Making Day for night work

[Jase]

So I just shot some day for night with the red and I feel it looks fine except the highlights of the sky that breaks through the tree line. I was told it's easy to pull that out but I myself have not been able to successfully. On this show we do not have the luxury of having a professional timer so the editor and myself are doing this.

Does anyone have any feedback on this? Any settings they use to pull out the highlights of the sky? What program is best to do this in?

Any info would be great. Thanks.

[Tom Lowe]

Jase, it sounds difficult to pull the highlights from behind trees to me.

Can you post a sample frame here from the footage, and maybe people can offer some suggestions.

[Steven Parker]

As long as the sky not clipped, you should be able to grab it and drive it down in exposure and alter the color. If you're in FCS, the Secondary Room in Color would be a good way to go.

If it is clipped, you'll never be able to do anything with it.

Good luck!

[MSProd]

If it is clipped you should be able to save it by laying it over some medium grey or your hue of choice keyed to the clipping and then once happily composited, pull the previously clipped area down in correction.

[Florian Stadler]

select the sky with a color dropper as an HSL key (Hue Saturation Luminosity) in the secondary room of Color for example. Add some key blur. Dial down highlights of your key selection to taste.

[Charles Angus]

These methods might work. A better solution (better in terms of result, not in terms of ass pain) would be to bring the footage into your compositor of choice and go to town on it. Maybe shoot a plate and comp it in, or just roto the top of the shot and make it really dark.

Again, without a screengrab its hard to say.