Lightsaber

Lightsaber

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn wielding their activated lightsabers in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace; note the lightsaber trace in the metal door in the background
Plot element from the Star Wars franchise
First appearance Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
Genre Science fiction
In story information
Type Energy sword

A lightsaber is a science fiction weapon in the Star Wars movies and the Expanded Universe. The lightsaber consists of a polished metal hilt which projects a blade of energy about one meter long. The lightsaber is the signature weapon of the Jedi order and their Sith counterparts, both of whom can use them for offense, or to deflect blaster bolts. Its distinct appearance was created using rotoscoping for the original trilogy, and digitally for the prequel trilogy. The lightsaber first appeared in the original Star Wars film (1977) and every Star Wars movie to date features at least one lightsaber duel. In 2008, a survey of approximately two thousand film fans found it to be the most popular film weapon in history.[1]

The lightsaber's blade cuts through most substances without resistance. It leaves cauterized wounds in flesh, but can be deflected by another lightsaber's blade, or by energy shields. Some exotic saber-proof materials have been introduced in the Expanded Universe. An active lightsaber gives off a distinctive hum, which rises in pitch and volume as the blade is moved rapidly through the air. Bringing the blade into contact with an object or another lightsaber's blade produces a loud crackle.

The term "lightsaber" has been applied to other similar weapons in science fiction.

Contents

Production

Visual effects

Animator Nelson Shin was tasked with drawing the lightsaber to match the film scenes that the film producers brought. Shin explained to the people from Lucasfilm that since the lightsaber is made of light, the sword should look "a little shaky" like a fluorescent tube. He suggested inserting one frame that was much lighter than the others while printing the film on an optical printer, making the light seem to vibrate. Shin also recommended adding a degausser sound on top of the other sounds for the weapon since the sound would be reminiscent of a magnetic field. The whole process took one week, surprising his company, and Lucasfilm demonstrated the film to him, having followed his suggestions, including using an X-Acto knife to give the lightsaber a very sharp look.[2]

Sound

The lightsaber sound effect was developed by sound designer Ben Burtt as a combination of the hum of idling interlock motors in aged movie projectors and interference caused by a television set on an unshielded microphone. Burtt discovered the latter accidentally as he was looking for a buzzing, sparkling sound to add to the projector motor hum.[3]

The pitch changes of lightsaber movement were produced by playing the basic lightsaber tone on a speaker and recording it on a moving microphone, generating Doppler shift to mimic a moving sound source.[3]

Prop construction

For Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the original film prop hilts were constructed by John Stears from old camera-flash battery packs and other pieces of hardware. The "switched-on" sword props were designed with the intention of creating an "in-camera" glowing effect. The "blade" was three-sided and coated with a retroreflector array—the same sort used for highway signs. A lamp was positioned to the side of the taking camera and reflected towards the subject through 45-degree angled glass so that the sword would appear to glow from the camera's point-of-view.

Set Decorator Roger Christian found the Graflex flash gun handles in a photography shop in Great Malbourough Street in London's West End and added car weather strip to the handles, stuck on with super glue. Then adding a few greeblies Christian hand made the first prototype laser sword for Luke before prep production began. George then added the clip to the handle so that Luke could hang it on his belt. Once approved by George Lucas this went to John Steers to make up the wooden rod dowling painted with front projection paint so that we could create a light glow for the Animators to enhance later in post production. Due to lack of prep time Christians prototype and a 2nd spare one were used for the shooting in Tunisia, where Star Wars filming began.[4]

Depiction

Lightsabers were present in the earliest drafts as mundane laser weapons that were used alongside laser guns.[5][6] The introduction of the Force in a later revision made the Jedi and the Sith supernaturally skilled, eventually the only swordsmen. The lightsaber became the Force-user's tool, described in-universe by Ben Kenobi as "not as clumsy or random as a blaster. An elegant weapon, from a more civilized age."[7]

Types

Lightsabers are described as hand-built as part of a Jedi's or Sith's training regimen. Each lightsaber is as unique as the one who built it, though some may bear resemblance to others (such as those utilized by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker). Lightsabers can be wielded as either one-handed or two-handed weapons. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace introduced a double-bladed lightsaber—essentially two lightsabers bound together at the pommels—for Darth Maul, and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones introduced a lightsaber with a curved hilt, wielded by Count Dooku. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed introduced a lightsaber pike; a lightsaber with a shorter blade but a long handle, resembling a spear. This lightsaber pike is weilded by shadow guards and Jedi Master Kazdan Paratus (although Kazdan Paratus weilds a two bladed variant in the PSP version).

The series' "Expanded Universe" of novels, comic books and video games adds several lightsaber types, including short[8] and dual-phase (adjustable length) weapons.[9][10]

Colors

Lightsabers depicted in the first two released films, A New Hope and Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, had blades that were colored either blue (for the Jedi) or red (for the Sith). In Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker's newly-constructed lightsaber was colored blue during the initial editing of the film, and appears so in both an early movie trailer and the official theatrical posters, but the film reveals that it was ultimately colored green in order to better stand out against the blue sky of Tatooine in outdoor scenes and also in the re-release posters. Green would later become another standard blade color for Jedi lightsabers in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Mace Windu's purple-bladed lightsaber, as first seen in Attack of the Clones, was a personal request from actor Samuel L. Jackson as a way to make his character stand out among other Jedi.[11] Jackson's favorite color is purple and he frequently requests the characters he plays to use an item of the color.[12]

A multitude of blade colors appear in the Expanded Universe and in other Star Wars products. The original Kenner figure of Luke Skywalker in his Tatooine costume from Star Wars was released with a yellow-bladed lightsaber. While no yellow-bladed or purple-bladed lightsabers appear in the films before 2002, they have appeared in several computer games, such as Jedi Knight, Jedi Outcast, The Force Unleashed, and Jedi Academy. The Knights of the Old Republic video games further expand the number of colors, adding cyan, viridian, violet, silver, and orange,[8] and The Force Unleashed video game adds black, gold, and pink in the Nintendo DS version. With the release of The Clone Wars film and series, a build-your-own lightsaber kit was released in toy stores, and included red, blue and green shards that colorize the blade when turned on.

Multiple sources refer to a focusing crystal in the hilt as the source of the blade's color, mainly from the video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.[8]

Choreography

The technical lightsaber choreography for the original Star Wars trilogy was developed by Hollywood sword-master Bob Anderson. Anderson trained actor Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and, in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, performed all the stunts as Darth Vader during the lightsaber duels wearing Vader's costume. Anderson's role in the trilogy was highlighted in the film Reclaiming The Blade where he shared his experiences as a fencer developing the lightsaber techniques for the three original movies.

The lightsaber duels in the Star Wars prequel trilogy were specifically choreographed by stunt-coordinator Nick Gillard to be miniature "stories". For these films, Gillard was the primary sword instructor for actors Liam Neeson (Qui-Gon Jinn), Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi), and Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader) among others. His goal in choreographing the action for The Phantom Menace was to create stunts that flow from the story; "You can't just think, 'I'm a stunt coordinator, I'm going to make a big stunt happen'," Gillard said. "It's all about making it tie in nicely with the film so that you don't notice the stunts."

In writing the prequel trilogy, Star Wars creator George Lucas said he wanted the lightsaber combat to be "reminiscent of what had been done in the previous films but also something that was more energized. We'd seen old men, young boys, and characters who were half-droid, but we'd never seen a Jedi in his prime. I wanted to do that with a fight that was faster and more dynamic — and we were able to pull that off."[13]

According to Gillard (who would later go on to perform a cameo role in Revenge of the Sith), various lightsaber combat styles were devised for the prequels and intended to further characterize their practitioners.

I developed different styles for the characters, and gave each of them a flaw or a bonus. So with Obi, for instance, he's got a very business-like style — when he was younger he could border on the flashy and might twirl his lightsaber a bit, because he was taught by Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon was brash, that rubbed off on Obi and Obi then taught Anakin, who was way too old to learn anyway... I think the style really worked well. The Jedi style of fighting is an amalgamation of all the great swordfighting styles. Melding them together is the difficult part — to move from a Kendo style to, say, Rapier requires a complete change in body and feet movement, and this must look effortless. The style moves seamlessly between the different disciplines, but remains technically correct throughout. It's unlike any other style of fighting and I think it's beautiful to watch.[14]

For The Phantom Menace, Gillard set out certain styles and faults for the saber-wielding characters.[15] He added that the Jedi's use of such "a short-range weapon" meant "they would have to be very good at it"; combining a variety of disciplines from various swordfighting styles to martial arts "with a touch of tennis and tree chopping", he created the style seen in the Episode I lightsaber battles.[16]

References

  1. ↑ Sophie Borland (2008-01-21). "Lightsaber wins the battle of movie weapons". Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/21/nweapon121.xml. Retrieved 2008-01-26. 
  2. ↑ "Interview with Nelson Shin". CNN. 2007-11-09. http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/18/talkasia.nelsonshin/index.html. Retrieved 2008-07-11. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Burtt, Ben (1993), Star Wars Trilogy: The Definitive Collection, Lucasfilm, "...the microphone passed right behind the picture tube and as it did, this particular microsophe produced an unusual hum. It picked up a transmission from the television set and a signal was induced into its sound reproducing mechanism, and that was a great buzz, actually. So I took that buzz and recorded it and combined it with the projector motor sound and that fifty-fifty kind of combination of those two sounds became the basic lightsaber tone."" 
  4. ↑ Star Wars Insider magazine issue No 98 Jan 2008
  5. ↑ Lucas, George (May 1973), The Star Wars, story synopsis, "An alarm sounds. The rebels are forced to fight their way out of the prison with "multiple lazer guns" and swords." 
  6. ↑ Lucas, George (May 1974), The Star Wars, rough draft, "Ten troopers break out of the ranks and take up the chase. Starkiller runs down a corridor and rounds a corner, reaching a dead end. The troops round the corner and confront the trapped Jedi." 
  7. ↑ Lucas, George (1977), Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 BioWare. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. (LucasArts). PC. (2003-11-19)
  9. ↑ Anderson, Kevin J. (1994). Dark Apprentice. The Jedi Academy Trilogy. Bantam Spectra. 
  10. ↑ Foster, Alan Dean (1979). Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Ballantine Books. 
  11. ↑ "Samuel L. Jackson". Inside the Actors Studio. Bravo. 2002-06-02.
  12. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000168/bio
  13. ↑ Bouzereau, Laurent; Duncan, Jody (1999). Star Wars: The Making of Episode I: The Phantom Menace (Hardcover ed.). New York: Ballantine Publ. Group. ISBN 0345431111. , page 99
  14. ↑ "March-Interview with stunt co-ordinator Nick Gillard (Mr. Optimism)". http://desiringhayden.net/pressarchive/?p=426. Retrieved 2009-06-21. 
  15. ↑ "Nick Gillard Talks ROTS Game". TheForce.Net. 2005-05-08. http://www.theforce.net/videogames/story/Nick_Gillard_Talks_ROTS_Game_92147.asp. Retrieved 2008-11-28. 
  16. ↑ Episode I Video: Prime of the Jedi -(part of the "Making Episode I" series).

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