Group Project: Developing the Night Scene

During the planning stage we agreed that the scene should be set and filmed at night. There were several practical reasons for this, compositing the cityscape would be more effective with the shadows, we have greater control over the lighting and matching the lighting to the digital assets, as well as less pedestrians on location. However due to technical issue we were unable to procure the camera equipment over night and unable to film as planned. In response to this we elected to film in the early evening and attempt to recreate the night effect digitally. This decision held several of the benefits that were originally planned, less people, lower lighting conditions making it easier to create shadow, and clear light sources. So if necessary if the creation of the night scene went unsuccessfully there was always evening footage to fall back on. Early test looked promising that the night effects would work. By applying Levels with individual controls I was able to adjust the individual RGB values of the white in the scene, this allowed me to darken the scenery, from there matching the effect with blue screen footage using Levels and Hue and Saturation controls I was able to match up the two layers. From there I added shadows and hue and saturation to the other assets.

The first test appears like it would work and work well, the perspective matched up and the darkened scene helped hid the edge between the foreground and background.

The subsequent test made it apparent that the overall treatment wouldnt pan out. In this particular image I had to use two layers of the same image to try and create an even spread on the applied effects, because of the contrast between the building and the highlighting on the actor, applying the effect to just one layer made an overly dark image.

Here I had to create multiple layers of the same image, to try and create the sense of the actor moving from a lit

room to the dark outside. However overall it just came out black.

The final tests were of the field scenery on its own, I was successful in creating a darker scene, however from previous tests it was clear that the final product would far too dark view.