Sillouette with illuminated sunglasses

[ThatGreasyFootball]

Howdy, I am looking to create a shot similar to this shot from Wes Anderson’s, The Grand Budapest Hotel, posted below.

Here is a sample image I shot on location of what I am thinking:

I plan to block the light coming from the elevator on the left so the subject is silhouetted against the foggy night sky. In the story the subject will be wearing sunglasses to help conceal his identity and we will crash zoom to a tight shot (a bit tighter than the one above, phone camera only zooms so far lol) of the subject with his body silhouetted and his glasses illuminated. Practically speaking I will have to be ~150 feet away with the camera (bmpcc4k) in order to get the right framing for this. This brings into question how i might want to light the subject so that he remains silhouetted, but has his glasses illuminated like the shot from The Grand Budapest Hotel. I was thinking possibly coating the glasses with a reflective material of some sort that disperses light well, (like Hi Vis reflector) shooting a flashlight at him and having him look at the source of the light by the camera. Does anybody have any suggestions or ideas for anything else that might work? If not, I can follow up this thread when I am done shooting in case anyone might need to do something similar in the future.

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[dmullenasc]

Shining a flashlight at him will just create a bright spot in the eyeglasses and add fill light. Yes, diffusing a pair of mirror sunglasses might do the trick but it would be better to light the opposite direction of where the person is looking as brightly as possible, though it would have to be a large flat wall or building, something that had a chance of filling the reflection of the glasses. Then the face could be kept dark.

But if the reverse view does not lend itself to creating a bright reflection, then try dull-spraying a pair of mirrored sunglasses and hit them with some frontal light, just beware that you’re hitting the face with light.

[ThatGreasyFootball]

Thanks for the info dmullenasc, what might you suggest for a light as opposed to the flashlight? Do you think it might be possible to shape the light from a high powered source so that it only hits the general area of the dull sprayed glasses and not the face? Unfortunately I am too poor to accomplish the lighting of something that would be big enough to fill the glasses, like your flat wall or building idea.

[dmullenasc]

At that distance, the only way to come close to focusing just a slash of light on the glasses would be to use a Source 4 Leko with something narrow like a 19 degree lens, then use the leaves to create a slash.

Though painting a face isn’t politically correct, so to speak, that’s how Gregg Toland solved the problem in “Ball of Fire” of only seeing Barbara Stanwyck’s eyes in a dark room where her face wasn’t supposed to be visible to the other character played by Gary Cooper. So Toland asked the make-up department to paint Stanwyck’s face black in the morning when she arrived — she phoned the set back and said “what in the hell sort of movie are we making?!?” But it worked!

[ThatGreasyFootball]

Thanks for the info again! Facepaint or a black mask might actually work pretty well because im going to be shooting in black and white. Ill keep this thread updated with what I end up working out.

[Roger Deakins]

Cover the glasses with front projection material – the same as reflective material on a running jacket or safety gear etc.. A flashlight beside your camera will be more than enough.

[ThatGreasyFootball]

Just wanted to add that the shot came out really nicely! Thank you Roger and Dmullenasc!

[neeraj.jain]

What did you wind up doing?

[gx42]

Cool frame, love that you went wide!

[ThatGreasyFootball]

Sorry for the late reply neeraj, I ended up finding some 3m reflective tape at the hardware store and putting it overtop the lenses of the glasses.

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