Night Scene Lighting Hacks Every Filmmaker Must Try

Recreating an evening scene is a challenge filmmakers frequently face, and it typically occurs — during the day! That’s because the majority of your night scenes are shot indoors, during the day. Therefore, it’s important to have some night scene lighting hacks to make the entire process come together more smoothly and efficiently. These night scene lighting hacks will help you achieve success are are certainly a must for filmmakers to try!

1. Recreate Color-Temperature-Blue (CTB) gels

For as long as most of us can remember, the night scene has been depicted by blue colored lighting in film.

So, if you’re going to recreate a night scene, or create a night appeal on the set, you’re going to need some color-temperature-blue gels to put on your lights to produce the nighttime look.

But these can be expensive, or you may have forgotten them, or maybe you just don’t have them at all. You could add blue to the light in post-production, but that just adds more to the post-production work and could increase total editing cost.

Instead, recreate the CTB gel look by using some items you’ve already got around the house.

Several options exist as follows:

• Grab an old CD case that is blue, and use it as your gel.
•  
• Color a piece of plastic blue with a Sharpie or with a dry erase marker and use it as your gel.
•  
• Grab a blue drinking glass and use it to filter your light through.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way! Night scene lighting hacks like this allow you to recreate the blue lighting of the night without any added investment on your part.

2. Create a Night Look, with a Single Light

You’re prepared to shoot, you know that you want to create a night scene, but there’s one problem – you’ve only got 1 light. Just one. That’s all! 

It’s not impossible to achieve night lighting with a single light, but you’re certainly going to need some night scene lighting hacks to pull this off! Here’s what you need to do:

• Place your single light source behind a curtain or other object so that it is refined and only illuminates a single area of the set. 
•  
• Move your actor toward the light source, so that the light only sheds some visual elegance to the actor’s face, head, or silhouette. 
•  
• Don’t try to use your single light source to light the entire room or set – it won’t work, and you certainly won’t have a scene that looks like the night.
•  
• Make sure the light illuminates the face, not the feet!

3. Mask White Walls & Use Golden Light

Night scene lighting hacks often place too much focus on the actual lighting and not enough focus on the surroundings.

So for this hack, we throughout it was important to explain to filmmakers why the walls are just as important as the lighting that you’re using to recreate your night scene. 

White walls have the power to become oversized light reflectors if you’re not careful.

In fact, if your trying to create a night scene and you’ve got limited lighting to work with, one of the best considerations you can make is to mask the white walls so that they do not become a backdrop for reflection of your light.

Use curtains, pictures, or other items to mask the white walls of the room you’re shooting in. Large, open, white walls become giant sources of light reflection if you allow them to.

Instead, aim for walls that are filled, colored, or otherwise masked to prevent your night light from reflecting in the wrong ways.

Now, use your lighting to produce a golden light that can be directed across a wall in a single, elongated shadow replicating the setting sun. This light should cast from a window to emulate the sun that has set outdoors.

In this example of night scene lighting hacks the most important thing we want filmmakers to know is that when setting the night lighting of a scene you’re best off focusing on a single splash of light that can be used to mimic the moon or the setting sun rather than attempting to illuminate the entire scene.

Keep it simple and you’ll have a stronger chance of success.