How Lightsabers Work

start off this podcast with a little listener tweet. This 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 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 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, 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. 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. 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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. 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 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,

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. 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 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. 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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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.

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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. 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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, are you