TOPIC: Best saber for a video

Hey There

I'm new to the saber world and quite overwhelmed . Ok so I wanna do a saber duel clip (e.g. like Ryan VS Dorkman) with visual FX etc. Can anyone recommend what kind of saber/blade is best for

a) dueling (I guess without sound and less is better) and

b) what color/led the best option is, so it's possible to add FX in the post production

I'm currently interested in the following sabers:

http://www.saberforge.com/crystal-sabers/crystal-chamber-jade
http://www.saberforge.com/elite-sabers/exhalted-saber
http://www.saberforge.com/elite-sabers/redeemer-saber

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Hi EmCee,

All the Saber Forge hilts will work fantastic. When it comes to how you want your film to look, it really depends on a couple decisions you will need to make before you begin filming.

Set and Lighting:
Do you know if you will be filming indoors or outside, and the amount of sunlight(natural) vs. artificial (electric) lighting your set will have?

Rotoscoping:
Are you familiar with rotoscoping in an editing tool such as HitFilm Pro or Adobe After Effects? Will you have access to these tools in the post production/editing phase of the project?

Camera Settings for Frame Rate and Exposure:
Will you be using a camera that has adjustable exposure and frame rate? Most Hollywood production films use a frame rate of 23.976 frames per second, even with the 1080 or 4K settings. This provides a soft motion blur that gives a very cinematic feel. If you dial up your exposure, your camera will capture more light and that will affect the way any light source being filmed looks in the final video.

Many of the Lightsaber Choreography fan films use Rotoscoping to essentially add a layer on top of the original footage and "draw" a glowing blade over the original footage. This can produce movie quality effects when glow settings are applied/created to the "blade" layer. These two layers must be rendered out together to make a composite.

Rotoscoping has it's pros and cons. To pull it off you might need to go frame by frame adjusting the start points and end points of your blade. Keep in mind you will need to do it twice, one layer for each saber in the scene. It is very time consuming. The draw back is that you will not get REAL lighting on your actors and set/scene that would have been cast off the blade. You'll have to artificially add tints to the scene where the light from the blade will cast color on the scene. On the plus side, you can get a movie quality saber core and glow immediately around the blade.

If you are shooting in late afternoon, evening, or indoors, you CAN do this with out Rotoscoping, by using any of the hilts from Saber Forge. To get a white core AND a colored glow, just adjust the exposure on your camera in tiny increments until you see the result you are looking for in the viewfinder. It doesn't take much, even with a 6W LED set up. If you adjust your frame rate on your camera to 24fps, you will also get very smooth motion blur as the blades move and spin. If you chose a higher frame rate, like 60fps, the footage will look almost TOO crisp and HD like, giving it an unreal effect, and the saber blades will have this skipping motion blur and partial motion blur because the shutter is not capturing as much blur. Also with 60fps, you have more than 2x the number of frames you will need to edit any special effects into.

To get the BEST of both worlds, you would want to do both. In Star Wars Episode 7, the production crew combined LED sabers with Rotoscoping. They filmed the scenes with LED blades to cast REAL colored light from the blades on the actors and sets. To fine tune the visual effect, they then did some rotoscoping work to bring the blades to life (such as the unstable turbulence on Kylo Ren's blade)

To add effects like a flash on clash and sparks, it can be as simple as adding very minimal "Lens Flare" effect, tracked to the points of impact. To get more robust clashes, you would need to add in the alpha from welding sparks or other spark effects. Most video editing applications have some type of lens flare feature that you can animate.

So to answer your question, any of the Saber Forge hilts you are interested in will work out awesome on film. The bigger decisions come when you decide how much time you want to spend editing and what software you have access to to make special effects.

If you have any questions on how to do editing, just let us know and we can point you towards some really useful tutorials that are available on the web. Hope this helps.

Hey just a quick note on sound for filming saber fights, I typically mute the sound on the clip during the fight scene, and I layer in the power ons, hums, swings, and clashes etc, by directly adding the sound files I've purchased into the video editing software, timing them with the video. This will bring your audience more into the fantasy than if you used the original footage sound. It will also help keep the saber sounds as primary when you layer in your background ambience or music. Muting the sound on the original clip also removes the "CLACK" sound of the blades hitting. Depending on how far the camera/mic is from the scene, the "CLACK" may be louder than the "Clash" provided by the soundboard. By muting the original footage and adding in your sound effects, your audience won't be distracted by any real world sounds like traffic near by, sirens, blade "Clack" etc.

Thanks for the detailed answer, much appreciated!

I will hire a freelancer for the rotoscoping / VFX, so yes, I plan on doing that in pre production. The details are still open yet, since I just came up with the idea few weeks ago. My music videos were done with an RED camera, so I guess I'll be fine on that end.

I'm personally not into visual effects, so I'm wondering if it's not better NOT to turn on the LEDs on the sabers, in case I wanna add effects later on? Otherwise the blade resonates to a certain level and that might be more difficult to mark end edit, no?

Cool, so all sabers work, except some of the crystal ones (for dueling). Great, I'll decide this week, thx a lot.

Cool. Might be a good idea to talk over the options with your freelancer before you film regarding turning the sabers on or not.. Then depending on what the freelancer needs to edit, you can go from there...I've done it both ways, they both can work, it all depends on what you want the final shot to be. Good luck with the filming. Be sure to post a link

Thanks a lot. In general: Is id advised to get a saber without sound for dueling, so less can be damaged?

All the sabers I own have sound, and I've smacked them around pretty hard. I've never had a problem with the boards. They should be fine as long as you are not taking them out of the hilt where they are exposed. The first sabers I had were from Ultra Sabers and they had other problems like the LED's getting disconnected, battery problems, etc. In my Genesis Custom Sabers and my Saber Forge hilts, I have never had any mechanical problems even when dropping the hilts on concrete. The Saber Core boards do have an option for "muted" sound if you are worried about the hilt speakers and sounds screwing with your scene audio capture, like say you had dialog during the fight, you wouldn't want the sound on the hilts. It would be better in that scenario to add the saber sounds in post production. If you have the sound "on" you might get an accidental sound (clash, lock up, blaster effect, etc.).

The one advantage you have besides audio, is that the Saber Core boards give you the ability to adjust the light flicker with 5 different settings. This could be helpful if you are using the LED's to cast realistic light and shadows on your actors and set. The Warrior tier just has a solid setting with no flicker (I think, I might be wrong on that).

If I didn't need the sound or want the sound, and would always use them for film projects where I'm adding sound in post, I wouldn't spend the extra to get a sound board.

You can't beat the grin factor you get when you ignite a saber with sound though... It will always make you smile.

Great, many thanks. Just need to figure out if 32 or 37inch is the better blade length for me (I'm 178 / 5`8``), and then I can finally order the Exhalted !

Hello!

I'm another fan with an uneasy itch to make a videoclip. Since it is evident that you're versed in the technical aspects, I'd like to ask you about wich compact digital camera I should look for.

My budget is, of course, far from infinite, so I'd like to know what would be the best compromise quality vrs price you could think of.

Thanks in advance.


Luis

Hi Lord Darkstar,

Honestly, the quality these days is so good, you can make a pretty solid video with any of the brands. I use DLSR type camera because I also use it for taking still pictures. I would love to get a dedicated video camera in the pro range, but they are thousands of dollars. The thinks to think about though, are frame rates, adjustable exposure, and the ability to switch between auto focus and manual focus. iPhones shoot at 30 frames per second, which will give you some degree of motion blur. If you have a camera that can slow down the shutter to 24 frames per second, you will get a more cinematic feel to the footage.

Auto focus can be a blessing and a curse. Sometimes it's spot on, but if you have actors moving towards or away from the camera, or objects moving toward or away from the camera, sometimes the auto focus will "search" for what the camera thinks you want to see, and you'll end up recording part of your footage with blurry footage during the focusing. The ability to turn off auto focus and manually set a fixed field of view can help in that situation.

If you have a camera that has an input jack for an external mic, that helps too. Getting a shotgun mic and attaching it to your camera will do wonders for the audio quality, important if you have dialog.

All that being said, it depends on your price range, but both Sony and Canon offer top quality cameras in all the ranges, from basic point and shoot, to DLSR, to Pro Video Camcorders. Then there are the RED and Blackmagic brands, which are FANTASTIC but they are also very expensive.

Find your price range, and look for features such as multiple frame rate options, adjustable exposure, and inputs for external mic then watch user reviews for those on youtube. Just search for the model you're interested in on youtube and you should find several user reviews with the pros/cons.

Thank you 308BJP,

Now I've got an idea. Of course, It'll take some time to prepare everything, but starting with the right foot saves one a lot of future potential headaches.

Once again, my thanks.

Luis

Hi 308BJP,

Just one more question: How about a Action Cam GoPro HERO 4?

It seems I've got a good offer. If it is acceptable I go for it.


Thanks,


Luis

Vader Strikes GoProhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvOBmi0Lg2s

I really like the GoPro Hero 4. I have been thinking about getting the black version.

You can do some really cool first person light saber videos with theme. Have you seen the "Vader Strikes" videos on YouTube?

Just checked it with the link you provided. Cool!!

The main reason I kinda like the Hero 4 is the price and the option to reduce field of view, thus eliminating the "fish-eye-distortion" caused by medium and wide FOV.

Lord Darkstar wrote:
I'm sorry... The price? How cheap is it where you live? O_o

Yes, you're right, is not exactly a bargain.

But everything is relative: It costs, in this particular case around the same as a Warrior Tier saber. Here I get the camera for 349 euros inmediately with a 5 euro delivery fee. The Epoch for instance is 371 in Etsy, plus sending costs, and I get it hopefully at the end of January.

I'm not rich by any standard, believe me, I'm just single and without children. That's why I can spare the bucks

But I digress...

If one can raise the money for a saber (or two), one can also -eventually- raise 350 for a camera to film such saber in action, wich is not far-fetched. And remember that other cams in the market with equivalent performance tend to cost up to 3 times as much.

Wait a second!!...

...you tell me that where you are, you get a Venom Hero for $150 and I put a blaster against my head

Lord Darkstar wrote:
Nah mate... I'm in Europe, where the customs are free to fuck us over and over and we're supposed to smile and say thank you while we can't sit for the following days... Particularly in France...

Man with what happened in the last few days, the customs are going to be extra careful about everything :'(

I get you clear on that one, Bro...

We're on the same boat.

I live in Germany and the thing is not getting exactly comfortable here either...

By the way: I love your Signature!! Ha ha ha ha!!!