I have a couple of footage files that where shot at day time but the action (script-wise) takes place at night.
Is there a way to turn the day into night? I've tried with a combination of curves contrast and blue tint but the outcome
was not good....

Any ideas?

Once upon the time, Hollywood used dark blue filters and called that "La nuit americaine", but if you watch the old movies, you'll see that the effect was not very convincing. Maybe it worked somewhat for natural scenes (western movies) shot on B&W.

But with urban scenes, what makes a night shot look like a night shot, is mostly the inclusion of the light sources in the frame. Overexposed lights and blocked shadows are your friends.

markoc wrote:Once upon the time, Hollywood used dark blue filters and called that "La nuit americaine", but if you watch the old movies, you'll see that the effect was not very convincing. Maybe it worked somewhat for natural scenes (western movies) shot on B&W.

But with urban scenes, what makes a night shot look like a night shot, is mostly the inclusion of the light sources in the frame. Overexposed lights and blocked shadows are your friends.

Thank you for your reply,

I'm aware of "nuit americaine" from photography. The footage in question is a close up of soldiers in a field. I have green foliage on the right and uniforms of red black and white on the left. It lacks of contrast though...

yeah usually it is the long shadows and light sources that "make the night" somehow..

but you could try, just an intuition: desaturate the colors , lower the overall luminosity (low key) and maybe rise a bit the contrast..

maybe ur image then gets noisy though ( which also is a hint of low light? haha..) good luck...

No problem: "Day for Night" https://vimeo.com/20036352 (german)

Well, that is an extremely labor intensive way to do it, even with a perfectly static camera.
And it could be improved - the searchlights cast no shadows