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 La Nuit américaine (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 disappeared 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. Use of day for night was very common in early Film Noir shooting. Day for night shooting seems to have become more common in recent years which goes against the trends of a decade ago.

The title of Francois Truffaut's Day for Night (1973) is an indirect reference to this technique, since the film is about the process of movie making in which Truffaut plays the role of the director being made within the film.

[edit] The Tragically Hip album

The fifth album released by the Tragically Hip, Day for Night, draws its title from this technique.