Ben's lightsaber

i read that in ANH the blade was actually a glass rod that glowed like a neon light. that was why it looked goofy from the front DD. the problem was that the blades kept shattering when they fought the duel. i dunno how credible this is though. i can't remember where i read it.

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Thanx Darth Stu. I think the same goes for TPM, as they had over a hundred lightsabre props made for use in the film.

This might not be a necissary response but Lucas said long ago that both Luke and OB1 were to have blue sabers. They fixed the confusion on Luke(when it went from looking green to white) by making the saber blue in ESB. They never got around to fixing Bens saber, even in the SE, which still puzzles me.

whos played kotor 2? there is a silver light saber crystal that makes the saber a greeny blue. maybe its one of these

A few things...

First off, it's supposed to be blue, but it ends up looking white most of the time. Most people just conclude that Ben used a silver lightsaber. After all, it was a different saber than the blue one he uses in the prequels.

Secondly, as I've addressed elsewhere, this month's issue of Star Wars Insider has a bit on the duel with Vader and Ben, and it describes how the lightsabers were constructed, and why we see what we see when the special effects don't work they way they should.

In particular, each lightsaber is a wooden prop with two reflective, silvery sides. These sides are spun around the blade end with a device that is actually in Obi's sleeve. In a few scenes, you can see the wire going into his sleeve if you pause the frame. Alright, so this device spins, and that combined with the stage lights creates the illusion of a light blade. Rather clever, but fragile. They broke easily in combat, and thus the duel was toned down. Both David Prowse and Alec Guinness had to learn to swing but not connect the blades.... Rough work.

So that being said, the blade is silver, really. Any blue or green tint is either a goof by the touch-up department, or lights from something in studio.

And the blade color you're thinking of is viridian. There's silver, blue, orange, bronze (Ach... ugly), red, green, cyan, purple. Of all of these colors, I think we could do without bronze, viridian, and cyan. Bronze is a duller form of orange, which is already pushing it. Viridian is not bright enough to be a lightsaber and looks silly in any case. And cyan is just silly.

Oh, and yellow. I forgot that color. Must be because I hate it. Huh.