Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from dot Com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today we're going to listen to a good, old
Speaker 1: classic episode of tech Stuff. This is prompted by the
Speaker 1: fact that the trailer for Star Wars episode seven came
Speaker 1: out from and set my mind on fire. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm not the only person out there who feels this way.
Speaker 1: I love Star Wars. I thought the prequels have killed
Speaker 1: it for me, but this, this preview has me cautiously optimistic.
Speaker 1: And we thought it might be fun to talk about
Speaker 1: the lightsaber and so I want to go back and
Speaker 1: listen to this episode that Chris and I recorded way
Speaker 1: back in April. This is going pretty far back there,
Speaker 1: but we talked all about lightsabers. So check it out.
Speaker 1: And then when the episodes over, I've got a little
Speaker 1: bit of an update and some information to tell you.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna start off this podcast with a little tweet.
Speaker 1: This listener tweet comes from Jacqueline Hyde, who says, got
Speaker 1: a listener request for you how lightsabers work. The force
Speaker 1: is strong with this one, so we are going to
Speaker 1: talk about lightsabers. This is kind of an interesting subject
Speaker 1: in the sense that really it belongs and stuff you
Speaker 1: missed in history class because it did happen a long
Speaker 1: time ago. Any galaxy far far away, Yeah, um or
Speaker 1: technically it could be fan stuff, but they don't have
Speaker 1: a podcast. So we're gonna tackle it before anyone can
Speaker 1: grab it from our cold dead paddawan hands. As the
Speaker 1: Jedi would say, niner niner, Yes, the Jedi would say that.
Speaker 1: So of course we're talking about the civilized weapon from
Speaker 1: a or the elegant weapon from a more civilized age.
Speaker 1: The light Saber, as introduced to us through George Lucas's
Speaker 1: brilliant work Star Wars A New Hope um or just
Speaker 1: Star Wars. When it first came out in it was
Speaker 1: not American Graffiti as many people think. No, no, there
Speaker 1: was no cameo of the lightsaber in American graffiti, although
Speaker 1: that would have made that movie that much more awesome.
Speaker 1: So Lightsabers, of course, this is the weapon the Jedi use,
Speaker 1: the the magic sword of the Star Wars series, and
Speaker 1: in fact, when uh, most of the interviews I've seen
Speaker 1: with Lucas, he just refers to it as a magic sword.
Speaker 1: You know, it just it's that's what the purpose of
Speaker 1: it is. It's just it happens to be called a lightsaber,
Speaker 1: but it's a magic sword. So the problem with magic
Speaker 1: is that there's not a whole lot to how it
Speaker 1: works other than magic. You know, Yeah, you're just totally
Speaker 1: getting into that early. I thought we were going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and talk about how it works. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: this has not stopped people from telling us how it works,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it's magic. So let's talk that.
Speaker 1: There are people who will argue exactly how this works.
Speaker 1: It's as a matter of fact, we have an article
Speaker 1: on how it works. It's not cannon, and cannon is
Speaker 1: important to me. But then again, and you know what
Speaker 1: is canon jar jar binks. So let's just move on
Speaker 1: into how lightsabers work. So a lightsaber is made up
Speaker 1: of several different parts. You've got the handle, which is
Speaker 1: pretty much where everything is, right, yeah, So the handle
Speaker 1: has at the base of the handle, you've got the
Speaker 1: power cell and it's a it was it diecium, yes,
Speaker 1: the dietum crystal. All right, so you've got the diaction
Speaker 1: power cell that's in the That's fine. You know what
Speaker 1: if they correct us, if they take that time more
Speaker 1: power to them uh diaction power cell is in the
Speaker 1: middle of a power of vortex ring and a power
Speaker 1: field conductor. Now where does all this power go? You've
Speaker 1: you're generated. That's essentially like the battery of the lightsaber.
Speaker 1: That's the very base. So and it's got a lot
Speaker 1: of energy stored in it, lots and lots of energy.
Speaker 1: Now where does this energy go once it starts to
Speaker 1: emit from the power cell? It goes into the crystal
Speaker 1: energy chamber right where you have your primary crystal. Now,
Speaker 1: depending on whom you ask, this crystal may or may
Speaker 1: not determine the color of the lightsabers blade. Now, some
Speaker 1: would argue that the real determiner for the lightsaber color
Speaker 1: is lies with the Jedi him or herself and the
Speaker 1: force that that Jedi abuse the crystal. So in that case,
Speaker 1: you could have any crystal and essentially have a lightsaber
Speaker 1: of any color. It would all be up to the
Speaker 1: individual Jedi. Others would argue, nay, tis not. So, the
Speaker 1: lightsaber color is dependent entirely upon the color of the
Speaker 1: crystal you select to focus this power. Um, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go with that one. So you know, of course, we
Speaker 1: we also need to talk about how Jedi lightsabers are
Speaker 1: different from Sith lightsabers because they are so the crystals
Speaker 1: that Jedi use tend to be natural crystals. They're crystal
Speaker 1: those found in caves throughout the galaxy um, and so
Speaker 1: these crystals are they can take the power and create
Speaker 1: the the the force of the I guess, the actual
Speaker 1: lightsaber blade. It's the best way of putting it. Um.
Speaker 1: And the Sith what they do is they'll they'll make
Speaker 1: a they'll make their own crystals, they'll create a forge,
Speaker 1: and they'll build a synthetic crystal. And there's tend to
Speaker 1: be red, yes, which is why you see Sith while
Speaker 1: like like Darth Maul or Darth Vader or Darth Tyrannus
Speaker 1: walking around with a big old red lightsaber, whereas Jedi
Speaker 1: they tend to stick with blue and green, although other
Speaker 1: colors are also available. Yes, so there are more that,
Speaker 1: but there are there are more than one crystal though
Speaker 1: the primary crystal is uh is just one part of that.
Speaker 1: There are sex there are secondary and smaller crystals, and
Speaker 1: it sort of depends on the Jedi who builds the lightsaber,
Speaker 1: because the lightsaber is creating a lightsaber is part of
Speaker 1: becoming a Jedi. Yes, it's actually the final step of
Speaker 1: Jedi training according to a Darth Vader. Yes so. But
Speaker 1: but what the additional crystals do is they actually help
Speaker 1: focus the energy into a blade form, right right, So,
Speaker 1: the energy coming from the power cell, once it passes
Speaker 1: through the crystal, that's what gives it the the destructive
Speaker 1: force that we see from lightsabers. The other crystals focus
Speaker 1: that into the blade. Um and depending also on upon
Speaker 1: whom you ask, they may also give the the lightsaber
Speaker 1: other certain powers, like it may enhance certain certain aspects
Speaker 1: of the lightsaber. For example, we know that lightsabers can
Speaker 1: deflect blaster fire. Some of these crystals are apparently more
Speaker 1: effective at deflecting blaster fire than others, and others may
Speaker 1: be better at cutting through certain kinds of material. So
Speaker 1: uh Now, other other scholars will argue that's not the case.
Speaker 1: The just focuses the blade, doesn't imbue it with any
Speaker 1: other powers. Um. Personally, I haven't had my hands on
Speaker 1: the lightsaber in a really long time, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard for me to tell you exactly what what
Speaker 1: which ones are, right, and also I have only ever
Speaker 1: really used one, So with that small sample size, it's
Speaker 1: impossible to say yes. And and it's probably a good
Speaker 1: time to point out that if you do have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to use the lights I remember it's it's not
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that you just want to play
Speaker 1: around with because it can be a very very dangerous weapon.
Speaker 1: It turns out serious damage when you can cut through,
Speaker 1: you know, a foot of steel that it's not the
Speaker 1: best thing to you know, swatterfly with no um. After
Speaker 1: it goes through the christ the focusing crystal, it passes
Speaker 1: through the blade energy channel again further refines the blade
Speaker 1: and directs it into a straight line that would emerge
Speaker 1: from the hilt um. And then at the very top
Speaker 1: of your blade, you've got your your cycling field energizer's
Speaker 1: your energy modulation circuits uh, and then you've got your
Speaker 1: your controls. Your control adjust the power of the blade,
Speaker 1: and it also adjust the length of the blade. So
Speaker 1: even though we normally see lightsabers used at a at
Speaker 1: a pretty standard length, most people have it at a
Speaker 1: whenever they turn on their lightsaber, it's pretty much the
Speaker 1: same length each time. Technically you can adjust that so
Speaker 1: you can make it longer or shorter using the blade
Speaker 1: length adjustment UM. And then there's a magnetic magnetic stabilizing
Speaker 1: ring and a blade shroud emitter um at the very
Speaker 1: top which helped control the blade so it doesn't just
Speaker 1: zap out when you turn it on. UM. That's your
Speaker 1: basic anatomy of your lightsaber hilt, all right. And then
Speaker 1: Coston there's the activation matrix, which is the star Wars
Speaker 1: term for the switch. I just I love that part there.
Speaker 1: The handle is about thirty centimeters in length, so they're
Speaker 1: not ridiculously long, right, UM, which is good to know.
Speaker 1: It generates an arc wave energy field, and this is
Speaker 1: why the blades actually have a stopping point. Yes, and
Speaker 1: it has it. It produces sort of a gyroscopic effect
Speaker 1: to which is why you have to be very careful
Speaker 1: with it because you know it has it has a
Speaker 1: pull to it if you will, right. But that also
Speaker 1: makes it easier to use, because otherwise it would be
Speaker 1: like swinging a flashlight around. There'll be no feedback from
Speaker 1: swinging the handle, and it would make it much more
Speaker 1: difficult to master a lightsaber if you didn't have that
Speaker 1: gyroscopic effect when you started swinging it around. UM. So
Speaker 1: the blade arc tip, that's the very end of the
Speaker 1: lightsaber um and it's it's the arc emmitter is what's
Speaker 1: keeping it from becoming like a blaster. Actually, lightsabers predate
Speaker 1: blasters um before it was a more civilized age after all,
Speaker 1: as it was, and you know, I guess civilized means
Speaker 1: that you locked each other's limbs off, as opposed to
Speaker 1: shooting each other from very far away. Uh. Never never
Speaker 1: bring a lightsaber to a blaster fight. Oh wait, no
Speaker 1: you could do that. No, yeah, you can't do that
Speaker 1: because yeah, alright, so let's let's talk about about that's
Speaker 1: that's the basics of building your lightsaber um. Now, each
Speaker 1: Jedi builds his or her own lightsaber as part of
Speaker 1: their training. Uh, and they're gonna build it according to
Speaker 1: their own particular fighting style. Now do you have you
Speaker 1: heard about the different Jedi fighting styles? No? I haven't.
Speaker 1: There are seven major forms of lightsaber styles. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: well why don't you? Why don't you tell this? All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go into a little detail, but I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna do this as a pretty high level thing. We
Speaker 1: don't need to get into depth. This isn't Jedi fighting
Speaker 1: style stuff. That's right. Yeah, that's another podcast that we're
Speaker 1: starting next month. You start requesting now, um, next month
Speaker 1: being April. I can't imagine when the first episode will
Speaker 1: come out. So, so the the fighting styles, and you
Speaker 1: can think of it kind of like martial arts styles. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, not all martial arts styles are alike. Cut
Speaker 1: on Day is very different from jiu jitsu, which is
Speaker 1: very different from a keto, which in turn is different
Speaker 1: from hap keto. Um, they're they're drunk Jedi style. No,
Speaker 1: there's no drunken master Jedi style, although I hear Yoda
Speaker 1: can get up to some way shenanigans on a Saturday unit. Uh.
Speaker 1: The seven forms of lightsaber combat are actually listed as
Speaker 1: you know, Form one, Form two, Form three. They each
Speaker 1: have their own names, but I'm not even going to
Speaker 1: try and pronounce them because they're all alien and I
Speaker 1: don't have the capability. I don't actually know what the
Speaker 1: pronunciation is for most of them. But if you hadn't
Speaker 1: spilled your mini chlorine, you'd be fine, I know. In general,
Speaker 1: Form one is the foundation. It is the basic form
Speaker 1: of lightsaber combat. It's your basic strikes, your basic defenses. Um.
Speaker 1: It teaches you how to view the body as a
Speaker 1: series of targets like you think of you divide up
Speaker 1: the body, like the head is a certain certain target,
Speaker 1: the arms, the torso, and you know, attacks are very
Speaker 1: specific to each target. You know, different slashing techniques and
Speaker 1: hacking techniques. So for one is kind of lightsaber combat
Speaker 1: one oh one, everyone pretty much goes through that. Form
Speaker 1: two is dueling. Now, this lightsaber combat really concentrates on
Speaker 1: finesse blade control footwork. This is the kind of of
Speaker 1: style that Colt Dooku slash Darth Tarrannis used. Now. That
Speaker 1: is why his lightsaber handle actually has a curve at
Speaker 1: the end of it. It's so that he can hold
Speaker 1: it kind of like a pistol grip. Gives him a
Speaker 1: lot of control over the tip of the blade. And
Speaker 1: that's just his style of dueling. Now, this was much
Speaker 1: more popular before blasters came out because it was just
Speaker 1: really meant for lightsaber to lightsaber combat. Once blasters came out,
Speaker 1: people Jedi began to realize that the in order to
Speaker 1: deflect these these blaster bolts, they would need to adapt
Speaker 1: their fighting style. This is not the best style to
Speaker 1: use if you're being shot at by stormtroopers, for example.
Speaker 1: So uh, but that was Tarrannis is favorite form. Then
Speaker 1: there's Form three, which is defensive, where you are trying
Speaker 1: to reveal the least amount of target space on your body,
Speaker 1: so it's really good for defending against blasters, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Form four is an acrobatic style, lots of
Speaker 1: flips and spins. You're using the force to boost your
Speaker 1: your physical abilities, so you're you're depending more on uh
Speaker 1: these acrobatics than on your blade at that point. So
Speaker 1: Yoda uses that a lot. Um if you've seen him
Speaker 1: fight Count Dooku, He's like a little queens and art.
Speaker 1: And then uh Fom five that uses the deflective nature
Speaker 1: of the lightsaber to reflect blaster fire. Um you you
Speaker 1: use use strengthen your attacks, so it's a more brute
Speaker 1: force kind of of approach. This is the style favored
Speaker 1: by a certain Skywalker family. Both Anakin and Luke used
Speaker 1: Form five. Form six combines elements of forms one through five. Um,
Speaker 1: but it also teaches that you should be detached from emotion.
Speaker 1: You should be using very calculating ways of moving. You
Speaker 1: shouldn't let your emotions dictate what you're doing. Four and
Speaker 1: seven is kind of the opposite, that's leveraging your emotion
Speaker 1: into power and using that to fight your opponents. This
Speaker 1: was what Darth maul Uh used with some reliance on
Speaker 1: on on Form four as well the acrobatic style. Now,
Speaker 1: of course he had a double bladed lightsaber, and those
Speaker 1: don't work all that differently than a regular lightsaber. They're
Speaker 1: just basically two lightsabers attached together at the hilt. So
Speaker 1: there's there's four crystals instead of two, or a minimum
Speaker 1: of four, because you have to have for you know,
Speaker 1: two of the generator type and two of the focusing
Speaker 1: type at minimum in order to create the two blades.
Speaker 1: By the way, those focusing crystals are usually add again
Speaker 1: crystals usually, but you can also find them on Dantweine
Speaker 1: as well as many many other UH planets within these
Speaker 1: Star Wars galaxy. Yes, until Senti Star comes after you
Speaker 1: and you know calls you a coward. Right, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I switched genres. Okay, you lost me. You lost me, seriously,
Speaker 1: you never played Senti Star. I rarely played way way
Speaker 1: way way back in the past, back when the Jedi
Speaker 1: were um much more numerous. The color of your blade
Speaker 1: also would indicate what what kind of Jedi you were.
Speaker 1: For example, if you had a blue blade. That signified
Speaker 1: that you were a Jedi Guardian, and so you're much
Speaker 1: more you know, kind of a physical. You would get
Speaker 1: into the fights, you would you know, defend people with
Speaker 1: your your prowess. Uh. Green would suggest that you were
Speaker 1: a Jedi consular, and this would be someone who was
Speaker 1: much more thoughtful and kind of contemplative. And then um,
Speaker 1: Yellow would indicate that you're a Jedi Sentinel, and that's
Speaker 1: someone who kind of was in between the other two.
Speaker 1: So so not as physical as the Guardians, but not
Speaker 1: as brainy as the others either. So Yellow and Blue
Speaker 1: dommate Green. This is true. I learned that somewhere should
Speaker 1: we go into the other aspect of lightsabers. So you
Speaker 1: mean we're actually gonna step outside of the realm of
Speaker 1: Star Wars just look at the time and thinking that
Speaker 1: maybe we should do that. That's pretty good idea, all right,
Speaker 1: So that's within the Star Wars universe, of course, that's
Speaker 1: how they supposedly work. And I should also add none
Speaker 1: of that is cannon. And when I say cannon, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the stuff that Lucas himself has signed off
Speaker 1: on as saying, yes, this is officially part of the
Speaker 1: Star Wars history. Um, most of that is just the movies. Um.
Speaker 1: To some extent, you could argue the books as well.
Speaker 1: Some of those. Lucas has more or less said, yeah,
Speaker 1: even though that didn't appear in the movie, that is
Speaker 1: cannon as well, But he never goes into explaining the
Speaker 1: blades in the movies. And so this is really other
Speaker 1: people trying to um rhet coon really to explain why
Speaker 1: this stuff works. Um, yeah, basically, and if you're unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with the tournament cannon is uh like basically, they're written
Speaker 1: instructions for how a a magical or you know, fantasy
Speaker 1: or science fiction universe operates. It kind of helps you
Speaker 1: write the stories. And the Star Wars cannon sort of
Speaker 1: came about after some of the stories had already been
Speaker 1: in practice. So it's a little of the other universe.
Speaker 1: So if you were to read some of the comic
Speaker 1: books or some of the other books that have been
Speaker 1: written in the Star Wars universe, you might notice that
Speaker 1: they sometimes contradict what happened in later movies, and that's
Speaker 1: because they're not canon, all right, So moving on to
Speaker 1: how they actually created this effect, which is really which
Speaker 1: is really fascinating too. I think right now now. First
Speaker 1: of all, in a New Hope, the first film, they
Speaker 1: hadn't originally considered animating or adding any light to these
Speaker 1: at all. The original idea was that the lightsabers were
Speaker 1: going to have There were these these uh I think
Speaker 1: it was three sided, three sided pole that came out
Speaker 1: kind of a triangular pole, and each side was was
Speaker 1: coated with a very reflective material, and they used a
Speaker 1: lamp that was on the same side as the camera
Speaker 1: and focus the light so that it would reflect off
Speaker 1: of it be really shiny, and there was a motor
Speaker 1: inside the handle that would direct the side to be
Speaker 1: aligned properly for the camera. But the effect was not
Speaker 1: as a zippy as Lucas wanted. So they started to
Speaker 1: cast about and see if they could find some other
Speaker 1: way of making this magic sword seem really magical, and
Speaker 1: they contacted an animator by the name of Nelson Shin.
Speaker 1: Nelson Shin took a week and looked at this footage
Speaker 1: that had been shot and used an effect called rhodoscoping.
Speaker 1: The the technique and animation technique is actually a very
Speaker 1: old technique. A lot of people and myself, including associated
Speaker 1: with AHAs, take on video. I associate it with Ralph
Speaker 1: Box She's um Lord of the Rings movie. Also, Wizards
Speaker 1: was another movie he used it in. But it's it's
Speaker 1: where you take live action footage and then you overlay
Speaker 1: animation on top of it, sometimes replacing the live action
Speaker 1: footage entirely, sometimes enhancing it, and in this case, it
Speaker 1: was enhancing it. So what he did was he used
Speaker 1: animation cells to create this this glowing blade effect on
Speaker 1: top of the the actual physical rods that were in
Speaker 1: the shots, and then uh using you know, synchronizing the
Speaker 1: cells that he had created with the actual film, overlaying
Speaker 1: the animated effect on it, creating a new print that
Speaker 1: combined these two individual prints. And that's how you you know.
Speaker 1: He sent that back to Lucas and said, well, here
Speaker 1: you can try this and see if this works. Lucas
Speaker 1: liked it. Um, they decided to go with that approach.
Speaker 1: They refined it a little bit. They added some color
Speaker 1: so you had different color blades because originally they were
Speaker 1: both white and uh, and that was the beginning of
Speaker 1: the lightsaber effect. Now, in the first three films, which
Speaker 1: four or five and six, UM, they use the rotoscoping
Speaker 1: technique where they would essentially hand draw these things on cells. Um. Basically,
Speaker 1: what they do is they put that cell over the
Speaker 1: original film and color it in and then but that's
Speaker 1: not but that's not all of it, because that does
Speaker 1: add some color to it. But from from there they
Speaker 1: have to shoot more film with the cell and the
Speaker 1: original and when they do that, they shoot it over
Speaker 1: a black background and use a light diffuser over the lens.
Speaker 1: They double exposed the shots and that that makes them
Speaker 1: really pop. That makes that makes them look sort of
Speaker 1: you know, gives them that sort of otherworldly effect. You know,
Speaker 1: how bright they are in their shots. So kind of
Speaker 1: sophisticated when you think about it, but very very time consuming. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: it took took a really long time. It took slightly
Speaker 1: less time by the time they got around to the
Speaker 1: prequels episodes one, two, and three, because they could do
Speaker 1: it all digitally, but somebody still has to go into
Speaker 1: the computer and you're doing it, you're doing it all
Speaker 1: in computer as opposed to doing it on hand handmade cells. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I mean it still takes time, it's just not quite
Speaker 1: as time consuming, except for the fact that Lucas decided
Speaker 1: to throw in about I don't know ten times as
Speaker 1: many lightsaber battles in those first three movies as the
Speaker 1: original trilogy combined. Um, the the actual hilts of the
Speaker 1: lightsabers were made up of old camera flash battery packs
Speaker 1: and other odds and ends, like stuff from hardware stores
Speaker 1: like plumbing, um gaskets and things like that. Now, they
Speaker 1: shot these movies in England, so they were raiding various
Speaker 1: British hardware shops. So a lot of the materials that
Speaker 1: they used to build the lightsaber handles are very hard
Speaker 1: to find or sometimes impossible to find in the United States,
Speaker 1: which is why it's kind of challenging to create a
Speaker 1: model of those those first. Again, this is for the
Speaker 1: first trilogy four or five and six. Um, it's hard
Speaker 1: to make those faithfully just because it's hard to get
Speaker 1: those parts in the United States. Um. Now, for episodes one, two,
Speaker 1: and three, those were all machined, so there's all like routed.
Speaker 1: They designed them in the computer and then and then
Speaker 1: made use a router to cut custom parts and then
Speaker 1: assembled them. So it wasn't like they were just grabbing
Speaker 1: whatever they could find and and sticking it together. Um.
Speaker 1: They came up with the concept, and artists came up
Speaker 1: with the concept and then they built it from scratch.
Speaker 1: That was actually one of my questions, like, where'd the
Speaker 1: Jedi going to machine these parts? And you know, do
Speaker 1: they as electrical engineering part of their training. It's Dreadria.
Speaker 1: It's in the CAD system, very very nice. A lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of rascals in the CAD system. As
Speaker 1: it turns out, I think Han Solo actually spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time in the CAD system. It's funny because
Speaker 1: when I started doing the two of these, the two
Speaker 1: pieces of this, the fantasy part and the you know,
Speaker 1: special effect, how do they make it happen? I started
Speaker 1: thinking about that way, So who's actually making these? You
Speaker 1: know because each one is different? Well that's one of
Speaker 1: the things too that uh um and I think is
Speaker 1: at least somewhat cannon, is that it's all sort of individualized,
Speaker 1: you know to the Jedi. So I'm wondering if you know,
Speaker 1: they have to go down to the shop, you know,
Speaker 1: on the thirty fourth floor and go, yeah, I need
Speaker 1: can you make the sort of the the arc tip
Speaker 1: sort of in this shape? No? No, no, not exactly
Speaker 1: like that? Yeah, yeah, uh you know it It's kind
Speaker 1: of sad because when I look at the props from
Speaker 1: the first trilogy, those look like things that have really
Speaker 1: lived in that universe for a really long time. I mean,
Speaker 1: the ships are all beat up, and even the Jedi, uh,
Speaker 1: the Jedi are beat up. The jedire beat up pretty bad.
Speaker 1: But no, even the lightsabers look like they've been well used,
Speaker 1: whereas the if you look at the prequels, every looks
Speaker 1: like brand new and sparkly, and it's just a little
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel to me. It almost feels like it's
Speaker 1: two different universes. Well, you know they are like years
Speaker 1: apart and on and thirty years. Come on, do you
Speaker 1: really want to go down this road because we've been
Speaker 1: recording for like twenty four minutes, I'm not gonna go
Speaker 1: for another fifty probably conservative that would be only because
Speaker 1: I'd have to stop and get a break to drink something.
Speaker 1: So let's we So we talked about the fact that
Speaker 1: you know, rotoscoping, either digitally or by hand, that replacing
Speaker 1: frame by frame, these these rods, the physical things that
Speaker 1: were in the shot, and you needed the physical rods
Speaker 1: because you needed to be able to make contact when
Speaker 1: you're doing lightsaber battles. Right now, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: good point. The handles that they use in the movies
Speaker 1: right now, are you know, plastic handles with aluminum rods,
Speaker 1: and they're they're basically cylindrical and colored red, blue or green.
Speaker 1: They actually had to wrap the aluminum rods in construction
Speaker 1: paper because they were giving off too much dust when
Speaker 1: they were colliding during the lightsaber battles. The original trilogy
Speaker 1: used I think wooden owls. I don't think they used aluminum,
Speaker 1: at least not in the first film. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: imagine that would be a little hard on your wrists too,
Speaker 1: because they're actually, you know, having a sword fight with
Speaker 1: aluminum rods. And yeah, now therons are are thinner than
Speaker 1: what you see on the screen. Um, they're not as
Speaker 1: they're not as thick as as the lightsaber blade appears
Speaker 1: to be. But yeah, they need that so that they
Speaker 1: can do these moves and and make it look convincing.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you would have lightsabers passing through one another and
Speaker 1: that would just not look right. So, um, so there
Speaker 1: is a physical object there that you are are concealing
Speaker 1: with the the overlay. And before we get into how
Speaker 1: you can do this yourself, I wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the sound effects. They were designed by
Speaker 1: Ben Burt, who was he's a brilliant sound designer. Um.
Speaker 1: Sound designers are I think of them kind of like
Speaker 1: a very specific type of engineer. Sound designers are the
Speaker 1: kind of people who can walk into a room and
Speaker 1: just take a second and think of a billion different
Speaker 1: ways to use the sounds that are naturally occurring in
Speaker 1: that room. Most of us we walk into a room,
Speaker 1: we'll hear a noise and then within a second we
Speaker 1: are already ignoring it. It's just been incorporated into what
Speaker 1: we think of as the background. But if you ever
Speaker 1: take a moment and really listen to your environment, you
Speaker 1: start to pick things out as as they happen. Well,
Speaker 1: he's one of those guys who can hear a noise
Speaker 1: and immediately say, hey, uh, this would be great for
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. And when he was tasked with finding
Speaker 1: a noise for the lightsaber, he actually says this was
Speaker 1: the first sound he designed for Star Wars was the
Speaker 1: noise of the lightsaber, and he did it with a
Speaker 1: combination of two noises. One was from an old projector.
Speaker 1: There was an old projector that would made this humming
Speaker 1: noise as it ran, and if you ran two of
Speaker 1: those projectors, you've got a good little harmonizing effect with
Speaker 1: the hum and that's so that formed the basis of
Speaker 1: the wow when you fire up your lightsaber. Um. The
Speaker 1: second was noise is that you would get if you
Speaker 1: ran a microphone near a television. It would be this
Speaker 1: buzzing noise feedback. Yes, that that gives it the kind
Speaker 1: of little crackle sound that you also hear. That's just
Speaker 1: sort of uh, kind of a light sound underneath the thrumb.
Speaker 1: And then whenever someone would wave a lightsaber, well, you
Speaker 1: have to create the wow noise. The way he did
Speaker 1: that was he would move a microphone past a speaker
Speaker 1: that was playing that UM. The the the humming noise,
Speaker 1: and the Doppler effect would take care of the rest.
Speaker 1: So you're just moving a microphone around a speaker and
Speaker 1: then it's translates into the womb womb when you're waving
Speaker 1: your lightsaber around. UM. Absolutely brilliant. One of the uh
Speaker 1: you know, there's there was no going into a synthesizer
Speaker 1: or going into a studio and trying to create this
Speaker 1: sound from scratch. He just found a practical way of
Speaker 1: creating it. And uh, and it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that is forever married with the Star Wars universe. You
Speaker 1: hear that sound, you know immediately what you're listening to. Now,
Speaker 1: let's say you want to do this yourself, it's quite possible. Well,
Speaker 1: you have to spend all that fuel getting to the
Speaker 1: other star system. You know, I don't mean building a
Speaker 1: real one, I mean like creating the effect in a video.
Speaker 1: So you can do this yourself with the right kind
Speaker 1: of software. And uh, there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: video editing suites out there that have the effects that
Speaker 1: you would need in order to create a lightsaber effect. Um,
Speaker 1: most of them are like things like Adobe has several
Speaker 1: There's even a tool that's called l S Maker, which
Speaker 1: allows you to create a lightsaber effect pretty easily. In fact,
Speaker 1: all you have to do is do two clicks and
Speaker 1: you create the basis of a lightsaber effect for a
Speaker 1: single frame of video, and then you can go in
Speaker 1: and tweak the effects so that it looks exactly the
Speaker 1: way you want it to. But again, you have to
Speaker 1: do this frame by frame, so it's not like you
Speaker 1: do two clicks and it magically turns something into a lightsaber.
Speaker 1: You actually have to go through each frame and replace
Speaker 1: the physical object with the lightsaber representation in order for
Speaker 1: it to work properly. Yes, but YouTube is filled with
Speaker 1: people who have done this successfully. Yes, yes, and some
Speaker 1: not so successful, and some of them are pretty awful.
Speaker 1: But uh, the same effect. You can use the same
Speaker 1: sort of technology to create other effects besides the lightsaber effect.
Speaker 1: It's just that's one of those that's pretty easy to
Speaker 1: to apply because really you're talking about a straight line.
Speaker 1: It's not that complicated. Um, it is time consuming though.
Speaker 1: It can take hours and hours and hours to render
Speaker 1: a video that would only last maybe thirty seconds, especially
Speaker 1: if you have multiple blades on there. That can because
Speaker 1: each blade is going to require a different layer in
Speaker 1: your video, you know, So you're gonna if you have
Speaker 1: like six Jedi out there and they all have lightsabers
Speaker 1: at six layers of video right there in order for
Speaker 1: you to have all the effects come together properly. Then
Speaker 1: if you know, they clashed and you have to add
Speaker 1: the sparks and there's and you have to and it's
Speaker 1: it can be challenging. I mean it's it's not it's
Speaker 1: not something that you're gonna be able to whip out
Speaker 1: in an hour. It's gonna take a while, but it's
Speaker 1: it's doable, all right. I hope you enjoyed that episode.
Speaker 1: I had a great time with Chris recording that one.
Speaker 1: So the update I promise. Well, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: not about your broadsword lightsaber that was seen in the trailer.
Speaker 1: Although my favorite theory so far is that the lightsaber
Speaker 1: is so overpowered and jankie and it was made by
Speaker 1: someone who was not actually trained as a Jedi, that
Speaker 1: the the cross hilt is not truly a cross hilt. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's vents that are venting off extra energy so that
Speaker 1: the lightsaber doesn't explode. It's awesome fan made theory that
Speaker 1: probably has no basis in reality, but it's also pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about a an actual experiment that
Speaker 1: was done back in two thousand thirteen that showed how
Speaker 1: light can somehow behave kind of like it does with lightsaber.
Speaker 1: So if you know your you know your your light physics,
Speaker 1: you know that photons don't normally interact with one another.
Speaker 1: That's why you can turn on two flashlights and pass
Speaker 1: the beams against and through each other and there's no interaction.
Speaker 1: There's no interference. They just passed right on through. Photons
Speaker 1: normally don't mess with other photons. However, the some scientists
Speaker 1: at the Harvard m I T Center for Ultra called Atoms,
Speaker 1: which is the best name ever, discovered that if they
Speaker 1: super cooled rubidium atoms a gas cloud of rubidium atoms
Speaker 1: too too as cold as they could possibly get it,
Speaker 1: and then they passed a couple of photons through that
Speaker 1: gas cloud, they would start to push and pull on
Speaker 1: each other as if they were like lightsabers. They could
Speaker 1: actually physically have this push pull relationship. Now, it all
Speaker 1: has to do with a pretty weird concept called the
Speaker 1: Rideberg blockade, which it states that if you excite an atom,
Speaker 1: then you cannot excite nearby atoms to that same degree.
Speaker 1: Is impossible to do that. So when a photon enters
Speaker 1: this super cool cloud of rubidium, it excites one of
Speaker 1: those atoms, and the other atoms around it can't be
Speaker 1: excited more. And that's where you start getting this kind
Speaker 1: of shoving behavior between the photons that the various press
Speaker 1: releases talked about it being kind of like the way
Speaker 1: atoms are arranged in a molecule. The photons actually clumped together,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty awesome. Doesn't mean you can have a lightsaber. No,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be helpful for a lightsaber, but it
Speaker 1: may end up one day helping us create quantum computers
Speaker 1: that use the interactions between photons to help do these computations. Normally, again,
Speaker 1: we can't do that, or it might even lead us
Speaker 1: to being able to create three dimensional objects physical three
Speaker 1: dimensional objects with light sometime in the future. How that works?
Speaker 1: You got me this point. The physics are way over
Speaker 1: my head, but I thought it would be pretty cool
Speaker 1: to talk about anyway. Let me know if you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this look back. Maybe one day we'll do another episode
Speaker 1: about lightsabers where we look into it again, especially given
Speaker 1: the new movies coming out. If you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes of tech Stuff, let me know. Send
Speaker 1: me an email. The addresses tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook,
Speaker 1: Twitter or Tumbler. The handle it all three is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff h s W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon for more on this and basons of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it have stuff works dot Com