How is it that while doing a close up of someone’s face in the movies or on TV you don’t see the camera reflected in their eyes

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How is it that while doing a close up of someone’s face in the movies or on TV you don’t see the camera reflected in their eyes

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3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The camera is not well lit compared to the actor and the scene, and the camera is dark in color. So its reflection is not significantly visible.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A lot of this has to do with the use of angles, zoom functions, and post-processing.

If you are just a couple degrees off from dead center in front of the person you’re doing the close up on, that can be enough to put the reflection out of line of sight so the camera doesn’t pick itself up, without affecting the shot the director is trying to create.

If the camera is physically far away, but utilizes a zoom lens to perform the close up, the effective reflection would be tiny and unnoticeable.

If the reflection DID end up in the eye, and visible in the final shot, it can be digitally removed in the editing process and not make the final release cut of the film (or they could re-shoot the scene if it weren’t fixable).

There are examples of some films where the camera operator IS actually visible in some reflections. My personal favorite is when you see Robert Rodriguez holding a camera in the mirror of the school bus that El Mariachi is sitting on, in the movie “El Mariachi” (the movie that Desperado is the sequel to).

As this was Rodriguez’s debut feature film, they shot the whole movie in 2 weeks with a budget of about $7000, using a single camera. So he didn’t really have the budget for digital effects or re-shoots. So when he edited the film, he just had to keep the shot in where he appeared behind the camera in the reflection.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Typically, you see the reflection of the lighting rigs, which drown out the camera.

https://ak5.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/12135395/thumb/7.jpg

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https://www.alamy.com/close-up-of-eyes-with-square-light-reflection-in-the-pupil-image239299435.html

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https://previews.123rf.com/images/catman/catman0701/catman070100017/690052-close-up-eye-with-light-reflection.jpg