Did you open up the aperture on your camera so that the camera let in more light?

Another option is to have a fire outside. Show a shot of something burning or a line of dialogue (those savages are burning cars now). Then you can use bright lights bounced off a crinkly yellow bounce board and have some very nice light.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

Welcome to filmmaking.net!

This is a great learning experience for you.

People watching movies are used to suspending their disbelief. Play around
with different placement of a single light source. The viewer will assume the
light is coming from the moon. Even in an interior room with no windows the
viewer will accept a little light in the scene. Buy a paper lantern and several
bulbs of different wattages. Buy a clamp on work light. Buy some gels and
some blackwrap.

And start experimenting. Have the actors move in and out of the light and
shadows - try backlighting the actors - place the light very low casting all
shadows out of frame.

I can remember playing around for HOURS with different lighting techniques
when I was first learning. It was great fun!

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

I've never tried doing a scene like that, but I'm guessing it could also work to aim the light torwards the roof of the room you're shooting in, to get an even lighting. By closing the diaphragm you can get the scene looking even darker if the light is still too much. And doing white balance on yellow I guess it could help you get a blue image, which is kind of what you see on dark scenes in movies. Blue's reminiscent of the night, I guess.
But I don't know. I repeat, I've never tried it. It's just what I would do if I had to shoot a scene like that ?:)?

I have just finished shooting a film that takes place entirely at night in an abandoned house. The lighting was really tricky. IF its too dark, its hard for the camera to focus and the video quality is lost (at least with my cheap camera). We used 2 large lamp lights which were really powerful... so we ended up covering them with a semi transparent sheet. The lighting was pretty good and in post-production I fixed any color and minor lighting problems in premiere pro cs4. Next time though, i'm going to try filming it when it in broad daylight and apply filters and lighting effects digitaly to make it look like night. I havent tried it yet, but from my editing knowledge, i'm pretty sure it will work out nice. again.. havent done that yet... just a theory.

"There's no point in living if you can't feel alive"

Cameras eat up a lot of light. Just because you want something to look very dark on screen doesn't mean it actually needs to be dark in reality--you can always stop down to a smaller aperture to let in less light. Remember that the human eye can see in the dark a lot better than a camera can, so something that looks just right to your eye is probably going to be way too dark for your camera.

It's surprising how much light some cinematographers pump into night scenes--thousands and thousands of watts. The reason being that they want to avoid film grain or video noise, which you get when you shoot in low light.

The trick is not in how much light is in a scene, but what kind of contrast that light produces. In a "brighter" scene, everything is illuminated more or less evenly, and contrast tends to be low. This is called "high-key" lighting and it's how most television is lit. Nighttime lighting is higher contrast--harsh highlights with very little fill light in the shadows. So to make something look darker without starving your lens of light, be very selective in where you put your lights. Make snoots out of aluminum foil in order to direct your light into pools throughout the scene, allowing everything else to fall off to black (or nearly black). Think about how a street looks at night--instead of being lit evenly by the sun, street lights create pools of yellowish light, surrounded by shadow.

Also think about the colors of light. A lot of old movies used "day-for-night" conventions where they'd shoot a night scene during the daytime and just tint everything a deep blue. That's a load of baloney. When is the last time you saw blue light at night, especially in a city? Most night scenes in reality are lit by orange tungsten bulbs, yellowish sodium-vapor sources, and green fluorescents. Moonlight looks blue in comparison to these sources, but it's actually closer to white (about 6500 Kelvin). Experiment with mixing the colors of lights, maybe invest a few bucks in some Rosco gels to play around with.

The most important thing is to not use too little light, because you'll only wind up creating headaches for yourself. When you're lighting the scene, try looking through sunglasses or a 2-stop neutral density filter to get a better idea of what the camera is going to see.

-----------------
Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com

Re-reading your post, I see that the power is out in the scene you're talking about, so you'll have to get creative with where your light is supposed to be coming from. There has to be SOME light or nobody would be able to see anything--right? So try amplifying that. Moonlight may be a primary light source for you, but it's impossible to actually use the moon as a light source, it's just too dim. So you'll need to set up some lights and diffuse them and balance their color temperature so they LOOK like moonlight.

Other possible sources: candles, flashlights, car headlights, etc.

-----------------
Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com

Generally, when I'm trying to do a "dark" scene, I'll either light the scene in blue, and just rim light the actors, Or else I'll shoot the footage with standard lighting, but use a dark blue filter over the lens, or else I'll do a "day for night" alteration of the shots in post. The way you do that is first switch the scenes to black and white, then place a transparent royal blue layer over them in After Effects.