A Historic Day in Lightsaber Combat

How do you take cool videos of a lightsaber performance?  Or rather, how do you perform so that the audience will get cool videos on their vidcams or phones?

This is the question I was intrigued by when I joing the Philippine Lightsaber Guild.  Yup, lightsabers are fun in lots of ways.

I’m not talking about the serious stuff like Ludosport or the Lightsaber Choreography Competition.  They’re a bit too hardcore.  I’m trying to find out things for the more casual participant.  There’s not that much time to do any heavy rehearsals and you’re there at an event to mainly entertain the audience – pose for photos and let them get great videos and memories to take home.

So as a start, here are some things that need looking into:

The Suppliers – e.g. Saberforge.com, Ultrsabers.com, fx-sabers.com, etc.

How fast should you move/spin to get the best light trail?

What colors look better on video?

What moves look good on video (thrusts, slashes, spins, etc.)?

What background and light level works best?

Here are a few screenshots of the saber light trails I got during the last meetup.  The blue one seems to have the flattest lighting throughout but at cetain angles you can still see the white highlight near the hilt.

Anyway, there’s still lots of things to look into.  Stay tuned!