One thing that seems to go unappreciated by a large number of people is that this is a continuation of geek-soaked fantasy. None of this is real, which should be accentuated by the regular return to reality in those long shots where all we see are a couple of nerds hacking away at each other with sticks.

Thus the question, or rather the statement “I thought he was dead!” becomes a moot point. Although it’s funny that I’ve heard people refer to Brian as “the demon” in this video. That makes some sense at least since he’s wearing the devil’s cloak from Satan’s Seat. I guess I should leave this to speculation; here I go ruining the whole idea of interpretation. So go ahead, interpret.

In fact, I may have just made all that up to throw you off the trail of the truth.

To answer another commonly asked question: no, that girl had no idea what was going on. I hurried us up so that we wouldn’t miss the opportunity to run past her. Partly because I was hoping for a good reaction from her (which we really didn’t get) but also because having random bystanders adds a good element to the atmosphere of the video.

I spent about 22 hours on the lightsabers in this one, which at the time I thought was an obscene amount of my precious life. This was the largest contributing factor to the length of time between this video and iSaber 4. Believe me, an hour of rotoscoping light sabers will discourage anyone from choosing to do so again for a while. (Also, you may have noticed I struggle with spelling light sabers, not sure if it’s one word or not still).

The Batman-esque titles covering the punches were a simple necessity because we never bothered to mask them properly. Our fight instructor at Eastern’s Theater Department, Mac, wouldn’t be too proud of that. I also had to deal with a couple of errant sticks here and there which you can pick up if you’re paying attention. All in all I could have spent more time perfecting this video, but at the time I wasn’t ready to sit in front of my computer any longer.

We had intended to finish the fight then and there, but I had to teach a class at 3PM and we started filming at something like 2:30PM so we didn’t have time.Thus the “To Be Continued…” Not bad for really cranking this one out though eh?

Interesting fact: Frank (Caleb) screams “My Mommy bought me an iPhone!” when he joins the fray with his new iSaber.

Slightly less interesting fact: I made the “sneaky” music deaf. In other words I couldn’t hear it when I was making it because I was pumping it into my computer to be recorded, and it works for how poorly it should have turned out.

VASTLY less interesting fact: Jonathan and Caleb are brothers in real life… I warned you when I said it was vastly less interesting.

Of course I’m haunted by a few editing choices, and some bad rotoscoping, but it was my first round with light sabers. All in all I think I spent 15 hours on them, and it panned out pretty well.

Yes there is a Zippo lighter app, and no it doesn’t light anything on fire. That would be cool, but it doesn’t do that.

The song is Phantom, by Justice, and yes it is that cool. This (as well as iSaber 3) was filmed by my buddy Andrew Taylor, whose name I messed up in the credits: “Taylor Andrews.”

It was thanks to his skateboard that we could attempt the vertigo effect and almost pull it off. Brian’s looks better than mine, but it’s possible that it’s because he’s that much cooler than I am.

Someone corrected me once on saying “2G Networks” when I should have said Edge, but I recently discovered that 2G networks do exist so take that… er, I mean I knew that when I said it.

In case you were wondering why we had the closeup shot mid fight where all you see is either Brian or me with just our light sabers, it’s because that type of shot comprised about half of the lightsaber fights in the original trilogy. Funny… joke…

Caleb broke two of those fluorescent lamps over my back, leaving shards of glass in my sweatshirt both times. It hurt a lot, but was well worth it in the end. Especially the second shot which I used because a huge portion of the tube bounced directly over the camera.

Why “Frank?” No idea, it just worked well in the moment. To be honest Caleb’s “Frank” is probably my favorite character in any of our skits, he makes the iSaber series what it is.

This is a fairly disjointed conglomeration of thoughts, but if you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments below and I’ll answer them!

Interesting fact: We use sticks to fight, wooden dowels to be exact, which makes it possible to add the lightsabers in later with the proper angles and blur.

Slightly less interesting fact: That epic archway Brian stands in at the beginning is part of the science department at Eastern.

VASTLY less interesting fact: Well, more an embarrassing fact, I didn’t make the saber mark on the wall in other shots after the first one. And the mark I made wasn’t quite as good as it could have been… in fact one could say it sucked.

Well, not no one. I think Seth Gossler and Daniel Fockler thought it was funny… maybe Jenny, but they were probably laughing at me more than with me. Basically we were all sitting around talking about our iPhones, or at least my iPhone and Seth’s touch. I’d downloaded the Force Unleashed‘s light saber app and we were playing with it while we should have been working.

I thought (out loud) about how funny it would be if you saw two nerds walking across campus that stopped when they saw each other, squared up, and then unsheathed their iPhone light sabers (hereafter shortened to “iSabers”). They laughed, and I thought about it and figured… why not? So we did it.

Brian Ross, who’s been with us since the beginning, has such a bad ass face with well pronounced features that he made the perfect sith nerd. I had the shaggy, been-out-with-the-sand-people-too-long Obiwan look going so I donned brown (which is why I didn’t wear the traditional good guy white for the last time!).

Caleb shook things up with his mad camera skills and his girlfriend Jenna provided our reality check mid-way through. Obviously filmed on Eastern’s campus we managed to get the whole thing finished in a few hours. This would not be true for iSaber battle 2, iSaber battle 3, or least of all iSaber Battle 4…

And for those of you nerdy enough to understand (or catch), in the opening dialogue I am talking about how to create two columns in an html document using floats. The trick is to put a div underneath them with a clear:both value.

Interesting fact: When in France that beard was long enough that I could grab it with my fist against my chin and have hair protrude out the bottom.

Slightly less interesting fact: The interesting fact above just ensured I would remain single for the remainder of my days.

VASTLY less interesting fact: The music and sound effects we used were all recorded off the light saber app itself.

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The story:

Some time before I moved to France, John and I had been playing around with starting to do some nerdcore. Don’t worry yourself it’s not something dirty. It’s basically nerdy, white guy, black tie rap about technology. Needless to say we never made it very far in the nerdcore scene.

However we did have an itch to do a music video, and when the opportunity popped up shortly after my return from the land of the frogs we jumped on it. You’ll notice I also had a sweet beard at this point in my life. I’d grown it while living abroad, a sign of solidarity with my distant country in some strange way. The ladies in my life tended to disagree with the awesomeness of said facial hair, but I had enough support from the fellas that I kept that thing for way too long (thanks a lot Garner, Scope).

I think I wrote Photonym in something like 15 minutes in the recording studio at EWU. I’m not sure but I know Mexidate was done in a similar time frame; regardless the lack of time spent shows through I’m sure. Not exactly a lyrical masterpiece. The track was one by Mr. Kooman and since it was a free-to-use download I’m hoping he doesn’t get mad at me down the road for using it.

We figured it’d be good to get some sweet dancing in there so we called up our buddy Brian and asked if he’d bust out some moves. Another friend, Kyle (KDUB), is a bit of a local legend as far as rapping goes so we figured we’d have him cameo. A bit of a stupid idea for a cameo though considering no one in our church knew who he was. It was fun to have him in it either way.

The lyrics are as follows:

Uh! Heck yeah y’all
-Mr. Kooman-
It’s time to roll, let’s do this uh!

Photography, the act of taking photos
you wanna mess with me? I’ll turn you Quasimodo
All of that to say I’ll hit you in the back
then dance in circles round you as my photos click and snap y’all

You want a piece of this?
You know you cannot handle this
Your aperture is way too small
Your viewfinder is bound to miss

You know I’ll take you down
I’ll make you smile I’ll make you frown
I’ll Photoshop your face and make you look just like a clown

Photology: The study of the photo
you know you are a geek
when you’re always flying solo

Photonomy: Is a photo in isolation
You know it is my fixation
An army base has a station!

Photogomy: Being loyal to one photo
You don’t wanna mess with mine
or I’ll kick you in the ho-ho! Yeah

*You know–

There are lots of things in life you can take photos of
like cats and dogs and baby birds and architecture yo

I took a picture of a man
he said his name was Stan
but in reality his name was Chase
so I shot him in the face y’all

*John originally repeated the “in your ho-ho” with quite a violently emphatic rhythm, but we edited it out just in case we’d offend anyone on Sunday morning. This was unfortunate however because the edited version was what ended up on YouTube, and it’s not nearly as funny (in our estimation).

And so began the trip down musical lane.

Interesting fact: that orange wall we danced in front of used to be a Burger King.

Slightly less interesting fact: we played the music from Dalbey’s car CD player and lip synced each shot.

VASTLY less interesting fact: filming by the dumpsters behind Safeway was a terribly (and literally) smelly idea.