Eyeglass Glare

[Walter Biscardi]

Tell them not to look up? 🙂

Usually with eyeglasses you ask the person to tilt them down a little bit so that helps to reduce the chance of glare. But you’re always going to get something if they move their heads around.

You can also play around with moving the lighting a little bit to help minimize the chance of glare. Before starting the interview ask them to move their head around a little so you can see if you’re getting glare and how bad it is.

If you’re trying to fight the glare in Post, then going into Color and applying a vignette in the area of the glare when they tilt their head back and dropping the highlights would work nicely.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” featuring Sigourney Weaver coming soon.

Blog Twitter Facebook

[Robb Harriss]

Yes, the trick is to avoid it in the first place. Note that some eyeglass prescriptions create lenses that are very curved on the front so it’s almost impossible not to catch a light.

But this is all about lighting and learning to deal with stuff. One way is not to try to beat it. Use large softboxes and extremely large diffuse light. You know those softly lit windows that show reflected in some people’s glasses are not? Nope — a large softbox with a “window-alourus*” across the front just creates a false motivation for the reflection.

*the Window-alourus is dedicated to one of my gaffers who would run outside and rip a leafy branch off a tree so he could rig his Leafalourus to cast shows on the scene.

Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.

[Mark Petereit]

The old standby trick is to ask if you can pop the lenses out of their glasses for the interview, so they’re just wearing the frames. Just be sure to have some extra makeup handy. Glasses have a tendency to hide bags.