eye lights

[Jon Erwin]

I have a problem. I was watching dailies that I shot for a couple of music videos and I really feel that I'm paying to much attention to lighting the location / set (i.e. fog spilling through windows) and not enough atetion on my subjects faces. I feel like I'm just getting lazy.

So on my upcoming projects I want to play close atention to bringing out the eyes of the actors. I want to see straight into there eyes. What are some tricks to acomplish this and what fixtures should I use?

[David Mullen ASC]

Either position the key light so that it catches the eyes better, or add an eyelight. Lots of ways of adding an eyelight -- too many to list. Just keep it low-level so that it doesn't flatten the contrast too much.

 

I notice that Roger Deakins will hardly ever use a frontal fill or eyelight -- he just brings the key light around and softens it for the close-ups so that it wraps a little more around the face. This way the shadow side still falls gradually into pure black to keep some contrast. Same with Storaro.

 

On the other hand, I tend to always use some fill light but knocked way down so that it becomes an eyelight more than anything else.

 

I sort of have the opposite problem -- I find that I learned to light close-ups well early on but it was always hard to light wide shots well on a limited budget. I think one can shoot great close-ups on any budget as long as your actors are attractive or interesting, but making wide shots interesting and well-lit gets harder as the budget gets lower, because art direction and location choice become bigger factors and lighting rigs and units get more ambitious. So I'm trying to get better at my wide shots. With lighting faces, simpler is almost always better anyway.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I must agree with David. I too feel that I'm pretty confident with close-ups and "beauty" shots, but need to get better at the wider stuff.

 

Frontlight, or close to front is always attractive on faces. It is a still, flashlight, Helmut Newton-y aesthetic, but it does work wonders with most faces. It can be achieved in many ways and even hard sources look very good if they're close enough to the camera.

 

When I want real etheral, frontal softlight, I sometimes rig a big frost frame or hang a wide frost filter right in front of the lens. Then I light that from behind (often with flo's) and cut a hole for the lens to peek through. Creates a very nice softlight that doesn't scream "ringlight". Stole it From DP Thomas Kloss when I was watching one of those MTV making-the-video segments..

 

Frontlight is in many ways my safety zone. It always works and almost always looks good. It is however a convention and I sometimes get bored/mad at myself for falling into it. I'd love to get more into feature "dramatic" film lighting, but it isn't always appropriate for music videos.

 

Fortunately I'm beginning to do more commercials and there there's more scope to get away from all that frontal light. But on the flipside, I also must say that frontal light is criminally underused in features. Everyone uses under-, over-, side- or backlighting, but rarely any frontal

lighting. Why?

 

In Alien Resurrection there's a heart to heart between Winona Ryder's character and Ripley - Khondji used a traditional ringlight for that scene, which is really brave actually - you

don't see that a lot.

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, the reason why frontlight is not used as much is that it is dramatically boring even if flattering. It also tends to reduce the feeling of depth and dimension -- I find it works best if the background is very dark.

 

I used frontlight for most of "D.E.B.S." -- often the key light for the close-ups was a Dedolight or a Tweenie right over the lens. I did a similar thing for Leslie Ann Warren's close-ups in "When Do We Eat?" But it gets a bit boring after awhile to use the same lighting on the same person over and over again. Not that the actresses care how bored anyone gets as long as they look good.

 

One thing I learned was to always use a snoot with an extra blackwrap extension on top of the frontal key -- or a topper flag shadowing the light right above the head -- because otherwise the sound man will kill you because everytime the mic dips close to the head, you get a mic shadow on the wall right behind them.

 

Also doing moving camera shots can be hard (and hard to keep realistic if the key moves with the camera) as well as over the shoulder shots. And while you can do it only for static close-ups, it will look odd if in the wide shot, the key was not frontal. So lighting continuity is another factor, along with mic placement, movement, realism, over-the-shoulders, etc. -- stuff that you don't deal with as much with commercials and music videos.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I agree - it can be very boring. But it is sometimes very refreshing to see low set sun exteriors photographed from the other side so that the light is straight in the actors eye. I wouldn't say it's more beautiful, just not so much of a cliche as a constant low set backlit sun.

[Michael Nash]

Also doing moving camera shots can be hard (and hard to keep realistic if the key moves with the camera) as well as over the shoulder shots.  And while you can do it only for static close-ups, it will look odd if in the wide shot, the key was not frontal.

I just re-watched The Replacement Killers again the other night, just for this very thing. Overall the film is lit in a style that's appropriate for an action movie, but Mira Sorvino's closeups ALWAYS had a soft front light. The trick D.P. Peter Lyons Collister seemed to do there was to add a low-level soft fill light for the closeups, rather than try to move the key light. By keeping it soft and low-level it didn't compete with any side key lighting continued from the wide shot. Also by changing the camera angle enough between wide and tight shots you can get away with a lot of lighting tweaks without hurting continuity too much. The fill was frontal enough to minimize any nose or chin shadows, and was snooted in on just her face so it didn't spill onto the background. If you look closely you can see where it looks like they had to word pretty hard at flagging it off Chow Yun-Fat in the over-the-shoulder shots.

 

I recently finished gaffing a feature for a veteran DP who liked to use frontal fill light on everything, even the wide masters. His favorite was to put a 2K zip right over the camera, as low as we could get it. We were constantly fighting mag and matte-box shadows!

 

Personally I love adding soft fill from BELOW the lens, just off to the side,a la Elliot Davis. It almost always looks flattering, and catches the actors' eyes when they look down (which is a LOT in drama). You can tone it down by keeping it soft and lowering the level.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I really like "The Replacement Killers." Unexpectedly quality performances from the at-the-time little known lead, who of course turned out to be fantastic. And Jurgen Prochnow! Turned what could have been a cheap little bottom-shelf video movie into a really decent film.

 

Phil

[Jon Erwin]

Thanks guys,

Lot of really great advice here. I need to use a fill light more.

Often, I do not use a frontal fill for two reasons: One, I love to move the camera, maybe even too often. I love a slight dolly or jib move. Second, I love contrast in my shots and on my actors faces. I love large soft sources close to the subject so the light just kinda wraps around there face and then falls off into deep shadows. So tend to use high key / fill ratios.

So what are some ways to fill without making my image look too flat. Also , how can I fill and not tie down my camera or battle shadows all day. Thanks again, I'm taking notes! :P

[Michael Nash]

    So what are some ways to fill without making my image look too flat. Also , how can I fill and not tie down my camera or battle shadows all day. Thanks again, I'm taking notes!  :P

Well, it's like David already said; move the key around enough so that it hits both eyes, at least a little bit, and let the fill go as dark as you like. Or, if you want to add fill rather than moving the key, then add a special eyelight that's a little underexposed. With a little practice it's not that hard to find the level where fill adds a little gleam in the eyeball (or fills in the eye sockets) without competing with the key light. But really, I rarely have a problem where either the key or the fill isn't reflected in the eye. And I generally try to keep a decent contrast ratio.

 

And if your camera is moving a lot, then you're probably not close enough to really worry about eyelights so much. And if you do move in that tight, then there's probably enough room to squeeze in or float in a bounce board to fill the eyes when the camera gets that tight.

 

But really the best way to learn this is to simply watch a lot of movies! (and TV). Observe how different DP's achieve desired contrast ratios and eyelights in a variety of setups.

 

And Phil -- yes, Replacement Killers is one of my "guilty pleasures." I'm a sucker for stylish action movies done by former music video/commercial directors. ;) And where did they find so many locations with such great ceilings?! But Chow Yun-Fat was only an unknown in America (and I'm guessing the UK). He was already an established action star In China, and RK served as a cross-over vehicle for him. And of course Mira Sorvino was, well, Mira Sorvino! B)

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

 

Yes. I understand that Mr. Chow had been looking for an opportunity to do this crossover piece for a while, and he was at the time obscure in the UK too. Once again, just can't get over how great it is to have actual talent (rather than Austrian oak) carrying an action movie.

 

Phil

[Scott Larson]

Are there different techniques for lighting different eye colors? I noticed that in "Thirteen", Evan Rachel Wood's blue eyes were often lit from the side to (I guess) emphasize her naive innocence, while Nikki Reed's dark brown eyes were often lit mostly by distant catch lights which (I guess) symbolized her dark corrupting influence. They stuck to this lighting even during some long scenes.

[Michael Nash]

I guess you'd have to ask Elliot Davis about that.

 

But it's not uncommon to do lighting tests with your main cast, to find out what light looks best, or most flattering, or helps bring out a particular character trait. Some people naturally have large eyes that catch every source in the room, and other people have tiny, dark recessed eyes that take extra care to be seen. You end up trying different things out to see what works.

[Nelson Rogers]

In American Beauty, Conrad Hall ASC, had amazing eye lights. One scene that stands out is the scene with Thora Birch and Wes Bently after they have just watched the bag being tossed around by the wind and Wes is talking. He is back/side lit with the camera side of his face completely black. But his eyes are on fire. Does anyone know what Conrad might have used as to not bring up the level on the shadow side, but have such a bright sparkling eye light? I really loved this look. Thanks

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

On some of that 20's-type stuff I posted, not that I'm holding it up as any kind of exemplary facial closeups, I simply lay a 20W halogen dichroic on the flag on the mattebox, as a fill, and to put sparkle in the eyes. Combined with a lot of fluorescent fill, which I'm sure is about as accurate to the period as the existence of fluorescent lights period, it really did start to look very skincare-ad and nice. The quality of skin texture on the female cast was quite variable and although nobody was being precious about it I kind of felt responsible for making some kind of effort in that direction.

 

Phil

[Guest Daniel J. Ashley-Smith]

One thing you could do is to get the actors to wear contact lenses. During the making of "Pirates of the Caribbean" the actors wore coloured contact lenses that either brightened their eyes or darkened. They actually had some made that were basically sunglasses, to stop the actors from squinting in bright conditions.

[Michael Morlan]

In Alien Resurrection there's a heart to heart between Winona Ryder's character and Ripley - Khondji used a traditional ringlight for that scene, which is really brave actually

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Watch the whole film. As I recall you will see the use of that 6-light ringlight only for the synthetic characters. It creates a distinctive reflection in their pupils and gives them a slightly "otherworldy" character.

[David Mullen ASC]

Looked more like Kino MiniFlos taped to each side of the mattebox, forming a square, not a ring.

[DavidSloan]

Has anyone seen Soderberg's Solaris? There are some strange eye lights in that film.

[Josh Bass]

Howdy.

 

How about this: using your fill light as an eyelight. Do we do this, ever? There's a shot from a short film I DP'd, back when I knew even less than I do now. It's a OTS/CU of a woman talking to her dude, and her face is very softly half-lit from the side. What we used to light her was a bedsheet with a 300w arri fresnel through it (maybe it was a 650. . . not important). At any rate, this created a little white glint in her eye that really helps the shot, though, like I said, total accident.

 

So, I'm thinking: if you have a strongly directional key (hard or soft, doesn't matter), and you use a large soft source for fill, right on the camera/subject axis, can it double as an eyelight? Is this ever done?

 

I did a test a while back where I lit me with a softbox from the size, and put a china ball with a low wattage bulb right over the lens, and looked toward it. I musta done some'n wrong, 'cause I got no eyelight whatsoever. Just seems like if you eyelit with your fill, could make life easier (and prettier).

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

A few weeks ago I posted some portrait shots of people in 17th-century outfits - all that had was a 20W halogen dichroic taped to the top of the mattebox. That's really quite adventurous for me - usually I don't liight the rest of the shot to a level where that wouldn't be overpowering at a few feet range, but it worked OK, filling shadows in the faces and making the eyes sparkle. Very skin-care-ad.

 

Phil

[Josh Bass]

I remember those. I'll have to take a second look at 'em.

[Guest fstop]

I always use to love the big white dot eyelights John Hora got in Gizmo's dark eyes on Gremlins 2- always thought they enhanced the cuteness of the furry one while never drawing attention to the lighting- I watched it recently however with a trained eye and could see the spill and shadows from the bottom light straight away. Nothing disappointing, just that it's nigh-on impossible to get an eyelight without affecting the shadow and exposure of the rest of subject, regardless of however many flags and funny angles you've got the eyelight at.

[Bob Hayes]

I?ve found that hand holding eye lights is an effective way to deal with moving cameras and Steadicam. Just keep the light on stand by and use it when the actor turns away from key. That way you can keep the scene darker.

[Michael Morlan]

Of course there's always the old, stylistic trick of creating an unmotivated slash of light across the eyes, Star Trek original serials style. To this day, I call that a "Kirk Light." :D

[Guest fstop]

I hear the "Kirk Light" is still around, flogging it's tired, dead, old horse- Roger Pratt recently wheeled it out with miserable results for the Dumbeldore office finale of 2002s Harry Potter 2: Chamber of Secrets...

 

"Kirk Light" is the brand name owned by the "Cinematography By Numbers" Company, a subsiduary of "Asleep at the Wheel" Ltd, FYI.