This reminds me of how early mechanical television cameras worked. Scenes like these [1] were recorded with a flying spot camera that scanned a dark room with a

This reminds me of how early mechanical television cameras worked. Scenes like these [1] were recorded with a flying spot camera that scanned a dark room with a narrow beam of light. Photocells placed around the room picked up the reflected light. Such a photocell appears to "illuminate" the area around it in the footage. [1] https://youtu.be/2W8SrgJ1hVM https://youtu.be/2W8SrgJ1hVM There is probably a more illustrative video but I can't find it at the moment.