A simple image of the effect.
The lightsaber effect in movies is the glowing, coloured blade made to resemble a laser sword called a lightsaber. These first appeared in Star Wars and have been used in every other film in the Star Wars series since. They typically come in three colours, which are blue and green for Jedi, and red for the Sith.
Effect
The typical layout of the program.
Original
The original special effect (used in LFwD and Episode I and II) was created using an open-sourced program that Noah found on the web. This involved him going through each frame and placing two points, one on each end of the blade, or four, if it was blurred. Noah first tried out with this effect on a series called "Lightsaber Fight with Patrick", which received mixed reactions from the viewers. He used this again on "LFwD", before again using the same technique with the Puppet Saga. He plans to use After Effects instead for Episode IV, as described below, before returning in Episode V.
New
Noah will use the program Adobe After Effects for Episode IV, as using all the blue screen to make them appear in space will make it difficult to use the old program for. The reason for this is that it uses a rotoscope technique, which also means that they can have the blue screen effect underneath the lightsaber effect in the same project, even if the lightsaber prop is coloured blue.