Day-for-Night

Day -for- Night ( " day as night " ), often simply an "American night ", refers to a method of film art, in which, from the recorded time of day or twilight scenes the viewer the impression of a night scene is conveyed. This can be done both already equal on a film set by a particular lighting - mostly localized, spot -like illumination or highlights, always with very large light units ( in broad daylight ) - and additional technical manipulations of the camera, including underexposure by 1 ½ to 2 f-stops, use of lens filters, as well as supplements, in color matching the post. In both methods, the general brightness is lowered, the contrast, and raised the gamma, where the selective illumination of the scene due to the now much steeper contrast range by " flooding " the dark parts of the image affects so succinctly apparent black that the optical illusion of a night arises helpful to be additionally often the blues over-emphasized ( "Moonlight " effect ).

The movie scenes are mostly artificial, especially by remaining harsh shadows or other features of a daily intake, such as visible clouds. This method has been frequently used in American television series productions; it is therefore also called "American Night ".

In a simple DV camcorder, this principle can be useful but also because night shots with non-professional digital cameras are not readily available and thus a "Day -for- Night" recording often seems more real than a noisy recording in semi-darkness.

Because they look much more realistic night scenes are now more and more also actually filmed at night, this is called "Night -for -night ." In very rare cases ( reshoots, lack of time ) at night recordings to be made, which should look like in the film days. This can in principle be only of spatially very limited scenery, and are often close-ups and then logically as "Night - for-Day " means.