Star Wars episode 7 The Force Awakens premiered before Christmas. It was fantastic!
I have always loved Star Wars, I credit a lot of my early imagination to that galaxy, particularly my interest in movies and special effects. There is a great scene toward the beginning of the new film where Poe Dameron shoots at Kylo Ren with a blaster. Kylo turns quickly throwing out his gloved hand and stops the laser blast midair! It hangs there violently shaking held in its place with the Force. I’ll admit, as a kid I had imagined a similar sequence where two Jedi in a Force Tug of War with a laser blast battle for victory. I never got around to shooting this sequence admittedly because I was tired of painfully rotoscoping lightsabers and moved on to other genres.
In this scene we get a peek of a laser blast up close and personal. The effects on the thing are so fantastically done, and in tandem with the sounds, I really believed that the crazy blue bolt was dangerous. Stay away, do not touch. So cool. I admired the craftsmanship of the laser details that I wanted to try it myself. It had just happened in theaters, and that shot isn’t in any of the trailers. There were no reference shots online to my finding, or at least none were available when I looked. I decided to take a crack at it from memory. I came up with this after about 10 minutes:
I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I was getting back to my roots. The effect is pretty simple and uses only stock After Effects plugins. I decided to make a tutorial, so I shot a quick video of my messy apartment, 3D tracked it and comped in my laser. I recorded myself making the laser in a simpler fashion to make it easier, though it looks nearly the same. I also mixed some sounds effects together to make the sound. It consists of an electric hum, an arc welder, and some guy making funny sounds with his mouth.
Here is the finished tutorial:
I had so much fun making this that I’ll probably be doing more. I’ve had some ideas for lightspeed and hyperspace kicking around in the back of my head. Once they solidify a little more, I will record them and post em online.
