How to shoot day for night with a street light

This article explains how to shoot day for night (the film making technique of shooting during the day and making it look as if it’s night), in a different way to the usual way of shooting day for night.

The usual way, or at least a very common way, of shooting day for night, is to adjust the controls on the camcorder to create the impression that it is night.
This system is pretty well known and doesn’t really justify any further explanation in this article.

Shooting day for night with street light

However, using the camcorder controls to shoot day for night isn’t very convincing, it doesn’t produce very convincing results – the ‘night’ never quite looks like night. This isn’t just a personal view, it’s a view that’s shared by quite a few people.
One solution is to shoot at dusk or sundown – at a time when it isn’t quite day and it isn’t quite night.
This is the system that I use, although I have to admit that it isn’t a perfect system.
Depending on your country or region there might only be half an hour of dusk or sundown.
This doesn’t give you much time, so you have to plan the shots very carefully before the shoot – you have to avoid wasting valuable time.
I used this system when I was shooting my short film ‘Spirit Of The Wind,’ a horror\comedy short film which can be viewed on my main Effects Films website.
More specifically I used it when I was shooting the ‘spirit’ moving across the night sky.
Ideally, you should have a shooting script, a list of all the shots that you plan to take.
A great way of creating a shooting script is to rehearse ths shots that you plan to take at night during the day, although this isn’t always possible.
One way of creating day for night or giving the impression that it is night is to include a street light that is switched on in your day for night shots.
The fact that it is dusk or sundown half-convinces people that it is night, and the street light completely convinces them that it is night.
That’s the theory, anyway.
When you think about it, it’s just basic psychology.