Jordan Peele's latest movie Nope improved 1 filmmaking trick, with massive implications for the future of the film industry. The sci-fi thriller tells the story of two estranged siblings who discover an unidentified flying object hovering above their ranch and abducting their horses in the dead of night. In an attempt to save their struggling ranch, and the promise of potential riches, the pair team up with a legendary cinematographer and a local conspiracy theorist to try and capture evidence of the UFO's existence. Naturally, this involves a lot of shooting at nighttime or in low light.
In fact, the significant number of scenes take place at night was one of the biggest challenges that came with making Nope. This is not an unusual occurrence for film productions, especially those in the horror genre like all three Jordan Peele films, but it does present some unique difficulties when filming. Shooting at night requires an incredible amount of lighting as cameras, digital or otherwise, do not have anywhere near the levels of sensitivity of the human eye in low-light conditions. Thus, extensive night shoots often end up being staggeringly expensive. Often, productions such as Nope, will sidestep the issues presented with night shoots by shooting during the day and altering the footage using a trick known as "day for night".
"Day for night" is a catch-all term for a number of techniques that try to make an image look as if it was captured at night. Examples in the past include purposefully underexposing the camera, to add the illusion of darkness by limiting the amount of light that the camera's sensor captures, and a red lens filter that makes a blue sky look black on black-and-white film stock. What Nope director Jordan Peele and DoP Hoyte Van Hoytema did, however, was completely different to any "day for night" tried before: they strapped two cameras together. Specifically, they used a 65mm film camera to capture the colors and film grain, and an infrared camera to simulate how the human eye perceives night, and layered the two images on top of one another. The results are breathtakingly gorgeous, and Nope stands out as having some of the best "day for night" scenes in film history. The technique used to achieve these shots can also change film production for the better by changing how other productions film "day for night" sequences.
How Nope's Innovation Can Change Film Production (For The Better)
"Day for night" sequences using old techniques can be incredibly controversial. House of the Dragon season 1, episode 7's "day for night" scenes, for instance, received so many complaints from viewers that guides for adjusting their television settings were published. Nope's "day for night" innovation would potentially help to prevent this issue, through the use of the infrared camera.
Instead of relying on a purely underexposed image, or post-production color correction, either of which could make the image hard to make out for viewers, the infrared camera captures an almost monochromatic image that helps to simulate night, without sacrificing legibility. If future projects continue in the tradition of Nope's "day for night" scenes, then complaints about the darkness of night scenes could be a thing of the past. This technical innovation proves that Jordan Peele's best abilities do not just lie in the writing department and makes Peele's next movie all the more promising, whatever it turns out to be. Nope's innovation of using an infrared camera to help a traditional camera to help simulate night not only made Nope's "day for night" scenes some of the best ever, but could also change how the whole industry shoots "day for night" sequences.
