There's a movie out there with that exact name.

It helps to be old. The movie Day for Night came out in 1973, and I saw it back then.

Ty so much. I even saw that movie last month

A piece of dark, course, heatproof cloth was placed over the lens of the camera. different grades of cloth produced varying levels of darkness.

In the old black and white days, it was simply a matter of underexposing the film. But today, there are more sophisticated techniques.

Just last night I was watching TCM film with Bette Davis and they used this technique. I see sharp contrasts, light, shadows, etc in the middle of the night and it drives me nuts!! I can't follow the film since the lighting is so fucked up. I am an illustrator and a very visual person so this is probably more irritating to me than most people. The same goes with watering all the surfaces of roads, streets, sidewalks, etc to make it look new or something. All it does is look wet AND ridiculous since nothing else is wet. Also, very annoying as far as visuals go.