How did you do the floating lightsaber handle in Ryan vs. Dorkman?
The floating lightsaber handle was done in two ways. For the wide, far away shot of the handle floating between us in our “force tug-o-war”, the handle was an image of the handle (photographed on set) that I animated to wiggle around. The closer shots of the handle were achieved by performing the shot with a puppeteer moving the handle via a rod screwed onto the end of the handle facing away from the camera. Then an empty background plate of the shot was photographed. In post production, the puppeteer and the rod were masked off in After Effects and replaced by the empty background footage.
