How come peoples eyes are dilated on TV or in Movies a lot?

[rcrush]

I'm watching Heroes right now and everyone has dilated pupils. I saw Watchmen last night and everyone had dilated pupils in it. I saw it in the Lord of The Rings movies to. Do actors eat shrooms before they shoot or something?

[MrScorpio]

1. Cocaine is a hell of a drug

[hippywife]

2. They have a lot of lights

shining right at them usually? :shrug:

[DeepBlueC]

5. that will do it

and there's no way they can control that reflex.

[sammythecat]

3. Good question

I tried looking for the answer and came up with nothing. Drugs and contact lenses can account for some cases but I doubt sets commonly have everyone on drugs or wearing contact lenses.

I never thought about it before, but now I'll probably notice it all the time. Someone once pointed out that a large percentage of actors have blue eyes and then I saw blue eyes everywhere. Scenes with several actors and they all had blue eyes. It seemed weird sometimes. I notice blue eyes even more in the older movies.

[LaraMN]

4. They're all perpetually aroused?

:shrug:

[bigwillq]

6. Probably the lights.

Or the cocaine! :P ;) :rofl:

[leftyclimber]

7. Lighting, stress, lack of sleep.

18- to 20-hour days really mess you up.

[nomorenomore08]

8. Supposedly some of the actors in "Natural Born Killers" were really on shrooms.

And if you look at any close-up of Woody Harrelson's eyes, at least during the more hallucinatory sequences, they really do look unnaturally dilated - not dim-light dilated, but like the size of dinner plates.

[kath]

9. uh, peoples, bright light makes your pupils constrict, not dilate.

just saying...

[La Lioness Priyanka]

10. actually i just realized that would have the opposite effect

[Tyrone Slothrop]

11. Most stuff you see in TV or movies is shot indoors in a studio set

Yes, there are bright lights on set that will make your pupils contract; however, most of the time the actors aren't on set except for their scene. They're usually hanging out in a more dimly lit part of the set/studio or in their trailer -- where it's dark and their pupils dilate.

[Lost in CT]

12. Cocaine... a lot of them also look like they just got out of the pool. nt