Eyes and reflections

LOOKING GLASS from Benjamin Lebeau on Vimeo.

For my time art project one of the screens is going to be a close up of an eye, with the reflection inside it. I've been looking at tutorials and different techniques people have used to do this. I really like the video above, as it shows some really nice close ups of different eyes. You can see the different colours and textures within the iris, as well as a slight reflection of the surroundings. This was a similar technique I wanted to go for, so I tried this out in After Effects.

Firstly I shot a close up of an eye, and made it slightly bigger so it was just the eye in the frame.

I then colour corrected it to make it look less warm/orange and make the blue and the texture of the eye stand out more. I also stabilise it as because I had to hold the camera close to the face and it was hard to do so on a tripod, the clip came out a little shaky. However, the stabilisation tool worked well, and has kept it from moving.

To add a reflection, I used the erase tool to cut the picture to the right size of the iris, and changed its opacity to make it seem like more of a reflection.

 Even though this worked well, I still have to find a way to be able to make is disappear and change to a different reflection when the subject blinks.