I am going to use this as an example of how everyone has this exact challenge, not just you, and how we all try to correct it with varying degrees of effectiveness.
Again, the solution is a combination of factors such as diet, environment, health, products, lighting etc.
These are screen grabs from a scene from episode 11 from an Apple TV+ television series I am currently working on.
Here are a few unedited raw screen grabs of an 18 year old male actor with a scene requiring an extreme close up of his eyes... The actor has extreme dryness / reddness/ peeling around his entire eye area, and the bridge of his nose, (borderline eczema).
The DoP used an ARRI Skypanel S60-C softlight set at 4800K, (degree Kelvin) with a square white foam-core board placed directly in front of him under his chin as light bounce, (to help redirct light to under his eyes)
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These are the products I used to correct his under eye darkness and to minimize the dryness, redness, and peeling of certain areas of his face. For the purpose of this thread I will only explain what we can see in these grabs.
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Moisturizer: Putty super soothing face cream by Graydon (not pictured)
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Foundation: L'Oreal true match in W5 - Applied with a dedicated concealer brush, over the lid and below the orbital bone and the outer eye area, and nose applied with a foundation brush.
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Concealer 1: MUFE concealer in #5
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Concealer 2: MAC Select Cover up in NC42 - Both concealers mixed and applied with a separate dedicated concealer brush.
Mixed 80% of Concealer 1 with 20% of Concealer 2, (total size of a nickle)
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Powder: Visiora PC 002 - Applied with a latex-free dry wedge sponge.
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As you can see, to effectively minimize under eye darkness, you need a combination of factors to help, however it will never be 100%, even in these images you can still see some darkness in the inner corners, but no dryness or flakyness. In this particular case, the 10 day routine was this:
- Drinking lots of water
- Skin care (Moisturizer)
- Make-up application including touch ups throughout the day
- Professional lighting set up
- Make-up removal
- Skin care (optional). Some days a very light moisturizer, other days a bare clean face.
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Sleep hours made no difference in this case, as everyone comes into the trailer with puffy eyes and the legal turn-around for actors is 10 hours from shoot to wrap for 10 days.
Remember each person is different, and each environment is different and how you approach it will be different.