or break the illusion’ created by day-for-night footage. And, like any trick, it works best when it goes unnoticed.
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DEFINITIONMAGS
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