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Shiny skin music video lighting question


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I'm wondering how this effect was created, I need to imitate it for a music video this weekend -

 

 

You can see the reflection of the light in his sunglasses at 0:07, but I don't recognize it, and it's pretty low res.

 

I'm thinking of using a small or medium chimera without the front diffusion, and blocking the direct source with some foamcore inside it so it bounces around the silver inside, and becomes a big round silver source, just in front and above the subject.

 

It's basically making the incident light under key, but creating white reflections (with the right shiny makeup) just on the front of the face, which I understand in principal but not sure how to achieve.

 

What do you think?

Edited by Maximilian Sándor Lakner
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Agreed with the above. Black skin in general tends to be quite reflective and you can def add some "moisture" make up. She is keyed with a pretty hard source in a lot of shots,with soft fill? Overhead fill? not sure. But it is a straightforward front light. You can see in some set ups she has a tad soft kicker on the side of her face. On the other the white bg bleeds/bounces and creates a nice shine. So you can play with softness angles of sources to put various reflections where you like.

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You light it with whatever you have available and modify the light quality to match your needs. That is, unless you have a rental house or a five ton lighting package at your disposal.

Many routes to reach the same destination.

No need to analyze exactly what light they used.

Figure out what moisturizer, oil, cream, gels, makes darker skin reflect like the video and do some camera and lighting tests.

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This is a mix of classic hip hop ring light and a slightly higher single source. I've done this a lot.

 

Ring lights are normally bigger bulbs arranged circularly on a board, and you stick your camera through the hole in the middle. They can be built or rented very easily and cheaply. As RnB videos evolved, the star-like arrangement of kino tubes radially became a staple. It reflects well in the eyes as well as in glasses. This is whats used in the video you referenced for all the shadowless stuff at around the 1:53 mark (BTW, Taral Hicks was the cute love interest of Robert DeNiro's son in the film A Bronx Tale).

 

Make sure you have a good makeup person that can add the correct sheen. It is key for that silvery, metallic look.

 

The other lighting is probably a slightly bigger source above camera. The way I normally do this when I do beauty ads is I get a Mole Big Eye 10K. They have a larger fresnel front lens that work very well for beauty portraiture. I undersling it on a goalpost and float it right above lens. To not nuke the talent, I normally change the bulb to a 2K via a step-down adapter that fits in the 10K (can be rented from most bigger rental houses). If that's not possible, one can dim it in conjunction with scrimming. But adding too much scrimmage can sometimes give a pattern that's visible, so best is the step down solution. This type of lighting can also be achieved in other ways - a small Briese, octadome or a built cutout solution. I've done all variations, but the Big Eye 10K solution always works for beauty.

 

Sometimes, when a more Helmut Newton or fashion flash light look is desired, you can use a smaller source that creates a sharper shadow. This can be anything, but the size will determine how sharp the shadow is. I've used PAR's, Dedo's and everything from a pea bulb up to a 5K to achieve this look.

 

 

beaty10k.jpg

Big Eye 10K on Garnier beauty ad I did. The underlights are what I call the Savides-lights as Harris used to use these for beauty fill. In general, when you're working with human eyes, you want round objects reflected in them. Any other shape has a tendency to look warped and strange due to curvature of eye. So to achieve this with square lights, one trick is to use round cutouts like I did on these panel-lights. Can be hard to tell in picture, but one can see that the right panel-light has this.

 

 

20744d1293116594-ringlight-ringlight.jpg

Example of old school ring light.

 

 

community-christmas-rap-300x300.jpg

The star or radiating ring light used in tons of hip hop and RnB videos.

 

Example of using Savides-lights in bottom of eyes on a beauty ad I did. Doesn't work for everything, but it's a good trick for beauty fill light.

 

http://artistry.net.s3.amazonaws.com/Frisch_Garnier_1_Ed_Nammour.mov

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Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful response Adam!

 

My shoot was on Sunday unfortunately, so I did not have a chance to take your advice for this. I wound up going for a darker, less frontal look than the Taral Hicks video. I used silver bounces, one on each side of the direction she is looking, high and at a 45 degree angle approximately, to get shine on the upper cheeks, favoring the far side of the face, and I used a small light above the camera dimmed way down for added glow over all, and I used small diffused fresnels for kickers when possible.

 

I'll post the video here when it's finished!

 

Round cut outs on panels is a great trick that I'm sure I will use in the future.

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