Make video look like it was shot in a dark room So I'm working on a video that I want to look a bit cooler. It was shot in a normally illuminated room (no special equipment, only normal light bulbs), it looks like this:



With a person sitting in front of the laptop. There are also over-the-shoulder shots with the laptop display being shown.
So, I want to make the video a bit darker and surreal. It does not have to look like it was actually shot in the dark, it would even benefit from looking a bit unnatural and obviously edited. To be more specific, I want the person sitting in front of the laptop (as well as the laptop itself) to be clearly visible, whilst the table, the chair, and everything in the background gets darker and unobstrusive.

I'm using the current version of Premiere Pro. What is the best approach to get that kind of effect?

And please, no lecture on good preparation and such. The recording was done in a rush and the whole video is kind of a last-minute thing. It doesn't have to look perfect, I'm open for suggestions ...
You are lucky that you don't have extreme lighting conditions in your shot, also you're indoors. So it should definitely be possible to get the footage a bit darker looking without making it look weird.
I can recommend working in After Effects rather than Premiere, its far more suited for advanced lighting correction.

I would start by masking the already dark areas of your footage and make them even darker. Try to create a more focused looking light that's coming from the light bulb/screen or whatever light source you want to have. If you want to create new light sources you will also have to make some masks to emulate the way the light would shine on the surrounding objects.
The whole part behind the chair should be a lot darker.
Generally make everything that is already in a shadowy area even darker and lower the brightness of the image overall to a point that feels good.

Also something that should help is this (bit dated) tutorial by Andrem Kramer. Its not perfect but definitely a good help to figure out the workflow:
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/day_to_night_conversion/