How do lightsabers

Even though the Jedi held themselves to these rules, [13] the groups like the Sith chose to use their lightsabers in ways that could cause suffering. Jedi Padawan Bell Zettifar also felt that the lightsaber was designed so as to give an enemy a chance to surrender, as it was easy to spot and hear.

Furthermore, he believed the blade's sound was one of training, focus, and skill; it was the sound of a Jedi's last resort and was the art of their Order.

Anakin Skywalker and Darth Tyranus engaged in lightsaber combat above Coruscant. Lightsaber combat was the preferred fighting method used by lightsaber wielders. Throughout the millennia, many combat styles were refined into the seven "classic" forms that serve as the standard, [46] and numerous other fighting methods that call for advanced levels of skill.

Lightsabers were most often held with both hands during combat. Lightsabers were an integral part of the knighting ceremonies of the Jedi Order. During the ceremony, a Padawan would have his or her Padawan braid ritualistically severed by the presiding Jedi Master.

Lightsabers were able to cut through most materials. The usage of the lightsaber was originally inspired by many of the serials that George Lucas watched and enjoyed as a child, which featured many characters wielding swords. When he began conceiving Star Wars , he wished to include swords, creating the "lightsaber" to allow them to better mesh with the futuristic setting. In the early incarnations of the Star Wars storyline, lightsabers were not exclusive to the Jedi and other Force-users, but were in fact very mundane.

Early concept art depicts lightsabers being wielded by Rebel and Imperial soldiers alike. George Lucas later limited the lightsabers to exclusively the Jedi in order to make them feel more unusual, and heighten the mystique of the Jedi. Crystals first appear in Star Wars simply as an embedded decoration on the hilt in the original film's novelization.

Aside from this single instance, there are no crystals mentioned in any of the movies or their novelizations. The handle grips were made with T-shaped pieces of plastic from sliding glass cabinet windows and, contrary to popular belief, were not made with rubber windshield wipers.

D-rings were attached to the bottoms of the units so that they could be worn on belts. Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber was the most complex hilt at the time. Korean animator Nelson Shin , who was working for DePatie—Freleng Enterprises at the time, was asked by his manager if he could animate the lightsaber in the live action scenes of a film. After Shin accepted the assignment, the live action footage was given to him. He drew the lightsabers with a rotoscope, an animation which was superimposed onto the footage of the physical lightsaber blade prop.

Shin explained to the people from Lucasfilm that since a lightsaber is made of light, the sword should look "a little shaky" like a fluorescent tube. He suggested inserting one frame that was much lighter than the others while printing the film on an optical printer, making the light seem to vibrate. Shin also recommended adding a degausser sound on top of the other sounds for the weapon since the sound would be reminiscent of a magnetic field.

The whole process took one week, surprising his company. Lucasfilm showed Shin the finished product, having followed his suggestions to use an X-Acto knife to give the lightsaber a very sharp look, and to have sound accompany the weapon's movements. The lightsaber effects during the original trilogy started out in a very complicated manner.

During the filming of A New Hope , the blade was made of a three-sided rod covered with reflective material. The rod was then rapidly spun by a compact motor in the hilt, reflecting the lights on set and creating an in-camera glowing effect. However, these props were highly limited; they were cumbersome and fragile, often breaking during fight scenes.

Also, the glowing effect was not absolute, as whenever the blade moved out of the light or pointed more directly at the camera the glow disappeared and the actual spinning rod could be seen. In order to partially compensate for this loss of the effect, the blade was rotoscoped and an animated glow was added by tracing onto a blown-up copy of the frame with pen and colored ink, one frame at a time.

It was at this phase that blades were given colors, as the props were simple white rods. Mark Hamill and Bob Anderson duel with carbon rods. During the filming of The Empire Strikes Back , it was decided creating an in-camera glowing effect was more trouble than it was worth, so the spinning rods were swapped for carbon rods.

While these new blades were less cumbersome than before, they were still very fragile and frequently broke. However, they continued to be used for Return of the Jedi.

When filming began for The Phantom Menace , the new lightsaber blades were steel and aluminum rods, which were highly durable, but frequently bent and flexed, requiring constant replacement. However, for the filming of Revenge of the Sith , the blades were replaced by carbon fiber rods laminated with glass and plastic. These new props were highly durable and didn't flex, though they were extremely hard, often causing bruising and leaving scars.

While lightsaber effects were still done by rotoscoping for the prequels , they were done digitally, rather than by hand. In behind the scenes footage, it was revealed that the actors were using blades similar to the ones made by Master Replicas.

This not only added to the environmental realism that was desired by providing interactive lighting on the actors and the set, but also immersed the actors in the lightsaber experience, building on the performance and convincing nature of the lightsaber effect.

Lightsabers depicted in the first two released films, A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back , had blades that were colored either blue for the Jedi or red for the Sith. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Prev NEXT. Memorable Movies. Much like the average iPhone , lightsabers are powerful devices that require vast amounts of energy. Any device that can melt through a blast door obviously requires access to tremendous energy reserves.

The source of this energy is a diatium power cell -- a device no larger than a roll of coins. You've probably noticed these cells at your local grocery store, though you generally have to ask a clerk for access. Surrounding the power cell is a power field conductor and the power vortex ring. These two devices work together to move the available energy toward the energy gate , which in turn controls the flow of energy into the crystal energy chamber.

The crystal energy chamber is the heart of any lightsaber, and the chamber depends on at least two crystals, each with its own specific role. The primary crystal converts the energy from the power cell and transfers it to one or more focusing crystals , held in place by the focusing crystal activator. Even if we could combine sheets of graphene to create a supercapacitor, it still could not hold enough energy.

A few years ago, researchers from MIT and Harvard accidentally created a lightsaber sort of. In an effort to move quantum information, researchers stumbled upon the photonic molecule — a possible new state of matter.

They found that could bind photons together for the very first time, forming molecules when they interact. This is different than what we knew of photons before e. In this study, when the molecules interacted, they pushed together reflected off each other, very much like the fictional lightsaber. While we may not have the technology right now for a seamless lightsaber, the future it looking pretty good for Star Wars fans.

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