Where to Light for Emotion (in the dark)

Lighting can often be centred around the perception of a character or subject. Here, our character sits shrouded in darkness. We can barely make out the features of his face. This was lit using a Pavoslim 120C, boomed above, and with our subject sitting just forward of the overhead light, most of his facial features are in shadow. We also had a second light, a Forza 60C with reflector dish, firing into the ceiling to lift these shadows just a touch, so you can just about see the eyes. And they look lifeless. There aren't any catchlights in the eyes, so it's hard to feel any emotion from our subject. This leaves us to interpret it ourselves, through the music or the context surrounding the scene. This lack of catchlights may be suggesting any number of things. Unfamiliarity, blankness, danger. There's a feeling of mystery or ambiguity. So what happens if we add a simple eye light? We used a little Nanlite FC-60B with its Bowens adapter to attach a large reflector dish from another lighting fixture, and taped some baking or parchment paper to the reflector. This increases the size of the light to ensure it shows up in the eyes, placed by the lens to create a more central eye light, and set to a very low power to minimise any exposure changes to the scene. Compared to the scenario with no eye light, we can now feel more from our character, just from his eyes. Since the light source is small, the catchlights are small, and the position of the light places the catchlights quite central within the eyes. It's very direct, and we can feel this directness from our character. Whatever he's feeling is clear and immediate. It could almost come off as a bit aggressive. What if we moved our catchlight a little higher? We simply moved our FC-60B higher above the camera. This way, we should get an eye light higher in the eye. A very subtle shift, and when compared to the centre catchlights, it still feels like our character is coming from a place of annoyance or anger, considering his expression. But this shift to the upper eye feels a bit less direct. It almost feels like he has slightly less conviction toward whatever he's feeling, and could be swayed from it. We can already see how changing the placement of the catchlight could change our character's intentions and our feelings toward him. Let's move the catchlight down to the lower part of the eye. We placed our FC-60B on the floor below our subject for this setup, to ensure the catchlight would be reflected lower down in the eye. In comparison to our previous catchlight scenario, we've definitely brought back some of that direct conviction. It feels a little closer in feeling to the centrally placed catchlights. But because we've placed them in an unnatural position toward the bottom of the eye, the emotion he's feeling now seems much less human. It almost feels devoid of humanity. Less direct, more possessed. It's a bit scarier. By simply changing the position of our catchlights, we alter our perception of the character. The overall lighting is the same between each shot, but the feeling he carries changes. And even though this is subtle, we can see through comparison how this can aid us in conveying nuance in a character's emotion. Not all directness or anger comes from the same place. We can even experiment with changing the size of the catchlight in the eye. Here, we place some bleached muslin material on the floor, just in front of our character, to reflect into the lower part of the eyes. When compared to the smaller source, we've added a touch more light to the face. But that's not the only thing that's changed. The larger catchlights take away that directness. And although our character might still appear somewhat angry, it feels like there's more emotion behind this anger. Let's go for some larger catchlights at the top of the eyes. We boomed a Pavoslim 240C with Softbox and Grid close and above our subject to achieve this. When compared to the smaller catchlights at the top of the eyes, we have a slightly softer look to our character's face. And this isn't just because the exposure is raised slightly because of the boomed light. If we instead focus on how the eyes feel to us, we may find again that we get more emotion from our character with larger catchlights. His intentions don't feel quite as direct. He feels more human, more vulnerable, more open to stand down from this emotion he's currently feeling. Eyelight, or catchlights, are a lighting tool that can often go overlooked or simply used as a functional way to get some light into the eyes. But they can also work as a subtle tool to make and exaggerate feeling and emotion in your character. Setting the tone and mood for the ideas contained within the scene that your audience can pick up on in a more subconscious way. And although using Eyelight in such a precise way isn't going to work for every situation and scene, it's a great trick to pull out when you need it and another tool you can use when lighting for cinema.