This can be achieved in camera.

On a lot of these there is a catch light that causes a specular highlight in the eyes. This can be done with anything from a practical in the room to a small light or even reflected light of a polyboard.

It should not be bright or close enough to affect the lighting in the room or on the face, its only function is to reflect in the eyes.

You can also see in some of the clips that the make up person has added water to the eyes to make them teary or just more watery just for reflections.

Do what you can in camera, so the colourist can just do minor tweaks if needed at all.

Eyes gather light; more makeup, more light, less reflection from the skin, brighter eyes.

@ alcomposer - that hard light was what required such powerful makeup. I really like that hard light look, but it is devastating unless the actress has great skin and a top-quality makeup artist. I read somewhere that Grace Kelly originally went in for makeup at 7AM on a shooting day. After a couple of years, it shifted to 6AM, to work on age lines that she had acquired that would be imperceptible to most of us.

Come on!!!

I keep on saying it every time i can.

You must at first choose your weapon. This is what kind of photon you are using. Here and like in all noir films tungsten is the wise choise.

But before that you must learn how to dominate light by using hard light. Then use your flags black flags, white flags. The distance, and angle are the difining factor to get the edges of the light right. Thise edges must some time be make from more than one flag in front of the beam of light.

The way light reflectes and refractes on your flag will be very important, since the gradiation that makes the volumetric perception that is made from all your light sources will be also important since it all ads up.

what ive notice in this video is the 3 point frontal light like a piramid, having a big one or closer one allways on the left of the camera. This makes the key light and you can paint from there all tge volume you want.

Actually is not that complicated to light like this its quiet simple. Noir is easy just learn how to dominate real hard light.

HMI is not as hard as tungsten belive it or not. Tungsten is difrent animal that is hot to handle. Learn how to use it and you will understand all lights easier.

this whole thread is funny

@shian

It is.

But can you make small video showing how to do such thing in Resolve? :-)

ColorGHear film school students already know how to do this. I covered it in a couple of tutorials and I repeatedly refer to The Cult song "She Sells Sanctuary" as the lyrics have always resonated in my head when lighting "The sparkle in your eyes, keeps me alive, keeps me alive."

This is done on set, in camera... every lighting setup you've every tried to reverse engineer is revealed in the eyes of the actors... I learned how to light by reverse engineering using the eye dots as a roadmap. The larger the highlight the larger the source. Big square highlight means, BIG diffused source like 6-8 foot square (sometimes even a 12x12). Long thin highlight, probably a kino, circle dot, is a spotlight.... tiny square a gel hung over a spot or a soft box, in my case I used a 1x1 foot led panel - on low power - right next to the camera on Femme Fatales to give just a little sparkle as we were using some intense Noir lighting, and when doing hard Noir lighting angles, you get shark eyes and sunken sockets, unless you have some sort of "eye light". The light is not intense enough to add anything to the exposure, it's just there to create the highlight.

On Trick or Treat (the halloween horror movie from a few years back) they actually had a similar rectangular panel and sometimes a ring light mounted on the camera for this same purpose.

As for the super tight eye lights around the eyes, they are created using snoots, and/or flags and cutters to limit a bright spot light like a leiko. I've also used dedo's for this.

In the attached image, I'm using a 4x4 kino with a skirt to give me a rectangle of drop light in the middle of the room, a 1k fresnel through light grid, off to the right to cast light on Diana's shoulder and hair to separate her from the christmas tree, which also later in the shot when Crystal advances with the shotgun, gives her nice key. But without the LED panel next the camera giving her that highlight, her eye sockets would be pure black in that top lighting. the shot was classic noir as the character is in shadow, but steps into their key.

And if you say Noir cannot be achieved with soft lighting, I can tell you, definitively, you do not know what you're talking about.