Color Balance & Night Time

[filmny500]

I'm coming upon a shoot for my last semester project. It has a lot of night scenes. I was just wondering with my exposure how can I replicate the feeling of eyes adjusted to darkness? I was thinking of underexposing my key a little more then a stop (may 1 and a half) and letting darker areas go more then 2 under. Then bringing it down in post. Is that a good way of doing it?

AND

I recently shot on 250D. The stock was beautiful in skin tones and color. I had an unsupervised transfer and the timer added blue as if I shot tungsten film uncorrected. Why would this happen? I shot a grey card at the head of each role. For instance one role was dedicated to shots done in sunlight so I shot the card in that light. The other was for shots done in the shade under trees, etc. and I shot the card in that light. I numbered the sunlight roll 1 and the shade roll 2 so the first thing they transferred was the sunlight roll. The way I positioned the card was flat, no glare, it was brand new 18% grey, and had it lit by the sun+sky or if I was in the shade then that light.

Thank You

 

[David Mullen ASC]

If the grey scale was transferred incorrectly, then they made a mistake or ignored it. If you had instructed them to time to the grey scale, you can get them to redo the transfer.

Dailies can look blue-ish if you shot the grey scale under the rising morning sun, while it is warm, but then shot in the shade. But it sounds like they just ignored the grey scale shot in the shade.

Eyes "adjusted" to darkness sounds like they'd be seeing normally in terms of brightness, doesn't it? Afterall, the eyes have now adjusted. Sort of depends on the look you want and what the eyes are adjusted to -- seeing by moonlight? Seeing by candlelight?

If you mean that you want the room to feel dim, underexposed, but with some detail, then yes, some underexposure combined with further darkening in post works better than simply underexposing a lot. It's certainly safer and less grainy that way.

 

[filmny500]

Thanks. Yup, I want the feeling of eyes adjusted to moonlight for some scenes and streetlight for others, giving the feeling of night. My concern just was 1 stop and a third under key would not be enough (which it isn't.) But I wanted to be postive that if I have a ratio where my fill is dark and my key is a little underexposed (basically dim lit areas with dark areas) I could darken further in post to get to the feeling I want, rather then ending up with to grainy or thin of a negative.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, you can easily take footage that is one-stop underexposed and darken it further in post to the level you like.

You can even try shooting your grey scale one stop overexposed so that they make everything one-stop darker to compensate; just warn them that the footage following the grey scale is supposed to look very dark. I have a bunch of signs on 8 1/2 x 11 card stock with notes in big bold letters like:

NOTE TO COLORIST:
PALE BLUE MOONLIGHT -- KEEP DARK

or
SLIGHT GOLDEN TONE
or
DEEP ORANGE FIRELIGHT
or
DEEP BLUE TWILIGHT
or
KEEP GREEN CAST TO UNCORRECTED FLUORESCENTS
etc.

It's all in a binder. I shoot the sign after the greyscale.