shooting at night

[tashunka]

How can I shoot a country road scene in the middle of the night so that I get enough light to obtain a usable image (on super8) without looking "lit". What's the fastest super8 stocks available and where are they? Colour and B&W.

[eddie]

You are going to need some lighting:
The Moon? Car headlights? A bicycle lamp?
If you dont mind if its black and white or colour, try black and white, it'll be more forgiving. You could try using a dim lamp and diffuse the light (by pointing the lamp away from actors/scene and reflecting it toward the scene from a sheet of white card, or tin foil) this will just lift the amount of light in the scene without swamping it.
The fastest super8 stock Ive seen is 200, (although Im certain you can get faster, try www.widescreen-centre.co.uk ) this is indoor film, and might be good enough. I filmed the eclipse last year using 40 ASA Kodak colour, and it came out beautifully. (40 ASA is really quite slow film, and it was a DARK DARK few minutes....so its nothing short of a miracle that it came out.)
Alternativley you could get really slow film, and shoot during the day and totally underexpose the film by shutting down the aperature.
OR (strewth, loads of ideas today) I shot some 40 ASA film in the evening, twilight, and this came out very dark,(although the aperture was wide open the film was too slow) it would probably pass as nighttime.

[mattias]

try day for night. use the sun as a back light. underexpose the subject two stops. use a red filter for black and white, skip the 85b in tungsten color and add a blue filter in daylight color. this will make the sunlight look like moonlight. it only works on sunny days when there are hard shadows. you can also try dusk for night, but only if there are lights visible in the frame, like car lights, windows and such. if you have to shoot night for night, you need to light the scene. car headlights is one of the best looking ways to do this.