Asking the valid question of why I shouldn’t shoot at night will lead you to the same answer, you lose sight of what you’re looking for. No details, no shadows. But if you do it this way you can explore the feeling of darkness and still pick out the wonderful elements on full display under the cloak of darkness!
To begin with I advise that you underexpose your shot a couple of stops, that is of course if your camera has a decent dynamic range.
For me it was a clear and bright day so I made the shot a little darker, with a cooler appearance of nightfall.
I then brightened up the shot by giving it a daylight effect. This took me back to a moderately similar look of the original day.
Next I turned up the temperature and added a touch of saturation, this way the daylight comes back but with a nice contrast separating the sky from the surface.
Moving into after effects, but before getting stuck into colour correcting, I needed to undertake one of the primary steps in adjusting the sky. This helped boost the night effect considerably.
Because it was a moving shot I had to track the camera. I then created a camera and placed my sky image as a 3d layer on the timeline. Pushed it back as far as possible, and scaled it up maxing out the numbers in order to ensure it looked natural.
After enlarging it correctly. I duplicated the main layer, turned off 3D tracking and dragged in colour range effect. I then applied the colour range effects and separated the sky.
Now for some magic! By turning on the sky and inserting it to the timeline I masked the top part of the sky and feathered it out to add that distant effect making it look more appealing.
At this point I focused on matching the colour by taking the temperature down and the highlights back. Once you dial these highlights back you’ll notice an exponential difference in tone of the visual. It merges pretty effectively, but with my image the hair was slightly problematic because of the manner in which it was sitting. However, by taking away some of the opacity of the sky and darkening the full picture it was relatively accurate.
The next step was all about playing around with the sliders of the cooler range effect to work out the most authentic look. After much deliberation I settled on the best version I could identify.
One of the most pivotal components in getting this effect to work is making sure your sky is as precise as possible. In my case I had to replace my specific sky numerous times to determine which one worked best.
I did some colour grading based on my preference. It’s up to you, but my advice is grade based on your own style and tone. Just don’t involve coolers the don’t compliment each other.
Finally, with the ink transition I placed my day layer above my night layer. Then on top of that, I have the day layer drag the luma matte over the ink layer. By the way, I pulled the ink clip from stock footage in Envato. There’s plenty of options out there, this is just the place I lean towards.
Lastly, I took the duplicate from the day layer to separate the talent from the background, and then animated the opacity to fuse the talent from night to day with the backdrop.
And that’s it! It’s never as hard as you think. Either way, I’ll be here to guide you for more tips and suggestions that can help navigate these tools.
Check out the video, and if you want to see more content like this don’t forget to hit that subscribe button!
I really appreciate your work. the whole point very easy to understand.