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Catch lights, reflections & actors with glasses: some advice please


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Hello,  I've been watching the latest Homeland season (8), DP David Klein. 

This shot of "Saul" summed it up: how does one handle the catch light in a performer with glasses?   It's a perfect little pop without a trace of reflection.

I understand one moves the sources to different angles, either sideways or higher (or lower) to avoid reflections.   However, with actors moving all over the place, I am trying to understand how cinematographers deal with this problem.  Perhaps the big answer is...they move the sources to different angles, either sideways or higher.

Watching "VICE" almost made me queasy - trying to figure out how Greig Fraser managed, with pretty much every character in glasses, running around, vast windows at every turn.   In larger films like this, is post-fixing involved?  Or is this part of the deal that DPs have to deal with all the time?

Thanks !

Saul eyelight .jpg

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There's no trick, a piece of glass reflects a light so you move the light to an angle where it isn't reflected. Here his body is angled to frame right (his left) and the light is probably just over the camera lens.  Or it's a reflection of his key light in his eyes, which he is almost facing, just high enough to be above the glasses but the bottom part of the light is being reflected in his eyes.

Sure a small ping that is unwanted could be painted out in post if it isn't over the eyes themselves.

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Thank you David. 
I didn’t think there was a "trick" !  

My question is really about getting a better handle on eye lights in trickier situations with glasses - and, using eye lights in a darker / moodier scenes, where the eye light would not come from the key.

This two shots illustrate what I"m talking about - you can see the pinprick size eyesight in Cheney's right eye behind glasses.  With Ferrell, the ambient light on his face is slight, and again the perfect little dots appearing - without adding any fill.

My confusion about this is: for Cheney, would this be residual from the general lighting on his face, or would this be a specific eye-light addition?    And for Ferrell, what kind (ie, size, placement) here so we get the effect without pushing too much fill into his face?   A scrimmed-down 300w 10 feet away ? A tiny, dimmable LED on camera? [Understood the is all relative to the illumination of the scene].

I've not the experience with eye lights; much obliged for any help.

 

WF.jpg

Cheney.jpg

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Cheney has at least two lights hitting his face judging by the two reflections in his eyes, one is very much to one side, almost a 3/4 kicker than a key, the other is a frontal light high enough to just be reflected in the top of the glasses. There may be an even higher 3/4 frontal-top soft light (maybe it's the overhead daylight being silked) that is too high for his eyes and to be reflected, but it is creating a lot of the shadow under the chin. Plus there is a kicker/edge from frame left.

I don't know what was used for Will Ferrel's eye light.

Eyes are a reflective rounded surface so any light hitting the face and the eyes will be reflected in it, it's just that for super large/soft light the reflection may be more of a hazy glare over the eyeball surface and not a point.

How bright the eye light is relative to how much fill it creates is controlled by contrast in the film stock, grade, LUT, etc. A higher-contrast grade and the shadow detail drops off but highlights in reflections get brighter.  But you generally dim an eye light so that it is contributing minimal fill.

I had an example of how the color-correction affects the shadow detail vs. the eye light (in this case, a dimmed Litemat 1) in a recent thread, using a frame from my own recent work:
eyelight7.jpg
If in correction, you make the blacks blacker and the whites whiter, then the white reflection in the eye gets brighter even as the shadow detail goes down.  Now if it is the key light being reflected in the eyes, then the contrast of the grade is less of a factor since the light being reflected is already brighter than one being used for fill or just the eyes only. For example, here is a case where the key light is reflected in the eye:
eyelight8.jpg

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I did a bunch of reading about this a few months back. I was curious how people got light in the eyes without filling in the face. I think the trick is hard light sources, dimmed down and pulled back. 

Here's an article with Wally Pfister about the Dark Knight. I'm pretty sure they used a 1x1 LED for close ups to get the perfect catch light. 

https://theasc.com/ac_magazine/August2012/DarkKnightRises/page1.html

Some cool BTS with Steve Yedlin on the topic of reflections in glasses.

 

In my experience, a LED panel about 10 feet away can create a nice catch light and not light the subject. The wattage is all going to depend on what ISO and F stop you are lighting for.

Here is an example. This was incredibly quick setup for some corporate work. C300 Mk2 with a 24-105. 2 person crew. Please take that with a grain of salt...

The client wanted a natural / candid look for this video. We used a bounce that was camera left. I had an astra behind me, 8 feet or so, at about 10/20 percent brightness. I don't think there was enough throw from the Light Panel to be lighting him. 

Eyelight222.jpg

EyeLight111.jpg

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Since the eye is a curved surface it shrinks the size of anything reflected particularly a frontal light, so I find that there are diminishing returns in backing up a small, hard eye light too far -- (1) it becomes a dot in the eye that is very hard to see unless you are shooting a tight close-up, and (2) the farther the light, the more it spreads, the harder it is to cut to just the face. Plus it becomes very sharp so if the background is too close, you will see a faint hard shadow of the head on the wall behind them. However, a 1x1 LED is a bit larger than, let's say, a Dedolight or 150w Arri, so you get a bigger reflection.

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This is great.  Thank you David & Ben for taking the time to flesh this out, especially with the links & examples.  Extremely valuable!

Edited by Bill Stone
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Has anyone actually seen an Arri Obie light in the metal? I have only ever seen them in pictures.

 I remember correctly there was a mechanical dimming mechanism in the housing that worked something like a Venetian blind. I found these pictures in an eBay listing that claims it is 500w. That power rating is almost hard to believe given that it was mounted right on the front of the camera and often used in close proximity to talent. 500w of tungsten gets pretty hot.

s-l1600 2.jpg

s-l1600.jpg

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