Black Swan opening dance

[Moritz Reinhart]

I am preparing to shoot a ballet scene and of course Black Swan is the main reference.

 

I have a question about the following still. There is one source behind her that creates the big visible beam and I think also backlights her.

 

Then there seems to be another source coming from camera right (based on the long neck shadow it creates) and it also seems like a pretty hard source. What kind of source do you think this is and where do you think it is placed exactly ? And why isn't the beam visible (like the one in the background)?

 

Thanks

Edited September 20, 2018 by Moritz Reinhart

[Moritz Reinhart]

here is the still

Edited September 20, 2018 by Moritz Reinhart

[David Mullen ASC]

Smoke becomes more visible when the light is coming from a backlit angle, and it is more visible the brighter the light is -- so the 3/4 frontal key would light up the smoke less visibly because it is dimmer and not from a backlit angle.

[Brian Doran]

I found a neat, short explanation of why the angle of light matters in illuminating smoke/vapors. The website seems to be about some sort of rendering software, but this page has a brief explanation of scattering anisotropy.

 

https://help.jawset.com/en/c4d/container_parameters/rendering/smoke_shader/illumination