Day for night

This article is about the movie technique. For other meanings, see Day for night (disambiguation).

Day for night, also known as nuit américaine ("American night"), is the name for cinematographic techniques used to simulate a night scene; such as using tungsten-balanced rather than daylight-balanced film stock or with special blue filters and also under-exposing the shot (usually in post-production) to create the illusion of darkness or moonlight.

Historically, infrared movie film was used to achieve an equivalent look with black-and-white film.

A great way to achieve this effect is to tune the white balance of the camera to a yellow source if there is no tungsten setting. Another way to make a more believable night scene is to underexpose the footage to the desired degree of night/darkness. This depends on the amount of light shown or believed to be in the given scene.

The title of François Truffaut's film Day for Night (1973) is a reference to this technique.

References

• http://www.videomaker.com/article/10368/
• http://www.videomaker.com/article/8150/
• http://www.moviediva.com/MD_root/reviewpages/MDDayforNight.htm