Day for night

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This article is about the movie technique. For other meanings, please see Day for night (disambiguation)

Day for night, also known as American Night, is the name of a (mostly historic) technique in cinematography to simulate a night scene. Mainly intended to avoid costly (and technically challenging) night filming, the scenes were instead shot during the day, with special blue filters and under-exposed film creating the illusion of darkness or moonlight. The technique dissappeared with improvements in film technology and increasing viewer expectations.

While never fully successful in creating 'realistic' night, the special visual style of the American night, often used in early B-movies and Westerns, nowadays has many fans among historic movies cineasts.