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AERIAL NIGHT SHOOTING
NEW YORK IS EASY Over New York you could probably shoot night aerials with an ND accidentally left on the lens. There is light everywhere. Not only does each building have multiple storeys, but office workers seem to work late into the night in brightly lit offices with no blinds. There is enough fill flying around to show detail in all the shadows. But back in austerity Britain street lights are selectively turned off, householders draw their curtains, and businesses can’t afford to leave lights burning at night. In Bancroft , Bolton Town Hall served as the police station exterior. But after dark
clean enough to be tweaked in post to bring up the blacks and give even more detail to the architecture. Within 24 hours I’d had the call that strikes terror into any DoP: the shots were unusable. The shadows were almost solid black and any attempt to pull them up resulted in a firework display of sparkly noise. So after a night contemplating becoming a monk, I promised I’d get it sorted. I had two nuts to crack. The first was to find a source of fill to increase exposure in the shadows. That was easy as there was only one option, our local neighbourhood star. Instead of shooting at night, I’d shoot when there was still a bit of twilight bouncing around. But twilight is fickle, limited, and changes rapidly – I needed to maximise the time window I could shoot in. My theory was I could start the shooting as soon as car headlamps and street lights came on, and grade those shots down to look like night. And I could continue to shoot for as long as there was
it was deserted, and all the lights were out. Great for cutting back on overtime and electricity bills, but not so great for cinematography. Without sufficient fill from interior lighting or the minimal street lighting, the shadows remained stubbornly shadowy, hiding any detail in the building exteriors. My second error of judgement was to push the Red ISO to 1600 and to assume that my now-improved SDI monitoring image was a true reflection of the Red Code data image being stored on the Red card. This proved to be a big mistake. In the darkness of the back of the helicopter, the image on my monitor looked
ABOVE An early twilight graded shot.
WITHOUT SUFFICIENT FILL FROM INTERIOR LIGHTING OR STREET LIGHTING, SHADOWS REMAINED STUBBORNLY SHADOWY, HIDING ANY DETAIL IN BUILDING EXTERIORS
DEFINITION MAY 2018
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