Reflection effect...

The next movie I'm doing involves a duel between two guys that this one chick has feelings for. For a dramatic shot, I want to get a close up of her eye, and reflect the two bashing each other with lightsabers.

The best way to do this, I think, would be to shoot that part against a greenscreen, take out the background, lower the opacity, and stick it in her eye. My question concerns the finer points. What would be the best way to light it? How do I compensate for the roundness of her eye? Would it look better if her eye is stationary, or if it twitches back and forth from person to person?

Thanks.

 

Why greenscreen? The background of the other shots would be in the reflection too.

 

True, but I want the effect to be somewhat subtle anyway, and I don't want the characters to get lost in the background.

 

I came across this a while back when looking for stock greenscreen footage. This kind of touches on how they did the eye reflection for Underworld 2 in the opening.

http://www.fxguide.com/article335.html

 

If the characters are swinging lightsabers and moving around a lot, they should be easy enough to follow.

 

Have you ever heard of this cool feature in after effects called "Blending Modes" and "Opacity". know whats even cooler? you can adjust the opacity...and the blending modes!!!

AHHHH!!

I hear that masks can also be used...but then again, i've only done this exact effect a number of times...so I am more than likely wrong.

 

Okay...that was a little over the top

 

. . . and I do believe he mentioned opacity in his initial post.

 

I don't believe that he ever questioned your ability or knowledge... And you can't assume everyone knows things you do.

 

I'd try using a spherical lens distort, if you have that tool in your compositing app's bag o' tricks. Adding a radial blur MIGHT help make it look more realistic. Then again both these effects are distortions so you'd lose quality at the cost of attempted realism, of course, even more so if you go overboard with these effects.

As far as the opacity of the characters are concerned, you might consider using your app's color corrector to change the opacity of the background if it's mostly around a single color (like green if you were shooting in the forest). If not, masks would be a far better way to go...

 

If I were you I would light the scene from behind or from the side, to highten the contrast between the actors and the background. Shoot it in front of black. But make sure that you only light an outline of the actors. Looks better if you screen it over the eye.

I'd rather like to know how you're gonna shoot the iris!

 

There is a Cycore Effects distort plug-in for AE called CC Lens.

I was trying it and my settings were: Size: 70.0, Convergence: -62.0 with the Center set to the middle of the pupil, my result looked like this...

 

Looks good, expected IMO it is a little weak.