Rotating blade saber?

[MoonDragn]

I recently brought some parts from a guy on ebay who said he hung out at some of the other saber forums. One of the things I got from him was a dowel with some reflective material taped on that can be mounted on a motor. He said something about it catching the light as it spins. Anyone have any ideal how this would work? Wouldn't the Motor block the path of the light from the LED?

Only thing I can think of is if you shined the material at an angle from either side.

[Lord Dottore Matto]

Sounds hokey. Post some pix & info if it actually works though!:D

[MoonDragn]

Did some googling and this is what I found:



The prop was constructed by the floor effects team from A New Hope as a duplicate of the original "hero" version Obi-Wan Kenobi lightsaber. A master copy was made of wood and then cast in metal for conversion into stunt sabers. The conversion included a motor inside the handle to spin a dowel "blade" with flat sides, some covered with a highly reflective material.

An electrical cord ran out the bottom of the saber hilt and up Alec Guinness' sleeve to run the motor. The glowing effect of the saber’s blade was a combination of on set camera tricks and animated enhancement. A light was mounted on top of the camera and the scene was shot through a half-silvered mirror to capture the full intensity of light from the alternating reflective material of the blade. On set the lightsaber didn't look like much, but through the camera’s lens it shone like a blade of energy. To give the blade color and a softer glow animated enhancements were made during post-production. At the time ILM was a small company just starting out so the lightsaber glows were assigned to Barry Nolan of VanDerVeer Photo Effects.



http://www.partsofsw.com/ob_luksab.htm

[ThreeQuadFive]

Hehe, roto scoping :D

[Donnovan Sunrider]

That would be pretty awesome to have a really old school prop replica like that. Even though the rotating blade didn't really give them what they wanted as an effect, it was still a cool idea.

[MoonDragn]

Yeah I'm disappointed in finding out this was only for that prop. I had thought maybe someone had an idea to make sabers look better.

I wonder though of I could set up two LEDs facing 45 degrees pointed at the rotating blade and make the blades like up that way.