Talk:Day for night

I'm revising the text a bit. Notes as follows:

", making it more obvious that the scene was not filmed during the night." No. No civilian viewer would ever get that. This probably means that night-for-night shooting typically requires wider apertures in the low light, resulting in limited depth of field; so small f-stop = lotsa light, ergo, daylight. Misleading as stated.

"Historically, black-and-white film prints were tinted blue to produce this effect." Redundant.

"some techniques use tungsten-balanced rather than daylight-balanced film stock.^[1]" Not inaccurate, but not clear. Historically, color negative films (Eastman 5254 and later 5247) were tungsten-balanced (3200K) and used out doors with a Wratten 85 filter to correct for the 5000K +/- of the light. In day for night, they left the filter off. Today, both daylight and tungsten emulsions are used, depending on the cinematographer's taste.

"during the so-called "magic hour"." Misleading. Magic hour is evening only, and is favored for the warm light quality and generally drier air, both of which make the day for night gag harder to pull off. Dawn and twilight are definitely used.

"While uncommonly used today, day for night techniques can be made more convincing through such digital effects." Sentence unclear. Is it day for night or digital techniques that are uncommon today? I tweaked the sentence.

"Taking advantage of the dynamic range of the digital cameras used on the production, the shots were then darkened and color-graded a bluish tint in post-production, with the result that detail was maintained in the shadows rather than being clipped, as might happen when underexposing.[7]" I'm leaving this, but I have strong doubts. With image sensors, you do the opposite of film technique: you expose for the highlights and "print" for the shadows. Over-exposed highlights burn out to pure, featureless white. Lower the exposure and all you can get is pure, featureless gray.

I will rework the sample photo supplied and upload the results to Wiki Commons. I'll post here when I've done.

Thanks again.Jim Stinson (talk) 00:21, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for you corrections, Jim. If you spot anything else that needs changing, feel free to fix it without discussion if you think it would be uncontroversial (WP:BOLD). I think most of the corrections and copyediting you've done are pretty self-explanatory. The edit summary should be enough to communicate the gist of it. As for the last item you mentioned, that text is just repeating what's in the cited article, where Jackson mentions how when shooting overexposed 14-bit RAW still images, you can get detail in the highlights, and that the cameras they shot the scenes with would behave similarly. If they're just using the extra wiggle room provided by having extra bits to play with in the RAW format, then it isn't that far fetched to be able to pull detail out of overexposed highlights. --diff (talk) 05:49, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I'll take your word for it. The recent American Cinematographer issue had a long feature about Mad Max but I confess I wasn't interested enough to follow it closely. And thanks right back atcha. 71.63.199.42 (talk) 18:54, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Okay, I've uploaded three other images to Wiki Commons:

Day for night cinema demo stage 1.jpg. CAPTION: Original, unprocessed image.

Day for night demo 2 blue tint.jpg. CAPTION: Bluish tint added by altering color temperature.

Step 3 in demo for Day For Night article.jpg. CAPTION: Image contrast increased.

The 4th image is the already-submitted:

Church and city walls, Santorini, Greece Day for night.jpg. CAPTION: Exposure reduced two f-stops.

Sorry for the inconsistency in filenames. Jim Stinson (talk) 01:08, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Jim. I'll add these to the article when I get a chance (probably tomorrow). --diff (talk) 05:24, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Diff. The added images seem to do the job. Jim Stinson (talk) 21:08, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I would like to emend the postcard section. What's there is just fine; but I'd like to add:

Though the results resemble day for night film and video shots, the techniques are quite different. Instead of reducing the exposure of the print made for the night version, the colorist painted an identical print with darker individual tints. No attempt at an overall bluish effect was made, and many colors are actually warmer in the "night" scene. Convincing bright hot spots were added to the streetlights, which are unlit in the original, and the sky was supplied with fewer, wispier clouds.

I'm posting my addition here, because the HTML text of the section is followed by complex coding for references that I -- what can I say? -- don't understand and am afraid of screwing up.

I am working on unretouched, identical details of the two cards and will supply them to Wiki Commons ASAP.Jim Stinson (talk) 21:17, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I have uploaded two identically framed details of the two postcards to Wikimedia Commons. Their titles are : "On the boardwalk at Ocean City, Md detail" and "On the boardwalk at night, Ocean City, Maryland detail." Could I beg a more competent editor to insert them for me? The captions are, respectively, "Daytime version detail" and "Day for night version detail."Jim Stinson (talk) 00:26, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Since it does involve a different technique, there may well be a better title for the section than what I hurriedly came up with. I certainly won't be offended at whatever changes make the section mesh better with the article (even removal, although I do think it's worth a mention in relation to the topic). --Junkyardsparkle (talk) 21:40, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

On reflection, I decided that my details shots were overkill. I did, however, add to the text of the section, as proposed above. BTW, I see nothing wrong with the section title.Jim Stinson (talk) 20:48, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I have been queried re the rights to use the two postcard images in the article. I went to the appropriate sites and said:

"I did not add this graphic or its companion, so I have no idea of its provenance."

Now I find from an earlier talk page entry that I apparently did in fact upload the images. I'll go over to Wikimedia and try to refresh my memory -- or rather, such memory as I have left.

The provenance of the picture postcards remains confused. I'd like to solve the whole problem by removing the entire section, pictures and all. Postcard painting techniques do not really belong in an article about cinema production procedures. I would make the edit, but several people have contributed to the article and I don't want to act unilaterally.Jim Stinson (talk) 01:14, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

In german it is called "Amerikanische Nacht" = american night, maybe because it was used in many hollywood movies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:16B8:310F:600:5AEB:F66F:9F8F:D0C (talk) 18:38, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

In French it's similarly called "Nuit américaine" (American night). The French Wikipedia page even includes the information that French director François Truffaut made a film entitled "La Nuit américaine" back in 1973. Maybe suitable for an "in popular media" reference? RenniePet (talk) 17:38, 23 July 2021 (UTC)