April 7, 2010 • 31 mins
Jonathan and Chris discuss the most famous weapon in the "Star Wars" universe -- the lightsaber -- in this episode of TechStuff.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
(00:20):
I am the tech editor at how stuff works dot com.
Sitting next to me, as he always does, is senior
writer Jonathan Strickland. I spilled my mini Glorians. Oh you know,
I'm gonna have to get them up. So we're gonna
start off this podcast with a little listener tweet. This
(00:42):
listener tweet comes from Jacqueline Hyde, who says, got a
listener request for you, how lightsabers work. The force is
strong with this one, so we are going to talk
about lightsabers. This is kind of an interesting subject in
the sense that really it belongs and stuff you missed
in history class because it did happened a long time ago.
Any galaxy far far away, yeah, um, or technically it
(01:04):
could be fan stuffed, but they don't have a podcast,
so we're gonna tackle it before anyone can grab it
from our cold dead paddawan hands. As the Jedi would say,
niner naner, Yes, the Jedi would say, that, So, of
course we're talking about the civilized weapon from a or
the elegant weapon from a more civilized age. The light
saber as introduced to us through George Lucas's brilliant work
(01:29):
Star Wars A New Hope Um or Star Wars when
it first came out in nine. It was not American
graffiti as many people think. No, no, there was no
cameo of the lightsaber in American graffiti, although that would
have made that movie that much more awesome. So lightsabers,
of course, this is the weapon the Jedi used, the
the magic sword of the Star Wars series, and in fact,
(01:51):
when uh, most of the interviews I've seen with Lucas,
he just refers to it as a magic sword. You know,
I just said, it's that's what the purpose of it is.
It's just it happens to be called a lightsaber, but
a magic sword. So the problem with magic is that
there's not a whole lot to how it works other
than magic. You know, you you're just totally getting into that. Early.
(02:14):
I thought we were going to go ahead and talk
about how it works, all right. Well, this has not
stopped people from telling us how it works, despite the
fact that it's magic. So let's talk. There are people
who will argue exactly how this works. It's not. As
a matter of fact, we have an article on how
it works. It's not cannon, and cannon is important to me.
(02:34):
But then again, you know what is canon? Jar jar binks.
So let's just move on into how lightsabers work. So
a lightsaber is made up of several different parts. You've
got the handle, which is pretty much where everything is, right, Yeah,
so the handle has at the base of the handle,
you've got the power sell and uh it's a it
(02:55):
was it dieci um, Yes, a dietium crystal. Alright, So
you've got the diet sham power cell that's in the
basic that's fine. You know what if they correct us,
if they take that time more power to that uh
diation power cell is in the middle of a power
of vortex ring and a power field conductor. Now where
does all this power go? You've you're generated that's essentially
(03:16):
like the battery of the lightsaber. That's the very base.
So and it's got a lot of energy stored in it,
lots and lots of energy. Now where does this energy
go once it starts to Emit from the power cell.
It goes into the crystal energy chamber right where you
have your primary crystal. Now, depending on whom you ask,
(03:37):
this crystal may or may not determine the color of
the lightsabers blade. Yes. Now, some would argue that the
real determiner for the lightsaber color is lies with the
Jedi him or herself and the force that that Jedi
abuse the crystal. So in that case, you could have
(04:00):
any crystal and essentially have a lightsaber of any color.
It would all be up to the individual Jedi. Others
would argue, nay, tis not so, the lightsaber color is
dependent entirely upon the color of the crystal you select
to focus this power. Um, I'm gonna go with that one.
So you know, of course, we we also need to
(04:22):
talk about how Jedi lightsabers are different from Sith lightsabers
because they are so the crystals that Jedi use tend
to be natural crystals. They're crystals found in caves throughout
the galaxy Um, and so these crystals are they can
take the power and create the the the force of
(04:45):
the I guess, the actual lightsaber blade. It's the best
way of putting it. Um and the Sith What they
do is they'll they'll make a they'll make their own crystals.
They'll create a forge, and they'll build a synthetic crystal.
And there's tend to be red, which is why you
see sith like like Darth Maul or Darth Vader or
Darth Tyrannis walking around with a big old red lightsaber,
(05:08):
whereas Jedi they tend to stick with blue and green,
although other colors are also available. Yes, so there are
more that, but there are There are more than one crystal.
Though the primary crystal is uh is just one part
of that. There are second there are secondary and smaller crystals,
and it sort of depends on the Jedi who builds
the lightsaber, because the lightsaber is Creating a lightsaber is
(05:30):
part of becoming a Jedi. Yes, it's actually the final
step of Jedi training. According to a Darth Vader, Yes so.
But but what the additional crystals do is they actually
help focus the energy into a blade form, right right,
So the energy coming from the power cell, once it
passes through the crystal, that's what gives it the the
destructive force that we see from lightsabers. The other crystals
(05:54):
focus that into the blade um and depending also on
upon whom you ask, They may also give the the
lightsaber other certain powers, like it may enhance certain certain
aspects of the lightsaber. For example, we know that lightsabers
can deflect blaster fire. Some of these crystals are apparently
(06:15):
more effective at deflecting blaster fire than others, and others
may be better at cutting through certain kinds of material.
So uh Now, other other scholars will argue that's not
the case. The just focuses the blade, doesn't imbue it
with any other powers. Um. Personally, I haven't had my
hands on the lightsaber in a really long time, so
(06:37):
it's kind of hard for me to tell you exactly
what what which ones are right, And also I have
only ever really used one, so with that small sample size,
it's impossible to say yes. And and it's probably a
good time to point out that if you do have
the opportunity to use the lights remember it's it's not
the kind of thing that you just want to play
around with because it can be a very uh very dangerous. Yeah,
(07:00):
it turns out serious damage and when you can cut through,
you know, a foot of steel, that it's not the
best thing to you know, swatterfly with no UM. After
it goes through the christ the focusing crystal, it passes
through the blade energy channel again further refines the blade
and directs it into a straight line that would emerge
(07:22):
from the hilt. UM. And then at the very top
of your blade, you've got your your cycling field energizer's
your energy modulation circuits uh, and then you've got your
your controls. Your controls adjust the power of the blade,
and it also adjust the length of the blade. So
even though we normally see lightsabers used at A at
(07:43):
a pretty standard length, most people have it at A
whenever they turn on their lightsaber, it's pretty much the
same length each time. Technically you can adjust that, so
you can make it longer or shorter using the blade
length adjustment UM. And then there's a magnetic magnetic stabilizing
ring and a blade trial emitterr UM at the very
top which helped control the blade so it doesn't just
(08:04):
zap out when you turn it on. UM. That's your
basic anatomy of your lightsaber hilt. And then of course
then there's the activation matrix, which is the Star Wars
term for the on switch. I just I love that part.
They are the handle is about thirty centimeters in length,
so they're not ridiculously long, right, um, which is good
(08:28):
to know. It generates an arc wave energy field, and
this is why the blades actually have a stopping point. Yes,
and it has it. It produces sort of a gyroscopic
effect to which is why you have to be very
careful with it because you know it has it has
a pull to it if you will, right. But that
also makes it easier to use, because otherwise it would
(08:50):
be like swinging a flashlight around. There'll be no feedback
from swinging the handle, and it would make it much
more difficult to master allie saber if you didn't have
that gyroscopic effect when you started swinging it around. Um.
So the blade arc tip, that's the very end of
the lightsaber, um, and it's it's the arc committer is
(09:12):
what's keeping it from becoming like a blaster. Actually, lightsabers
pre date blasters, um. Before it was a more civilized
after all as it was and you know, I guess
civilized means that you locked each other's limbs off, as
opposed to shooting each other from very far away. Uh.
Never never bring away lightsaber to a blaster fight. Oh wait, no,
(09:33):
you could do that. No, yeah, you can't do that
because yeah, all right, so let's talk about it's about
that's that's the basics of building your lightsaber. Um. Now,
each Jedi builds his or her own lightsaber as part
of their training. Uh, and they're gonna build it according
to their own particular fighting style. Now do you have
(09:54):
you heard about the different Jedi fighting styles? No? I haven't.
There are seven major forms of lightsaber styles. Yes, okay,
well why don't you I want don't you tell this?
All right, I'm gonna go into a little detail, but
I'm just gonna do this as a pretty high level thing.
You don't need to get into depth. This isn't Jedi
fighting style stuff. That's right. Yeah, that's another podcast that
(10:16):
we're starting next month. You'll start requesting now. Um, next
month being April. I can't imagine when the first episode
will come out. So, so the the the fighting styles
that you can think of it kind of like martial
arts styles. Um, you know, not all martial arts styles
are alike. Cut on day is very different from jiu jitsu,
which is very different from a keto, which in turn
(10:36):
is different from hap keto. Um, there they're drunk Jedi style. No,
there's no drunken master Jedi style, although I hear Yoda
can get up to some wacky shenanigans on a Saturday night. Uh.
The seven forms of lightsaber combat are actually listed as
you know, Form one, Form two, Form three. They each
have their own names, but I'm not even gonna try
and pronounce them because they're all alien and I don't
(10:59):
have the k ability. I don't actually know what the
pronunciation is for most of them. But if you hadn't
spilled your mini chlorine, you'd be fine, I know. In general,
Form one is the foundation. It is the basic form
of lightsaber combat. It's your basic strikes, your basic defenses. Um.
It teaches you how to view the body as a
series of targets, like you think of you divide up
(11:20):
the body like the head is a certain uh certain target,
the arms, the torso, and you know, attacks are very
specific to each target. You know, different slashing techniques and
hacking techniques. So Form one is kind of lightsaber combat
one oh one. Everyone pretty much goes through that. Form
two is dueling. Now, this lightsaber combat really concentrates on
(11:45):
finesse blade control. Footwork. This is the kind of of
style that Count Dooku slash Darth Tyrannis used. Yes, now
that is why his lightsaber handle actually has a curve
at the end of it. It's so that he can
hold it kind of like a pistol grip, gives them
a lot of control over the tip of the blade.
(12:06):
And that's just his style of dueling. Now, this was
much more popular before blasters came out because it was
just really meant for lightsaber to lightsaber combat. Once blasters
came out, people Jedi began to realize that the in
order to deflect these these blaster bolts, they would need
to adapt their fighting style. This is not the best
(12:26):
style to use if you're being shot at by stormtroopers,
for example. So, uh, but that was Trannis's favorite form.
Then there's four three, which is defensive where you are
trying to reveal the least amount of target space on
your body. So it's really good for defending against blasters
that kind of thing. Form four is an acrobatic style,
(12:47):
lots of flips and spins. You're using the force to
boost your your physical abilities, so you're you're spending more
on uh, these acrobatics than on your blade at that point. Yes,
so Yoda uses that a lot um if you've seen
him fight Count Dooku, he's like a little queens and art.
(13:08):
And then uh FOM five that uses the deflective nature
of the lightsaber to reflect blaster fire. Um you you
use use strengthen your attacks, so it's a more brute
force kind of a of approach. This is the style
favored by a certain Skywalker family. Both Anakin and Luke
(13:28):
used Form five. Form six combines elements of Forms one
through five UM, but it also teaches that you should
be detached from emotion. You should be using very calculating
UM ways of of moving. You shouldn't let your emotions
dictate what you're doing. Form seven is kind of the opposite.
(13:48):
That's leveraging your emotion into power and using that to
fight your opponents. This was what Darth maul Uh used
with some reliance on on on Form UH four as well,
the acrobatic style. Now, of course he had a double
bladed lightsaber, and those don't work all that differently than
a regular lightsaber. They're just basically two lightsabers attached together
(14:11):
at the hilt. So there's there's four crystals instead of
two or a minimum of four, because you have to
have for you know, two of the generator type and
two of the focusing type at minimum in order to
create the two blades. By the way, those focusing crystals
are usually add again crystals usually, but you can also
find them on Dantweene as well as many many other
(14:33):
uh planets within the Star Wars galaxy. Yes, until Senti
Star comes after you and you know calls you a coward. Right,
I'm sorry I switched genres. Are you lost me? You
lost me? Seriously, you never played Seni Star. I rarely
played Star anyway. Also, um depending uh way, way way
(14:55):
way back in the past, back when the Jedi were
um much more new rus. The color of your blade
also would indicate what what kind of Jedi you are.
For example, if you had a blue blade, that signified
that you were a Jedi guardian and so you're much
more you know, kind of a physical you would get
into the fights. You would you know, defend people with
(15:16):
your your prowess. UH green would suggest that you were
a Jedi consular, and this would be someone who was
much more thoughtful, kind of contemplative. And then um yellow
would indicate that you're a Jedi Sentinel, and that's someone
who kind of was in between the other two, so
(15:36):
so not as physical as the Guardians, but not as
brainy as the others either, So Yellow and Blue domat Green.
This is true. I learned that somewhere. So should we
go into the other aspect of light tabers. So you
mean we're actually gonna step outside of the realm of
Star Wars at the time and thinking that maybe we
(15:58):
should do that. That's where idea, all right, So that's
within the Star Wars universe, of course, that's how they
supposedly work. And I should also add none of that
is cannon. And when I say cannon, I'm talking about
the stuff that Lucas himself has signed off on as saying, yes,
this is officially part of the Star Wars history. Um,
most of that is just the movies. Um to some extent,
(16:20):
you could argue the books as well. Some of those
Lucas has more or less said, yeah, even though that
didn't appear in the movie, that is cannon as well.
But he never goes into explaining the blades in the movies.
And so this is really other people trying to um
rhet coon really to explain why this stuff works. Yeah,
um yeah, basically, and if you're unfamiliar with the term,
(16:43):
and cannon is uh like basically they're written instructions for
how a a magical or you know, fantasy or science
fiction universe operates. It kind of helps you write the stories.
And the Star Wars cannon sort of came about after
some of the stories had already been in practice, so
it's a little looser than some of the right. So
if you were to read some of the comic books
or some of the other books that have been written
(17:04):
in the Star Wars universeit you might notice that they
sometimes contradict what happened in later movies, and that's because
they're not cannon, all right. So moving on to how
they actually created this effect, which is really which is
really fascinating too, I think right now now, First of all,
in a New Hope, the first film, they hadn't originally
considered animating or adding any light to these at all.
(17:26):
The original idea was that the lightsabers were going to
have there were these these uh I think it was
three sided three sided poll that came out kind of
a triangular pole and each side was was coated with
a very reflective material, and they used a lamp that
was on the same side as the camera and focus
the light so that it would reflect off of it
(17:48):
be really shiny, and there was a motor inside the
handle that would direct the side to be aligned properly
for the camera. But the effect was not as a
zippy as Lucas wanted. So Um they started to cast
about and see if they could find some other way
of making this magic sword seem really magical, and they
(18:10):
contacted an animator by the name of Nelson Shin. Nelson
Shin took a week and looked at this footage that
had been shot and used an effect called rhodoscoping. The
the technique and animation technique is actually very old technique.
A lot of people and myself, including associated with AHAs
(18:32):
take on me video. I associate it with Ralph Box
She's um Lord of the Rings movie. Also Wizards was
another movie he used it in. But it's it's where
you take live action footage and then you overlay animation
on top of it, sometimes replacing the live action footage entirely,
sometimes enhancing it, and in this case it was enhancing it.
(18:53):
So what he did was he used animation cells to
create this this glowing blade effect on top of the
the actual physical rods that were in the shots, and
then uh using you know, synchronizing the cells that he
had created with the actual film overlaying the animated effect
(19:13):
on it, creating a new print that combined these two
individual prints. And that's how you you know. He sent
that back to Lucas and said, well, here, you can
try this and see if this works. Lucas liked it. Um,
they decided to go with that approach. They refined it
a little bit. They added some color so you had
different color blades because originally they were both white and uh,
(19:34):
and that was the beginning of the lightsaber effect. Now,
in the first three films, which episodes four or five
and six, UM, they used the rotoscoping technique where they
would essentially hand draw these things on cells. Um. Basically,
what they do is they put that cell over the
original film and color it in and then but that's
(19:57):
not but that's not all of it, because that does
add some color to it. But from from there they
have to shoot more film with the cell and the
original and when they do that, they shoot it over
a black background and use a light diffuser over the lens. Yes,
they double exposed the shots and that that makes them
really pop. That makes that makes them look sort of
(20:19):
you know, gives them that sort of otherworldly effect, you know,
how bright they are in the shots. So kind of
sophisticated when you think about it, but very very time consuming, right, Yes,
it took took a really long time. It took slightly
less time by the time they got around to the
prequels episodes one, two, and three, because they could do
it all digitally, But somebody still has to go into
(20:40):
the computer and you're doing it. You're doing it all
in computer as opposed to doing it on hand handmade cells. Um. So,
I mean, it still takes time, it's just not quite
as time consuming, except for the fact that Lucas decided
to throw in about I don't know ten times as
many lightsaber battles in those first three movies as the
original trilogy and bind Um. The The actual hilts of
(21:03):
the lightsabers were made up of old camera flash battery
packs and other odds and ends like stuff from hardware
stores like plumbing um gaskets and things like that. Now,
they shot these movies in England, so they were raiding
various British hardware shops. So a lot of the materials
(21:24):
that they used to build the lightsaber handles are very
hard to find or sometimes impossible to find in the
United States, which is why it's kind of challenging to
create a model of those those first. Again, this is
for the first trilogy four or five and six. Um,
it's hard to make those faithfully just because it's hard
to get those parts in the United States. Um. Now
(21:45):
for episodes one, two, and three, those were all machined
and so there's all like routed. They designed them in
a computer and then and then made use a router
to cut custom parts and then assemble them. So it
wasn't like they were just grabbing whatever they could find
and and and sticking it together. Um, they came up
with the concept and artists came up with the concept
and then they built it from scratch. That was actually
(22:08):
one of my questions, like where the Jedi going to
machine these parts? And you know, do they is electrical
engineering part of their training. It's in the CAD system,
very very nice, a lot of a lot of rascals
and the CAD system. As it turns out, I think
(22:29):
Han Solo actually spent a lot of time in the
CADS system. Very nice. No, it's funny because when I
started doing the two of these, the two pieces of this,
the fantasy part and the you know, special effects, how
do they make it happen? I started thinking about that way,
So who's actually making these? You know? Because each one
is different. Well that's one of the things too that
(22:49):
uh um and I think is at least somewhat cannon,
is that it's all sort of individualized, you know, to
the Jedi. So I'm wondering if you know, they have
to go down to the shop, you know that thirty
fourth floor and go, yeah, I need can you make
sort of the the arc tip sort of in this shape? No, no, no,
not exactly like that. Yea, yeah, you know it. It's
(23:13):
kind of sad because when I look at the props
from the first trilogy, those look like things that have
really lived in that universe for a really long time.
I mean, the ships are all beat up, and even
the Jedi. Uh, the Jedi are beat up. The jedire
beat up pretty bad. But no, even the lightsabers look
like they've been well used. Whereas the if you look
(23:34):
at the prequels. Everything looks like brand new and sparkly,
and it's just a little it doesn't feel to me.
It almost feels like it's two different universes. Well, you
know they are like years apart and on and thirty years.
Come on, do you really want to go down this
road because we don't recording for like twenty four minutes.
I'm not gonna go fortably conservative, but that would be
(23:57):
only because I'd have to stop and get are to
drink something. So let's we So we talked about the
fact that you know, rotoscoping, either digitally or by hand,
that replacing frame by frame. These these rods, the physical
things that were in the shot, and you needed the
physical rods because you needed to be able to make
contact when you're doing lightsaber battles. Right now, I think
(24:19):
that's a good point. The handles that they use in
the movies right now are you know, plastic handles with
aluminum rods, and they're they're basically cylindrical and colored red,
blue or green. They actually had to wrap the the
aluminum rods in construction paper because they were giving off
too much dust when they were colliding during the lightsaber battles.
(24:39):
The original trilogy used I think wooden dowls. I don't
think they used aluminum, at least not in the first film. Yeah,
I would imagine that would be a little hard on
your wrists too, because they're actually, you know, having a
sword fight with aluminum rods. And yeah, now la rons
are are thinner than what you see on the screen. Um,
they're not as they're not as thick as as the
lightsaber blade appears to be. But yeah, they need that
(25:01):
so that they can do these moves and and make
it look convincing. Otherwise you would have lightsabers passing through
one another and that would just not look right. So um,
so there is a physical object there that you are
are concealing with the the overlay, and um, before we
get into how you can do this yourself, I wanted
to talk a little bit about the sound effects. They
(25:22):
were designed by Ben Burt, who was he's a brilliant
sound designer. Um. Sound designers are I think of them
kind of like a very specific type of engineer. Sound
designers are the kind of people who can walk into
a room and just take a second and think of
a billion different ways to use the sounds that are
naturally occurring in that room. Most of us we walk
into a room, we'll hear a noise, and then within
(25:45):
a second we are already ignoring it. It's just been
incorporated into what we think of as the background. But
if you ever take a moment and really listen to
your environment, you start to pick things out as as
they happen. Well, he's one of those guys who can
hear a noise and immediately say, hey, uh, this would
be great for blah blah blah. And when he was
tasked with finding a noise for the lightsaber, he actually
(26:06):
says this was the first sound he designed for Star
Wars was the noise of the lightsaber. And he did
it with a combination of two noises. One was from
an old projector. Uh, there was an old projector that
would made this humming noise as it ran. And if
you ran two of those projectors, you've got a good
little harmonizing effect with the hum and that's so that
(26:28):
formed the basis of the wow when you fire up
your lightsaber. Um. The second was noise that you would
get if you ran a microphone near a television. It
would be this buzzing noise feedback yes, that that gives
it the kind of little crackle sound that you also hear.
That's just sort of uh, kind of a light sound
(26:50):
underneath the thrumb. And then whenever someone would wave a lightsaber,
well you have to create the wow noise. The way
he did that was he would move a microphone past
a speaker that was playing that. Um, the the the
humming noise, and the Doppler effect would take care of
the rest. So you're just moving a microphone around a
speaker and then it's translates into the womb womb womb
(27:15):
when you're waving your lightsaber around. UM. Absolutely brilliant. One
of the uh you know, there's there was no going
into a a synthesizer or going into a studio and
trying to create this sound from scratch. He just found
a practical way of creating it and uh, and it's
one of those things that is forever married with the
Star Wars universe. You hear that sound, you know immediately
(27:37):
what you're listening to. Now, let's say you want to
do this yourself, it's quite possible. Well, you have to
spend all that fuel getting to the other star system.
You know, I don't mean building a real one, I
mean like creating the effect in a video. So, uh,
you can do this yourself with the right kind of software.
(27:57):
And uh, there are a lot of different video and
suites out there that have the effects that you would
need in order to create a lightsaber effect. Um, most
of them are like things like Adobe has several There's
even a tool that's called l S Maker which allows
you to create a lightsaber effect pretty easily. In fact,
all you have to do is do two clicks and
you create the basis of a lightsaber effect for a
(28:20):
single frame of video, and then you can go in
and tweak the effects so that it looks exactly the
way you want it to. But again, you have to
do this frame by frame, so it's not like you
do two clicks and it magically turns something into a lightsaber.
You actually have to go through each frame and replace
the the physical object with the lightsaber representation and order
(28:43):
for it to work properly. Yes, but YouTube is filled
with people who have done this successfully. Yes, yes, and
some not so successful. Some of them are pretty awful.
But uh, the same effect. You can use the same
sort of technology to create other effects besides the lightsaber effect.
It's just that's one of those that is pretty easy
to to apply because really you're talking about a straight line.
(29:06):
It's not that complicated. Um. It is time consuming though,
it can take hours and hours and hours to render
a video that would only last maybe thirty seconds, especially
if you have multiple blades on there. That can because
each blade is going to require a different layer in
your video. So you're gonna if you have like six
(29:27):
Jedi out there and they all have lightsabers at six
layers of video right there in order for you to
have all the effects come together properly. And then if
you know, they clashed and you have to add the
sparks right there's and you have to and it's it
can be challenging. I mean it's it's not it's not
something that you're gonna be able to whip out in
an hour. It's gonna take a while, but it's it's doable,
(29:49):
and most of the software is you know, like I said,
there's some software out there that's free that you can
use to create this effect if you have the time
and patients and a little bit of artistic ability. Yep,
I have none of those three, I think. Um, well,
the force is weak with Pulette. But uh, I guess
we can wrap this up and we'll we'll finish with
(30:10):
a little more listener mail. This listener mail comes from
Matt and Matt says, Hey, Chris and Jonathan, thanks for
taking my request about the dangers of Wikipedia. You guys
are awesome and I am totally having a star struck
moment right now. O m G. The tech stuff guys
are talking about me. You two are great. Ps if
either of you are Trek ease. I can't remember if
(30:31):
you have mentioned it before. I just got done watching
one of my favorite episodes called The Offspring from the
Next Generation, where Data becomes a dad Data. I guess
I'm sorry he hates it when he when you call
him Data. I remember that episode. Great episode, check it out.
So I figured we'd talked about star Trek for a second,
since we talk about Star Wars for thirty minutes has
a serious cannon, live long and prosper Thanks Matt and
(30:55):
we it was our pleasure to talk about Wikipedia. We
haven't received any hate mail on that yet. Time will
tell if that'll change. If you would like to send
us a message, please no hate mail, just tell us
how much you love Star Wars and that you want
to build your own lightsaber. Now you can write us
tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and check
(31:16):
out the website how stuff works dot com. We do
have how lightsabers work right there on the site. Yes
and uh. If you do decide to build a lightsaber,
don't hit anybody with it or yourself. And may the
Force be with you always for moral This and thousands
of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com
(31:39):
and be sure to check out the new tech stuff
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
(00:20):
I am the tech editor at how stuff works dot com.
Sitting next to me, as he always does, is senior
writer Jonathan Strickland. I spilled my mini Glorians. Oh you know,
I'm gonna have to get them up. So we're gonna
start off this podcast with a little listener tweet. This
(00:42):
listener tweet comes from Jacqueline Hyde, who says, got a
listener request for you, how lightsabers work. The force is
strong with this one, so we are going to talk
about lightsabers. This is kind of an interesting subject in
the sense that really it belongs and stuff you missed
in history class because it did happened a long time ago.
Any galaxy far far away, yeah, um, or technically it
(01:04):
could be fan stuffed, but they don't have a podcast,
so we're gonna tackle it before anyone can grab it
from our cold dead paddawan hands. As the Jedi would say,
niner naner, Yes, the Jedi would say, that, So, of
course we're talking about the civilized weapon from a or
the elegant weapon from a more civilized age. The light
saber as introduced to us through George Lucas's brilliant work
(01:29):
Star Wars A New Hope Um or Star Wars when
it first came out in nine. It was not American
graffiti as many people think. No, no, there was no
cameo of the lightsaber in American graffiti, although that would
have made that movie that much more awesome. So lightsabers,
of course, this is the weapon the Jedi used, the
the magic sword of the Star Wars series, and in fact,
(01:51):
when uh, most of the interviews I've seen with Lucas,
he just refers to it as a magic sword. You know,
I just said, it's that's what the purpose of it is.
It's just it happens to be called a lightsaber, but
a magic sword. So the problem with magic is that
there's not a whole lot to how it works other
than magic. You know, you you're just totally getting into that. Early.
(02:14):
I thought we were going to go ahead and talk
about how it works, all right. Well, this has not
stopped people from telling us how it works, despite the
fact that it's magic. So let's talk. There are people
who will argue exactly how this works. It's not. As
a matter of fact, we have an article on how
it works. It's not cannon, and cannon is important to me.
(02:34):
But then again, you know what is canon? Jar jar binks.
So let's just move on into how lightsabers work. So
a lightsaber is made up of several different parts. You've
got the handle, which is pretty much where everything is, right, Yeah,
so the handle has at the base of the handle,
you've got the power sell and uh it's a it
(02:55):
was it dieci um, Yes, a dietium crystal. Alright, So
you've got the diet sham power cell that's in the
basic that's fine. You know what if they correct us,
if they take that time more power to that uh
diation power cell is in the middle of a power
of vortex ring and a power field conductor. Now where
does all this power go? You've you're generated that's essentially
(03:16):
like the battery of the lightsaber. That's the very base.
So and it's got a lot of energy stored in it,
lots and lots of energy. Now where does this energy
go once it starts to Emit from the power cell.
It goes into the crystal energy chamber right where you
have your primary crystal. Now, depending on whom you ask,
(03:37):
this crystal may or may not determine the color of
the lightsabers blade. Yes. Now, some would argue that the
real determiner for the lightsaber color is lies with the
Jedi him or herself and the force that that Jedi
abuse the crystal. So in that case, you could have
(04:00):
any crystal and essentially have a lightsaber of any color.
It would all be up to the individual Jedi. Others
would argue, nay, tis not so, the lightsaber color is
dependent entirely upon the color of the crystal you select
to focus this power. Um, I'm gonna go with that one.
So you know, of course, we we also need to
(04:22):
talk about how Jedi lightsabers are different from Sith lightsabers
because they are so the crystals that Jedi use tend
to be natural crystals. They're crystals found in caves throughout
the galaxy Um, and so these crystals are they can
take the power and create the the the force of
(04:45):
the I guess, the actual lightsaber blade. It's the best
way of putting it. Um and the Sith What they
do is they'll they'll make a they'll make their own crystals.
They'll create a forge, and they'll build a synthetic crystal.
And there's tend to be red, which is why you
see sith like like Darth Maul or Darth Vader or
Darth Tyrannis walking around with a big old red lightsaber,
(05:08):
whereas Jedi they tend to stick with blue and green,
although other colors are also available. Yes, so there are
more that, but there are There are more than one crystal.
Though the primary crystal is uh is just one part
of that. There are second there are secondary and smaller crystals,
and it sort of depends on the Jedi who builds
the lightsaber, because the lightsaber is Creating a lightsaber is
(05:30):
part of becoming a Jedi. Yes, it's actually the final
step of Jedi training. According to a Darth Vader, Yes so.
But but what the additional crystals do is they actually
help focus the energy into a blade form, right right,
So the energy coming from the power cell, once it
passes through the crystal, that's what gives it the the
destructive force that we see from lightsabers. The other crystals
(05:54):
focus that into the blade um and depending also on
upon whom you ask, They may also give the the
lightsaber other certain powers, like it may enhance certain certain
aspects of the lightsaber. For example, we know that lightsabers
can deflect blaster fire. Some of these crystals are apparently
(06:15):
more effective at deflecting blaster fire than others, and others
may be better at cutting through certain kinds of material.
So uh Now, other other scholars will argue that's not
the case. The just focuses the blade, doesn't imbue it
with any other powers. Um. Personally, I haven't had my
hands on the lightsaber in a really long time, so
(06:37):
it's kind of hard for me to tell you exactly
what what which ones are right, And also I have
only ever really used one, so with that small sample size,
it's impossible to say yes. And and it's probably a
good time to point out that if you do have
the opportunity to use the lights remember it's it's not
the kind of thing that you just want to play
around with because it can be a very uh very dangerous. Yeah,
(07:00):
it turns out serious damage and when you can cut through,
you know, a foot of steel, that it's not the
best thing to you know, swatterfly with no UM. After
it goes through the christ the focusing crystal, it passes
through the blade energy channel again further refines the blade
and directs it into a straight line that would emerge
(07:22):
from the hilt. UM. And then at the very top
of your blade, you've got your your cycling field energizer's
your energy modulation circuits uh, and then you've got your
your controls. Your controls adjust the power of the blade,
and it also adjust the length of the blade. So
even though we normally see lightsabers used at A at
(07:43):
a pretty standard length, most people have it at A
whenever they turn on their lightsaber, it's pretty much the
same length each time. Technically you can adjust that, so
you can make it longer or shorter using the blade
length adjustment UM. And then there's a magnetic magnetic stabilizing
ring and a blade trial emitterr UM at the very
top which helped control the blade so it doesn't just
(08:04):
zap out when you turn it on. UM. That's your
basic anatomy of your lightsaber hilt. And then of course
then there's the activation matrix, which is the Star Wars
term for the on switch. I just I love that part.
They are the handle is about thirty centimeters in length,
so they're not ridiculously long, right, um, which is good
(08:28):
to know. It generates an arc wave energy field, and
this is why the blades actually have a stopping point. Yes,
and it has it. It produces sort of a gyroscopic
effect to which is why you have to be very
careful with it because you know it has it has
a pull to it if you will, right. But that
also makes it easier to use, because otherwise it would
(08:50):
be like swinging a flashlight around. There'll be no feedback
from swinging the handle, and it would make it much
more difficult to master allie saber if you didn't have
that gyroscopic effect when you started swinging it around. Um.
So the blade arc tip, that's the very end of
the lightsaber, um, and it's it's the arc committer is
(09:12):
what's keeping it from becoming like a blaster. Actually, lightsabers
pre date blasters, um. Before it was a more civilized
after all as it was and you know, I guess
civilized means that you locked each other's limbs off, as
opposed to shooting each other from very far away. Uh.
Never never bring away lightsaber to a blaster fight. Oh wait, no,
(09:33):
you could do that. No, yeah, you can't do that
because yeah, all right, so let's talk about it's about
that's that's the basics of building your lightsaber. Um. Now,
each Jedi builds his or her own lightsaber as part
of their training. Uh, and they're gonna build it according
to their own particular fighting style. Now do you have
(09:54):
you heard about the different Jedi fighting styles? No? I haven't.
There are seven major forms of lightsaber styles. Yes, okay,
well why don't you I want don't you tell this?
All right, I'm gonna go into a little detail, but
I'm just gonna do this as a pretty high level thing.
You don't need to get into depth. This isn't Jedi
fighting style stuff. That's right. Yeah, that's another podcast that
(10:16):
we're starting next month. You'll start requesting now. Um, next
month being April. I can't imagine when the first episode
will come out. So, so the the the fighting styles
that you can think of it kind of like martial
arts styles. Um, you know, not all martial arts styles
are alike. Cut on day is very different from jiu jitsu,
which is very different from a keto, which in turn
(10:36):
is different from hap keto. Um, there they're drunk Jedi style. No,
there's no drunken master Jedi style, although I hear Yoda
can get up to some wacky shenanigans on a Saturday night. Uh.
The seven forms of lightsaber combat are actually listed as
you know, Form one, Form two, Form three. They each
have their own names, but I'm not even gonna try
and pronounce them because they're all alien and I don't
(10:59):
have the k ability. I don't actually know what the
pronunciation is for most of them. But if you hadn't
spilled your mini chlorine, you'd be fine, I know. In general,
Form one is the foundation. It is the basic form
of lightsaber combat. It's your basic strikes, your basic defenses. Um.
It teaches you how to view the body as a
series of targets, like you think of you divide up
(11:20):
the body like the head is a certain uh certain target,
the arms, the torso, and you know, attacks are very
specific to each target. You know, different slashing techniques and
hacking techniques. So Form one is kind of lightsaber combat
one oh one. Everyone pretty much goes through that. Form
two is dueling. Now, this lightsaber combat really concentrates on
(11:45):
finesse blade control. Footwork. This is the kind of of
style that Count Dooku slash Darth Tyrannis used. Yes, now
that is why his lightsaber handle actually has a curve
at the end of it. It's so that he can
hold it kind of like a pistol grip, gives them
a lot of control over the tip of the blade.
(12:06):
And that's just his style of dueling. Now, this was
much more popular before blasters came out because it was
just really meant for lightsaber to lightsaber combat. Once blasters
came out, people Jedi began to realize that the in
order to deflect these these blaster bolts, they would need
to adapt their fighting style. This is not the best
(12:26):
style to use if you're being shot at by stormtroopers,
for example. So, uh, but that was Trannis's favorite form.
Then there's four three, which is defensive where you are
trying to reveal the least amount of target space on
your body. So it's really good for defending against blasters
that kind of thing. Form four is an acrobatic style,
(12:47):
lots of flips and spins. You're using the force to
boost your your physical abilities, so you're you're spending more
on uh, these acrobatics than on your blade at that point. Yes,
so Yoda uses that a lot um if you've seen
him fight Count Dooku, he's like a little queens and art.
(13:08):
And then uh FOM five that uses the deflective nature
of the lightsaber to reflect blaster fire. Um you you
use use strengthen your attacks, so it's a more brute
force kind of a of approach. This is the style
favored by a certain Skywalker family. Both Anakin and Luke
(13:28):
used Form five. Form six combines elements of Forms one
through five UM, but it also teaches that you should
be detached from emotion. You should be using very calculating
UM ways of of moving. You shouldn't let your emotions
dictate what you're doing. Form seven is kind of the opposite.
(13:48):
That's leveraging your emotion into power and using that to
fight your opponents. This was what Darth maul Uh used
with some reliance on on on Form UH four as well,
the acrobatic style. Now, of course he had a double
bladed lightsaber, and those don't work all that differently than
a regular lightsaber. They're just basically two lightsabers attached together
(14:11):
at the hilt. So there's there's four crystals instead of
two or a minimum of four, because you have to
have for you know, two of the generator type and
two of the focusing type at minimum in order to
create the two blades. By the way, those focusing crystals
are usually add again crystals usually, but you can also
find them on Dantweene as well as many many other
(14:33):
uh planets within the Star Wars galaxy. Yes, until Senti
Star comes after you and you know calls you a coward. Right,
I'm sorry I switched genres. Are you lost me? You
lost me? Seriously, you never played Seni Star. I rarely
played Star anyway. Also, um depending uh way, way way
(14:55):
way back in the past, back when the Jedi were
um much more new rus. The color of your blade
also would indicate what what kind of Jedi you are.
For example, if you had a blue blade, that signified
that you were a Jedi guardian and so you're much
more you know, kind of a physical you would get
into the fights. You would you know, defend people with
(15:16):
your your prowess. UH green would suggest that you were
a Jedi consular, and this would be someone who was
much more thoughtful, kind of contemplative. And then um yellow
would indicate that you're a Jedi Sentinel, and that's someone
who kind of was in between the other two, so
(15:36):
so not as physical as the Guardians, but not as
brainy as the others either, So Yellow and Blue domat Green.
This is true. I learned that somewhere. So should we
go into the other aspect of light tabers. So you
mean we're actually gonna step outside of the realm of
Star Wars at the time and thinking that maybe we
(15:58):
should do that. That's where idea, all right, So that's
within the Star Wars universe, of course, that's how they
supposedly work. And I should also add none of that
is cannon. And when I say cannon, I'm talking about
the stuff that Lucas himself has signed off on as saying, yes,
this is officially part of the Star Wars history. Um,
most of that is just the movies. Um to some extent,
(16:20):
you could argue the books as well. Some of those
Lucas has more or less said, yeah, even though that
didn't appear in the movie, that is cannon as well.
But he never goes into explaining the blades in the movies.
And so this is really other people trying to um
rhet coon really to explain why this stuff works. Yeah,
um yeah, basically, and if you're unfamiliar with the term,
(16:43):
and cannon is uh like basically they're written instructions for
how a a magical or you know, fantasy or science
fiction universe operates. It kind of helps you write the stories.
And the Star Wars cannon sort of came about after
some of the stories had already been in practice, so
it's a little looser than some of the right. So
if you were to read some of the comic books
or some of the other books that have been written
(17:04):
in the Star Wars universeit you might notice that they
sometimes contradict what happened in later movies, and that's because
they're not cannon, all right. So moving on to how
they actually created this effect, which is really which is
really fascinating too, I think right now now, First of all,
in a New Hope, the first film, they hadn't originally
considered animating or adding any light to these at all.
(17:26):
The original idea was that the lightsabers were going to
have there were these these uh I think it was
three sided three sided poll that came out kind of
a triangular pole and each side was was coated with
a very reflective material, and they used a lamp that
was on the same side as the camera and focus
the light so that it would reflect off of it
(17:48):
be really shiny, and there was a motor inside the
handle that would direct the side to be aligned properly
for the camera. But the effect was not as a
zippy as Lucas wanted. So Um they started to cast
about and see if they could find some other way
of making this magic sword seem really magical, and they
(18:10):
contacted an animator by the name of Nelson Shin. Nelson
Shin took a week and looked at this footage that
had been shot and used an effect called rhodoscoping. The
the technique and animation technique is actually very old technique.
A lot of people and myself, including associated with AHAs
(18:32):
take on me video. I associate it with Ralph Box
She's um Lord of the Rings movie. Also Wizards was
another movie he used it in. But it's it's where
you take live action footage and then you overlay animation
on top of it, sometimes replacing the live action footage entirely,
sometimes enhancing it, and in this case it was enhancing it.
(18:53):
So what he did was he used animation cells to
create this this glowing blade effect on top of the
the actual physical rods that were in the shots, and
then uh using you know, synchronizing the cells that he
had created with the actual film overlaying the animated effect
(19:13):
on it, creating a new print that combined these two
individual prints. And that's how you you know. He sent
that back to Lucas and said, well, here, you can
try this and see if this works. Lucas liked it. Um,
they decided to go with that approach. They refined it
a little bit. They added some color so you had
different color blades because originally they were both white and uh,
(19:34):
and that was the beginning of the lightsaber effect. Now,
in the first three films, which episodes four or five
and six, UM, they used the rotoscoping technique where they
would essentially hand draw these things on cells. Um. Basically,
what they do is they put that cell over the
original film and color it in and then but that's
(19:57):
not but that's not all of it, because that does
add some color to it. But from from there they
have to shoot more film with the cell and the
original and when they do that, they shoot it over
a black background and use a light diffuser over the lens. Yes,
they double exposed the shots and that that makes them
really pop. That makes that makes them look sort of
(20:19):
you know, gives them that sort of otherworldly effect, you know,
how bright they are in the shots. So kind of
sophisticated when you think about it, but very very time consuming, right, Yes,
it took took a really long time. It took slightly
less time by the time they got around to the
prequels episodes one, two, and three, because they could do
it all digitally, But somebody still has to go into
(20:40):
the computer and you're doing it. You're doing it all
in computer as opposed to doing it on hand handmade cells. Um. So,
I mean, it still takes time, it's just not quite
as time consuming, except for the fact that Lucas decided
to throw in about I don't know ten times as
many lightsaber battles in those first three movies as the
original trilogy and bind Um. The The actual hilts of
(21:03):
the lightsabers were made up of old camera flash battery
packs and other odds and ends like stuff from hardware
stores like plumbing um gaskets and things like that. Now,
they shot these movies in England, so they were raiding
various British hardware shops. So a lot of the materials
(21:24):
that they used to build the lightsaber handles are very
hard to find or sometimes impossible to find in the
United States, which is why it's kind of challenging to
create a model of those those first. Again, this is
for the first trilogy four or five and six. Um,
it's hard to make those faithfully just because it's hard
to get those parts in the United States. Um. Now
(21:45):
for episodes one, two, and three, those were all machined
and so there's all like routed. They designed them in
a computer and then and then made use a router
to cut custom parts and then assemble them. So it
wasn't like they were just grabbing whatever they could find
and and and sticking it together. Um, they came up
with the concept and artists came up with the concept
and then they built it from scratch. That was actually
(22:08):
one of my questions, like where the Jedi going to
machine these parts? And you know, do they is electrical
engineering part of their training. It's in the CAD system,
very very nice, a lot of a lot of rascals
and the CAD system. As it turns out, I think
(22:29):
Han Solo actually spent a lot of time in the
CADS system. Very nice. No, it's funny because when I
started doing the two of these, the two pieces of this,
the fantasy part and the you know, special effects, how
do they make it happen? I started thinking about that way,
So who's actually making these? You know? Because each one
is different. Well that's one of the things too that
(22:49):
uh um and I think is at least somewhat cannon,
is that it's all sort of individualized, you know, to
the Jedi. So I'm wondering if you know, they have
to go down to the shop, you know that thirty
fourth floor and go, yeah, I need can you make
sort of the the arc tip sort of in this shape? No, no, no,
not exactly like that. Yea, yeah, you know it. It's
(23:13):
kind of sad because when I look at the props
from the first trilogy, those look like things that have
really lived in that universe for a really long time.
I mean, the ships are all beat up, and even
the Jedi. Uh, the Jedi are beat up. The jedire
beat up pretty bad. But no, even the lightsabers look
like they've been well used. Whereas the if you look
(23:34):
at the prequels. Everything looks like brand new and sparkly,
and it's just a little it doesn't feel to me.
It almost feels like it's two different universes. Well, you
know they are like years apart and on and thirty years.
Come on, do you really want to go down this
road because we don't recording for like twenty four minutes.
I'm not gonna go fortably conservative, but that would be
(23:57):
only because I'd have to stop and get are to
drink something. So let's we So we talked about the
fact that you know, rotoscoping, either digitally or by hand,
that replacing frame by frame. These these rods, the physical
things that were in the shot, and you needed the
physical rods because you needed to be able to make
contact when you're doing lightsaber battles. Right now, I think
(24:19):
that's a good point. The handles that they use in
the movies right now are you know, plastic handles with
aluminum rods, and they're they're basically cylindrical and colored red,
blue or green. They actually had to wrap the the
aluminum rods in construction paper because they were giving off
too much dust when they were colliding during the lightsaber battles.
(24:39):
The original trilogy used I think wooden dowls. I don't
think they used aluminum, at least not in the first film. Yeah,
I would imagine that would be a little hard on
your wrists too, because they're actually, you know, having a
sword fight with aluminum rods. And yeah, now la rons
are are thinner than what you see on the screen. Um,
they're not as they're not as thick as as the
lightsaber blade appears to be. But yeah, they need that
(25:01):
so that they can do these moves and and make
it look convincing. Otherwise you would have lightsabers passing through
one another and that would just not look right. So um,
so there is a physical object there that you are
are concealing with the the overlay, and um, before we
get into how you can do this yourself, I wanted
to talk a little bit about the sound effects. They
(25:22):
were designed by Ben Burt, who was he's a brilliant
sound designer. Um. Sound designers are I think of them
kind of like a very specific type of engineer. Sound
designers are the kind of people who can walk into
a room and just take a second and think of
a billion different ways to use the sounds that are
naturally occurring in that room. Most of us we walk
into a room, we'll hear a noise, and then within
(25:45):
a second we are already ignoring it. It's just been
incorporated into what we think of as the background. But
if you ever take a moment and really listen to
your environment, you start to pick things out as as
they happen. Well, he's one of those guys who can
hear a noise and immediately say, hey, uh, this would
be great for blah blah blah. And when he was
tasked with finding a noise for the lightsaber, he actually
(26:06):
says this was the first sound he designed for Star
Wars was the noise of the lightsaber. And he did
it with a combination of two noises. One was from
an old projector. Uh, there was an old projector that
would made this humming noise as it ran. And if
you ran two of those projectors, you've got a good
little harmonizing effect with the hum and that's so that
(26:28):
formed the basis of the wow when you fire up
your lightsaber. Um. The second was noise that you would
get if you ran a microphone near a television. It
would be this buzzing noise feedback yes, that that gives
it the kind of little crackle sound that you also hear.
That's just sort of uh, kind of a light sound
(26:50):
underneath the thrumb. And then whenever someone would wave a lightsaber,
well you have to create the wow noise. The way
he did that was he would move a microphone past
a speaker that was playing that. Um, the the the
humming noise, and the Doppler effect would take care of
the rest. So you're just moving a microphone around a
speaker and then it's translates into the womb womb womb
(27:15):
when you're waving your lightsaber around. UM. Absolutely brilliant. One
of the uh you know, there's there was no going
into a a synthesizer or going into a studio and
trying to create this sound from scratch. He just found
a practical way of creating it and uh, and it's
one of those things that is forever married with the
Star Wars universe. You hear that sound, you know immediately
(27:37):
what you're listening to. Now, let's say you want to
do this yourself, it's quite possible. Well, you have to
spend all that fuel getting to the other star system.
You know, I don't mean building a real one, I
mean like creating the effect in a video. So, uh,
you can do this yourself with the right kind of software.
(27:57):
And uh, there are a lot of different video and
suites out there that have the effects that you would
need in order to create a lightsaber effect. Um, most
of them are like things like Adobe has several There's
even a tool that's called l S Maker which allows
you to create a lightsaber effect pretty easily. In fact,
all you have to do is do two clicks and
you create the basis of a lightsaber effect for a
(28:20):
single frame of video, and then you can go in
and tweak the effects so that it looks exactly the
way you want it to. But again, you have to
do this frame by frame, so it's not like you
do two clicks and it magically turns something into a lightsaber.
You actually have to go through each frame and replace
the the physical object with the lightsaber representation and order
(28:43):
for it to work properly. Yes, but YouTube is filled
with people who have done this successfully. Yes, yes, and
some not so successful. Some of them are pretty awful.
But uh, the same effect. You can use the same
sort of technology to create other effects besides the lightsaber effect.
It's just that's one of those that is pretty easy
to to apply because really you're talking about a straight line.
(29:06):
It's not that complicated. Um. It is time consuming though,
it can take hours and hours and hours to render
a video that would only last maybe thirty seconds, especially
if you have multiple blades on there. That can because
each blade is going to require a different layer in
your video. So you're gonna if you have like six
(29:27):
Jedi out there and they all have lightsabers at six
layers of video right there in order for you to
have all the effects come together properly. And then if
you know, they clashed and you have to add the
sparks right there's and you have to and it's it
can be challenging. I mean it's it's not it's not
something that you're gonna be able to whip out in
an hour. It's gonna take a while, but it's it's doable,
(29:49):
and most of the software is you know, like I said,
there's some software out there that's free that you can
use to create this effect if you have the time
and patients and a little bit of artistic ability. Yep,
I have none of those three, I think. Um, well,
the force is weak with Pulette. But uh, I guess
we can wrap this up and we'll we'll finish with
(30:10):
a little more listener mail. This listener mail comes from
Matt and Matt says, Hey, Chris and Jonathan, thanks for
taking my request about the dangers of Wikipedia. You guys
are awesome and I am totally having a star struck
moment right now. O m G. The tech stuff guys
are talking about me. You two are great. Ps if
either of you are Trek ease. I can't remember if
(30:31):
you have mentioned it before. I just got done watching
one of my favorite episodes called The Offspring from the
Next Generation, where Data becomes a dad Data. I guess
I'm sorry he hates it when he when you call
him Data. I remember that episode. Great episode, check it out.
So I figured we'd talked about star Trek for a second,
since we talk about Star Wars for thirty minutes has
a serious cannon, live long and prosper Thanks Matt and
(30:55):
we it was our pleasure to talk about Wikipedia. We
haven't received any hate mail on that yet. Time will
tell if that'll change. If you would like to send
us a message, please no hate mail, just tell us
how much you love Star Wars and that you want
to build your own lightsaber. Now you can write us
tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and check
(31:16):
out the website how stuff works dot com. We do
have how lightsabers work right there on the site. Yes
and uh. If you do decide to build a lightsaber,
don't hit anybody with it or yourself. And may the
Force be with you always for moral This and thousands
of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com
(31:39):
and be sure to check out the new tech stuff
blog now on the how stuff Works homepage. Brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
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