Glasses Reflections Painting Out

[Dan Hasson]

Hello,

I am editing a project for a client. We have issues with reflections in the characters glasses of the tripod.

Super low budget job but they said they used a polar filter to sort and took other measures but unfortunately things didn't work out that way..... 

The images are from three points in the shot (which runs for 2mins and 7 seconds in total) which show the various points the reflection appears.

Click here for higher res versions of the images.

I'm a one person post team on this so will have to do it myself. Can anyone advise on painting out or other methods to sort out these reflections. In my mind it's something like using spot healing in Photoshop but of course this is 24 frames per second for just over two minutes, not one frame...

I am using DaVinci Resolve.

 

Thanks,
Dan

[Mark Dunn]

Glasses reflect- personally I would certainly accept it visually. It doesn't look too intrusive. Presumably this isn't going to be a continuous shot but will be a few seconds at a time which reduces the amount of attention it will get.

No idea how this would be dealt with as a VFX shot but it is a tremendous amount of work. Just make sure any extra work is charged for so they get the idea that you solve these problems beforehand.

Edited October 19, 2023 by Mark Dunn

[Dan Hasson]

13 minutes ago, Mark Dunn said:

Glasses reflect- personally I would certainly accept it visually. It doesn't look too intrusive. Presumably this isn't going to be a continuous shot but will be a few seconds at a time which reduces the amount of attention it will get.

No idea how this would be dealt with as a VFX shot but it is a tremendous amount of work. Just make sure any extra work is charged for so they get the idea that you solve these problems beforehand.

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately this is a continuous shot... 

Like I mentioned there is one take that was the final where this was dealt with and not a problem. However, the actors performance was not as good... 

Yeah I'm not sure either. The only thing I can think of is making a tiff sequence and frame by frame painting it out in Photoshop. Of course the hours will massively clock up this way!

Thanks,
D 

[Mark Dunn]

I still say it may well be visually acceptable. Maybe you could ask a few non-experts what they think about the shot, without prompting. If they mention the reflections, then I'm wrong.

As to Photoshop, this is almost an animation job and not what it's intended for. As I said I know nothing of these things but I wonder if there is an effects plugin meant for a job like this. Does "power windows" mean anything to you? They're mentioned on the forum.

This? I could be completely wrong.

 

Edited October 19, 2023 by Mark Dunn

[Dan Hasson]

9 minutes ago, Mark Dunn said:

I still say it may well be visually acceptable. Maybe you could ask a few non-experts what they think about the shot, without prompting. If they mention the reflections, then I'm wrong.

As to Photoshop, this is almost an animation job and not what it's intended for. As I said I know nothing of these things but I wonder if there is an effects plugin meant for a job like this. Does "power windows" mean anything to you? They're mentioned on the forum.

This? I could be completely wrong.

 

Hey,

Great idea! I'll show some friends and family and not prompt as you say.

Yeah I've tried power windows and adding some blue to reflections. Quite tough as it was shot on a tight lens (90mm) and whenever the actor moves, their movements are quite big making the tracking quite tough. 

Like I said I'll try your first suggestion and go from there. Thank you for your help Mark!

Best,
Dan

[charles pappas]

If it were me, I wouldn't worry about the reflections much, but I'd put a good number of cutaways in there and fight to the death with the director over them.

That is, unless this scene stacks up favorably with Bibi Anderson's famous monologue in Persona.

[Dan Hasson]

4 hours ago, charles pappas said:

If it were me, I wouldn't worry about the reflections much, but I'd put a good number of cutaways in there and fight to the death with the director over them.

That is, unless this scene stacks up favorably with Bibi Anderson's famous monologue in Persona.

I'll see what could work for some cutaways.

Thanks Charles!

[Dan Hasson]

On 10/19/2023 at 6:13 PM, Mark Dunn said:

I still say it may well be visually acceptable. Maybe you could ask a few non-experts what they think about the shot, without prompting. If they mention the reflections, then I'm wrong.

As to Photoshop, this is almost an animation job and not what it's intended for. As I said I know nothing of these things but I wonder if there is an effects plugin meant for a job like this. Does "power windows" mean anything to you? They're mentioned on the forum.

This? I could be completely wrong.

 

@Mark DunnI used this method and it worked great! Thank you.

It took some time because the head and eye movements were hard to track as it was a closeup on a 90mm wide open.

I would cut the shot up into moments where the actor was still enough for the tracking of the power windows to be consistent. This varied from 15 frames or 4 seconds or 7 seconds. Then I added some blur to the power windows. To blend the cut up film I would add a cross dissolve wherever I cut so each time the new power window appeared on a cut, it would blend. 

In the final grade we have pulled the shadows down and there was enough eye light to keep the actors eyes lit.

 

We showed to a couple of people without telling them and no one noticed when we asked after. One person who had seen the original clip watched the edited version and again did not notice.

Thanks for everyones help and hope what I wrote above can possibly help anyone at some point.