LIGHTSABER NUNCHUCKS...

Hi, just thought I'd show you a snippet of a film I did last year that involves a scene with 'Light Saber Nunchucks'. It was from a 20 minute time travel film I made called Take Your Time (not enough web space to host it, any offers...!), but the scene was cut in the end. The Saber glow was was of my first dabbles in FX and was done in Photoshop. The blaster bolts were done in AE which is where I do my sabers now.

The scene is where I had to give one of the chracacters a small 'Time Travel' device and hold off the Android who is keen to get hold of it.

Click on link then right click on LightSaber Nunchucks - save as

starwarsproject.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk


Has anyone else ever done Nunchuck type sabers? It was done on a whim at the time, can't say I'm a big fan of anything other than single sabers though...

 

There's a lightsaber 3-section-staff in The Planet With No Name...

 

PwNN rules. Cool idea, but definatly not the first time this idea has been thrown around.

 

Downloaded and watched TPWNN - was ok - still not a fan of anything other than a single blade. Seemed a good idea at the time though...

 

I could be wrong, but is the plural of Nunchuck technically Nunchucku?

I recall a many year arguement between a couple friends about this issue. I don't think it was ever resolved.

 

The only solution: A fight to the death with nunchaku vs. nunchucks.

 

There's a lightsaber 3-section-staff in The Planet With No Name...


The Planet with No Name kicks serious fanfilm butt, and takes fanfilm saber duel names.



If you haven't seen it yet, watch it.



I'd love to see it redone with Ryan-W quality sabers.






My life dream....

 

I agree, I prefer to see single saber fights over a bunch of dual, or double bladed fights.

One of the reasons i didnt really like duality was becuase they both used double bladed sabers, which looked kinnda stupid, and it never seemed like they were never attacking each other, only attacking the other lightsaber blade...

Nunchucks also seems like itd be to outta control, and not precise enough for a jedi...

 

The only solution: A fight to the death with nunchaku vs. nunchucks.

I recall suggesting something along those lines. Only problem is, which is which? They wouldn't know which ones to use.

 

This was a pretty well done clip! It's not exactly what I was imagining, given I had actually built a different kind of light-chuck to fight the tri-staff in in PwNN, but it was never used. As for the "life dream" above - I'm flattered, but the time resources required to execute that (read: about 2 to 3 months of solid rotoscoping) would be better put to use on a better film

The notion of light-chucks has been tossed around a few times - though this is the first clip I've seen of one. There IS a fanfilm on the way (I hope PadawanNick?) that is to have light-chucks in it that I eagerly await.

BTW: The design I did was built into the double-bladed saber prop. Basically, the middle section of the saber was held together by a vacuum cleaner hose, that could be unclipped to then flail both blades of the double bladed saber - the stiffness of this joint is what caused the hilt to bend in a few shots. Such a design required a truly bizarre fighting style, but it was certainly managable.

Kudos for the clip! I liked the acting and cinematography as well!

-Spiff

EDIT: A fight to the death with nunchaku vs. nunchucks

Yes. You should make the film and call it Game of Death. Then you should fight Kareem Abdul Jabbar (sp?). Oh... and if you want to be truly blown away, watch "Kids of Shaolin" to see Jet Li fight 2 people with 3-sectional staffs with a 3-sectional staff of his own Best. Scene. Ever.

 

Awe crap. Here we go again.
While we're at it, here's my saber chuck test. (circa 2001).
This design is intended to start out as escrima (sp?) stick sized sabers that can be used as chucks when pod-racer-style energy binders "tie" them together.

Cool looking villan there Andy. The clip kinda looks like Die Hard, meets MIB, meets Blair Witch Project.

BTE: PwNN ROCKS!

That is all ....

Have fun.

 

I've resisted the idea of saber chucks all the way to the bank for years and years. Mainly because I could see no reason to use them, at all. I could see no way that they would prove advantageous and so were essentially worthless to design and try to gain some semblance of mastery. They never seem to progress the story or have any use other than to look cool and be different.

But to my great shock, while working on the choreography for my upcoming film, an opportunity and reason for them occurred naturally from the design of the fight (no tellie); as such I'm no longer in blanket opposition to the idea of saber chucks, and I guess you're gonna get more leniency from me on the issue.

The main problem, besides the footage being way underexposed, and the issue with saber chucks for quite some time in my estimation, is there's nowhere to hold the thing. Your actor holds it by the blade, for heaven's sake. Granted, this scene is out of context and that might be part of the humor, but that's my observation on it.

M. Scott

 

Thanks for all the feedback.

I liked your test footage PadawanNick, just out of interest, what bluescreen software did you use? Ulitmatte, AE Production Bundle...etc

Like I said before, in answer to you Dorkman, like you my footage was done on a 'whim' at the time. The actors were meant to simply dodge the blaster bolts, but I thought I would make it a little more intersting. I never really thought about where the would hold it without burning their hands off! The scene never made it in to the final cut because the blade looked crap as well as it not really 'fitting' in with the rest of the film.

 

Very cool Dorkman! Can't wait to see the fight!

I kinda lucked out for my casting in that the karate school I go to emphisizes holding/catching the chucks near the chain, so that made it pretty easy to have two saber hilts together. This guy still had to get used to the extra length, though, so I have a few clips featuring self-inflicted head strikes and loss of some lighting gear.

Andy: Ulitmatte, AE Production Bundle...etc
Tee hee. Nothing so expensive.
This was done a a few years ago using Media Studio Pro.
I still use MSP for compositing, but I've written my own procedural keying plugins for it that make the process much easier/better than in those days.

Have fun.

 

Hey Nick,

The fighting style you demonstrated there is quite similar with that which I came up with, essentially using them as a staff. Now I'm really curious to see if you use any of the other moves I thought about... that use the two ends simultaneously and the flail as an advantage.

One of the thoughts I had wrt the light-chucks is that there's an opportunity to use them even more quickly and effectively if the ability to add and retract blades at whim is involved. The beauty of this is that you could do whatever you wanted with an actual pair of chucks, then add the sabers later as appropriate. For all those "sabers are massless" people out there, there wouldn't be a problem at all

The main problem with a double bladed lightsaber is that you can only attack or block with one blade at a time. People say it's effective against two people, but only if they ludicrously co-ordinate their attacks (TPM). The light chucks marginally alleiviate this problem, but constrain the motion more than you'd get with two swords. The advantage is that you can conduct force through both handles and use it like a staff, the disadvantage is that both blades stay too close to each other to provide particularly agile blocking and striking combinations.

Two swords is a much more advantageous from this perspective, but you lose strength in both hands. The solution to two sworded combat, as I see it is simultaneous circular blocks and strikes, using momentum to block rather than strength.

From personal experience, the 3 bladed design that I used is actually superior to any of these combinations practically, if one assumes the physics for constructing the middle blade are as sound as that of lightsabers (actually, there are good scientific reasons why the middle blade is MORE feasible) [ at Mike]. As a defensive weapon you actually have 3 blocking surfaces, and as an offensive weapon you have either 5+ feet of range with a blocking instrument in one hand, or two offensive ends at closer range. However, with while the two ends are shorter, the additional defensive ability makes it easy to close the gap between an opponent. If fighting two swords, the geometry of the triple-bladed design is actually such that you could simultaneously block BOTH swords, and attack.

Fun stuff

-Spiff

 

YES it most have been PwNN - the film is one of my favourites

plus it got lot of great looking guys in it for us ladies

 

That must hurt his hands soooooo bad.

 

Ahhh, but didn't you notice the actor was wearing woollen gloves? The only known item in the Star Wars universe that can withstand a Light Saber blade....ahem

Ok, point taken...

 

first, i thought it was well done in PwNN, but i wouldnt mind seeing the weapon expanded upon...

this clip was cool, and i liked the style, but it was way too jumpy for me... use a tripod or maybe increase the framerate... was that 15fp? also, the PS sabers werent great, but since you use AE now, i'm not gonna really complain about that. overall, i liked it, but it wasnt anything that couldnt be done with a regular saber... try to come up with something really original with this weapon and that would be awesome!

nick, i love the look of that saber, but the "beam" or whatever it is looks obviously masked on to me. i'm not sure how that could be improved, but if that was added to a scene in a film i would love it (in other words, use your design, with the other 2 (PwNN/clip from this thread) battles )

one more thing about that clip... its 10mb... for 30 sec. there has to be a way to compress that more. 1/2min=10mb, so therefore 20min would equal... 400mb! ? wow... i dont think many people have anything close to that much space... if you did compress the full version more, how large is it? if anyone would be willing to host, that could help them to know how much they would be hosting

 

I mentioned before it was a spur of the moment thing and the Saber was really when I was learning to apply fx. You'll be pleased to know that my AE sabers (from Ryans tutorial) are far better! I don't really ever intend to expand upon the Nunchuck idea though....


The frame rate was 25fps (or should have been). The original footage was PAL standard, I didn't de-interlace as I hadn't purchased Magic Bullet then.

I used the sorensen codec and a frame size of 300x240 with 50% quality.

What would you suggest is the best frame size, compression and codec so I can get the full twenty min film down to a 'hostable' size?

 

find figs tutorial, that would really help. its great how it works... i had my 2min clip at 50mb, but (he did it, i cant take credit) it is now down to 3mb, no real quality loss.

the key points of that are... 15fps (unless there is alot of camera motion, which is the case here...), compress the audio (described in the tutorial) and to use specific (mentioned in the tut.) numbers in the settings for the video. (kb per sec, etc)

the tutorial should be at his site, but i'm not quite sure where. (figrinfilm.com) --just looked and i cant find it. if i remember, i'll ask him later.

 

Odd. I had always envisioned lightsaber nunchuks (can't spell!) as having only one blade, whereas the other bit would simply be a handle, with a chain, that goes to the actual blade bit. Having two blades would make it impossible to wield. (unless you want to hold it with one or two fingers at a time).