I had read about the work that Yedlin had done on Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019) and Hoytema had done on Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022), and how they had shot a lot of the night exterior shots during the daytime. This proved to have many advantages; in reality, at night, the sky is lighter than the landscape and using lights to light up the landscape makes an unrealistic image. Yedlin, specifically, accomplishes this by filming the same subject at both day and night and then compositing the two frames over each other.
I admired the look this created a lot, and wanted to try it to see if it could be a technique I could use in my narrative work.
This shot for example:
First I shot the frame during the day, in sunlight. Then, in DaVinci Resolve I split that shot up into different parts so I could control the exposure of each part of the frame.
The sky in the background:
Then lowered the offset and gain, so it resembles the night sky:
The sunlight on the house in the foreground:
Again lowering the exposure so it resembles moonlight:
The ambient light part of the house:
Also lowering the brightness of this part, so it matched with the other parts of the frame:
Then, once it became dark, I positioned the camera to match the daylight frame, now showing interior lights affecting the surroundings:
After adding this to the project I overlayed it and it created the final product:
I’m pleased with the results, and how realistic it looks. It’s subtle but adds a lot to the frame. I will definitely be using this for future projects where the ‘night sky’ can be seen.