Everyone, and I do mean everyone on this planet must have at some point in their lives picked up a big stick and wooshed it around in the air making pathetic "zzzz-zum" noises whilst recalling fond memories of a certain gadget in a certain galactic movie series...

Of course, the movie series was Star Wars but you already knew that. If you didn't then my word - where have you been for the last 25 years?!

Now creating your own realistic lightsabers will take time, patience and perhaps even a little money. For this particular tutorial you will need the following software:

There are other ways in which to create your own lightsabers but this is the simplest and most effective method. Adobe Photoshop was created by Industrial Light & Magic who - yep you've guessed it - did the special effects for the entire Star Wars saga. Chances are if Photoshop can't make realistic looking lightsabers, nothing will.

Now before clicking onto the actual tutorial, you need to first of all shoot some actual footage of yourself, a mate or whoever knocking ten paces of shit out of one another with some big sticks.

If you are really fancy, rich, or just stupid with money, you may have picked up a replica lightsaber handle from a film fair or convention. Into these replica handles, you can place a poll or a very straight stick and then once you've completed the tutorial you will have a 100% bonified, genuine-looking lightsaber! But not all of us can afford such luxuries (they can retail for upwards of £150/$200) so just using a poll will suffice. After all the bright, dazzling blade will detract most people anyway.

The poll or stick needs to be wrapped in very bright tape (such as hazard tape) so that when you come to edit your footage it stands out a mile to make your life easier. The tape will not be seen in the finished product unless you truly fuck up.

As for the footage, I'd recommend shooting on miniDV as it's cheap and gives a relatively sharp picture plus is piss-easy to edit with. If your are shooting indoors, make sure you get plenty of light or else you will just have this grainy mess to work with later. But if you want it dark and atmospheric, it's fine to keep the lights down but remember it may be a bitch to work with later.

You must bear in mind that although at this point you are probably thinking of filming an extravagant 30 minute fight to challenge the likes of George Lucas, you are going to have to rotoscope (manually edit frame by frame) every single bit of footage you want to use.

If you are not familiar with how a "picture" is made up, PAL (UK) footage is shot a 25 frames per second (it does get more complicated but I won't bother with that here) so if you shot just one minute of action, you will have 1500 pictures to manually edit (25 frames x 60 seconds). There are software workarounds to automate some of the work but it is still a daunting task!

If by this point you have shot some footage, edited into a final cut (minus the effects and sound) and have the software listed above installed on your computer, you are ready for the nitty gritty.