Being To Conservative

[Garrett Davis]

I just recently shot a short film on the kodak 7219 stock. I rate my stock a 1/3 slower and actually shot my first moonlit sequence. A lot of the projects I have shot at school usually involve night scenes which take place in the city. So usually its motivating either practicals or street light coming in through a window. Usually I expose that light at key and let my shadows go 3 stops under. And darken further if I need to.

For moonlight I figured I should underexpose a bit. But I was worried that since I had a frame with a lot of darkness and that my moonlight (coming from the side) would be too dark if I underexposed to much. I only underexposed 2/3 of a stop which did put my shadow side of the face around 3 stops under. I just don't know if I am being overly conservative at 2/3s under. Though I assume I can darken it to the way I want it in post.

Do you tweak a lot in a coloring session? Or do you try to get it in camera the way you want it so you don't have to do much color correction?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

It sounds like you did the right thing, yes, you are being conservative but so am I when it comes to underexposure -- as you said, you can always darken it further in post, it's worse when you are forced to brighten it in post.

How "dark" moonlight should look depends on a lot of factors -- for example, relative to other sources of light, moonlight should look dim. But when the moon is the only source of light in the scene, you can assume that the human eye would have adjusted to that level in order to see what's going on. On the other hand, there can be a story reason for exposing so darkly that you can barely see anything in the frame, so it just depends on the intent and needs of the scene.

In general, with front or side moonlighting, when it's the only light in the scene, I'll tend to underexpose it by only a stop, but that's remembering that I often rate the stock slower, so I'm not actually underexposing as much as that. But one-stop down feels about right for moonlight that is bright enough to see by.

Now in backlit situations, you have to decide how hot the backlight is from the moon, but you are mainly deciding how dark the shadow side should be, assuming you even want to see into the shadows. Sometimes you might opt for fairly low-contrast lighting, a lot of fill relative to the key, so that you can print it down, or underexpose it, for a dim-but-detailed image, sort of that feeling you have a night sometimes that you can see into the dark but barely, that murky look to night. Other times, you want a high-contrast effect with black shadows, maybe to hide things in the darkness.

It also depends on how long the sequence is -- a brief transition shot, it may be more important to sell how dark it is rather than worry about seeing the action, but for a long sequence, with acting involved, you may opt for more visibility. You know what I mean - perhaps someone turns off the lights in the room and the shot continues only for a few seconds, so you just want some sketchy moonlight to keep things from going pitch-black, but otherwise, you are going to be out of the scene quickly so it's unlikely anyone is going to complain about the shot getting too dark.