The project grew out of special effects experimentation with Adobe Photoshop® in combination with Apple iMovie®. It was initially conceived as a short clip to be included in the student produced Morning Bulletin program, but quickly expanded to a much larger undertaking.

Working in class, during lunches, and after school, they conceived, choreographed, shot and revised, then created a highly efficient organization and workflow that allowed them to individually process nearly 5000 individual frames over the course of the production.

The basic special effect process involved choreographing and shooting the fight scene using toy light sabers with florescent green plastic light blades for easy identification in processing. The individual shots were imported into iMovie® and a rough cut of the scene was created. Each shot was then exported as an image sequence using Quicktime Pro®, then imported into Adobe Photoshop® for rotoscoping.

After some initial tests the CG crew created a series of programmable actions in Photoshop® to speed the process and make it more consistent. After processing the image sequence was re-imported into iMovie® for the final edit. Mixing of the audio was accomplished using Apple Soundtrack®. The Bulletin intro was created in 3D Max®.

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