A particular challenge on this project that I lost sleep over was how we were going to handle the night exteriors. Whatever advantages there may be with shooting night scenes with a digital camera, they were nullified with the addition of the M2. This combined with our paltry lighting resources was a sizable dilemma to circumvent, so we decided to investigate a day-for-night approach. We watched a number of films we knew successfully used the technique, including Jaws and Cast Away, and dissected them for what we felt worked and what didn’t. There was also a wealth of on-line sources we reviewed, including a very useful tutorial on VideoCopilot.net. We felt day-for-night worked best when there was a backlit rim light on the subject with just enough illumination to reveal some detail in the shadows. After some experimentation, we decided this tactic not only addressed our resource and technical limitations, it also worked best aesthetically in relation to our interior look.
During our research, we found that we had to use a different day-for-night approach for each of our subjects, Skittles (the cat being hunted) and the Hunter respectively. For the shots involving the cat, we found that direct sunlight was necessary to give the animal the appropriate rim light to suggest the moon’s illumination; Joe, the cat playing Skittles, is a large Maine Coon with a dark heavy coat that readily soaked up the intense light. The trick was to shoot the rascal with the late morning sun backlighting him to produce the desired silhouette.
Unfortunately we discovered this method would not work with Noah’s fare skin, as the direct sunlight created unacceptable clipping. We attempted to address this issue by balancing the exposure with ND filters and bounce light, but we were unable to get a satisfactory look. What we ultimately worked out was to shoot Noah late in the day when the backyard was in full shadow and add our own “lunar” lighting with three Fresnel lights lined up off-camera. The final look was created by rendering the image black & white and then tinting it grayish blue using Curves and Hue/Saturation in After Effects. Knowing we were going to create the look in this fashion, no attempt was made to color balance the bank of lights with the exterior lighting.
All the tests and preparation proved invaluable to the success of the shoot, which was critical as the crew consisted of only Mattie and myself. When we did deviate from the plan, it incurred little drama behind the camera. We also decided to focus exclusively on Noah during the initial shoot, and then return at a later date for the other actors. Once we had our primary actor wrapped, we immediately roughed out a cut in Premiere Pro; narration was edited first, and then a first pass on the picture. The pickups involving the other actors followed a few weeks later, with the film edited in tandem.
