You will get more flexibility and potentially better results by producing the DFN effect during your edit session. Just as in the camcorder, you will want to reduce the overall saturation and brightness and colorize with a believable amount of blue. If you have access to three-way color correction and exposure adjustment curves, you'll have a powerful set of tools to help you dial in just the right amount of this effect (for details, see our tutorial comparing the in-camcorder vs. post-processing DFN effect). Depending on your software and experience, you can call it quits here and have a reasonably good DFN shot. If, however, you want to make your shot even more believable, compositing software will be very useful.

When you shoot at night there are things like lamps, flashlights and other "practical" sources to provide the actual illumination or at least suggest the direction, intensity and color of the light you have falling on your subject. These light sources get washed out when you are shooting during the day, so you'll need to add them back, using software like Adobe's After Effects. Here you can insert static or even animate moving light sources like car headlights that otherwise would never show up during the day. By using your camcorder's custom white balance, your editing software's subtle color and exposure adjustments and compositing in nighttime light sources, you'll get all the mystery and drama of a night scene without having to pay for even one non-fat double-shot no-whip mocha.

Contributing editor Brian Peterson is an independent video producer, production consultant, trainer and lecturer.

Keep the sky out of your shots as much as possible, particularly if you are producing the DFN effect in-camera. The sky is darker than the ground at night and brighter during the day. So if your shot includes sky, it'll be a dead giveaway unless you take steps to darken the sky. For instance, if you were shooting sky against a horizon that your subject will not cross, you could use a strong graduated neutral-density filter to bring the sky's brightness down to at least equal to or preferably less than the ground in your shot.

Oh yes, to really sell the technique, don't forget to add a quick cutaway (or two) with a shot of the real moon.

View the tutorial video for Night Light: How to turn the light of day into the dark of night.