Turning lights off in After Effects?

[potato]

In the process of making a short film with a friend and a lot of the filming is at night.

Anyways, do any of you guys know how to turn off street lights, or just lights in general using After Effects? Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[jonnywb]

Hey... I'm no way near qualified to answer this :p
...but I'm thinking that it's gonna be pretty hard to get the lights down like you said... the best thing i can think of, would be to film in in the day and use after effects to 'turn the light down...'

This episode should help you with that:
http://revision3.com/filmriot/day4night

(I'm sure someone else has a better idea about it though...)

[danielmiller]

you could try a luma matte. Duplicate the footage, on the top layer make the footage black and white, then use levels/curves to jack the contrast way up so the street lights are white and the everything else is black, then set the bottom layer to luma matte (not sure if it would be inverted or not) and that should cut out the light from the scene. Make a third layer of the footage do some cc work and see if you can get it to look like the light is off. put that layer on the bottom and you might have a workable solution.

[scoobydiesel]

I would honestly say film prior to the lights coming on(from before night fall) and then just add the night effects, but since you have already filmed im guessing you wont want to film it again :-p