Research and planning-test shots showing times we could film our evening/night time scenes

For our trailer we will be doing quite a lot of shooting in the evenings for a low key lighting effect and to match the connotations of a thriller trailer. Because of this I decided to track the light conditions from 3 pm to 8 pm today (25/11/2012) so that I could find out when the best times would be to shoot dark scenes and also to find out how far into the night we can film before it gets to dark to see anything. Below are the test shots I took at different points today.

This is the photo from 3:00 pm 

The lighting is very good is this picture but not at all suitable for night or evening scenes and shots and so we will avoid shooting our darker scenes at this time as it is too light.

This is the photo from 4:00 pm

This picture is a tiny bit darker but not much different to the one above and so we will have to shoot our dark scenes later than 4 pm in order to get the right lighting.

This is the photo from 5:00 pm

Between the hours of 4 and 5 pm it has suddenly got considerably darker as shown in the image above. This picture is sort of dark but still light enough for us to see what we are doing and so 5 pm may be a good time to film our night time shots.

This is the photo from 6:00 pm

As you can see this picture is darker and more gloomy than the one above. Also the lighting at this time suits very well with what we require for our dark scenes and so 6 pm may also be a good time to film the scenes where we need dark lighting. 

This is the photo from 7:00 pm

There isn't much change in lighting between this image and the one above it and so 7:00 may also be a good time to film evening scenes for our thriller film trailer. 

This is the photo from 8:00 pm

This image is significantly darker than the two above it and you can't see much of the image as there is hardly any light. Because of this I don't think we'll be able to film at 8 pm as it is too dark to see what we are doing and therefore anything we film would pretty much come out in pitch darkness which means we'd just be wasting our time. 

From doing these shots today and tracking the amount of light as the evening goes on I have learnt that the best times for us to film any dark evening shots will be between 5-7 pm as this is when it is dark enough to call it evening or night time but not too dark so we can't see what were doing. Also the latest we can film into the night will be around 7-7:30 pm.