I was wondering if you guys had any tips for filming dark scenes, like caves, a creepy house at night, etc.. to produce good raw footage. do most people use lots of lighting, and then make it dark in the editing process? any advice appreciated

IMHO the best thing to do is use lots of lighting and use the camera.

More light gives you the ability to adjust the aperture accordingly, and highlight areas of interest or stylise the shot. This can give (in my opinion) a really nice contrasting image with very dark backgrounds and well exposed subject/textures.

But It all depends on the look you are going for.

Moved - this is a good creative tpye of question.

I quite like the grungy look of dark scenees shot with lots of camera gain, but also twek the footage in post, often adding more blue.

I'd say it's best to use a lot of light and then stop it down. I assume you use a monitor with your camera?

I interpret this as meaning "more sources of light at different levels of output'. And I think you have hit the solution on the head

When I've been shooting dark scenes, I always use a lot of lights, then adjust the aperture accordingly, if you want some of the grainy effect that gaining has, then you can always apply that in a video filter in post

I have been shooting dark b&w scenes using lots of light and editing in premiere pro for the "night gallery" look after the fact -- this works fine.

In color, I wanted to shoot a scene by candle light. Using only the candle light looked fine except the result was too grainy. Turning on my movie lights and making things darker during editing didn't work all that well because the warmth of the candle light was lost. I actually thought of lighting a bazillion candles behind the camera and using them instead of my normal lighting, so that I would at least have the right colors in the scene. I'm not sure if using lots of light and simply playing with the camera settings will give me the result I am looking for, but I'll give it a try.

Zamiotana
Digital Video and Film: Top Ten Ways to Improve your Digital Videos and Films

Oh, what a cliff hanger......I wanted to know how the candle light thing went. I had a simmilar "low light" Idea for a Holloween special but I have no idea how to even start, as far as lighting goes. This sounded really awesome. If you happen accross this let me know how it went. thankyou

It's not the amount of light... it's how you use it.

By carefully placing the units and balancing them with each other, the ambient light and careful use of fill light, you end up with a scene which is within the camcorder's range and yet still looks good on the screen. Post production effects are best left for "fine tuning" rather than simply hoping that the software can turn a brightly lit scene into a romantic candle-lit dinner.

Most candlight scenes in films use special candles (here's a 2 wick candle Movie Candles, Double Wick candles for film, Wax for Set-Dec and FX ) Stanley Kubrick had 3 wick candles made for the scenes in Barry Lyndon