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.