Assignment 2 - Light Saber Effect

I like the light saber effect, it looks really cool. In the video tutorial (link below), it shows a saber being lighted up but I would prefer to light up a wand/pen so that it looks really magical (set the "extend" from "0" to "100" to show up the light saber effect). For enhancement, I have added/used a fire footage to create a blue fire around the light saber.

Light Saber

Tutorial link: http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/light_sabers_v2/

Steps (what I did):
1. Drag out the "Light_Saber_V2".
2. To make the light appear, in 1st frame, key in the value of "0" for extend and further down the frame, change it to "100".
3. Change the thickness.
4. To dim out the effect/intensity, choose a darker color.
5. Make sure to turn on the motion blur (the icon beside ur layer).
6. Set keyframe for start position and end position, and adjust the position.


So that the light saber is behind the actor:
7. Create a new solid rename as "mask".
8. Mask out the actor with pen tool.
9. Change the blue saber to "alpha matte inverted" and turn off the visibility of "mask".


Blue Fire

Tutorial link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAUgxX6dHDo

Steps (what I did):
10. Drag fire footage in.
11. Change mode to "Add".
12. Hit "s" and scale it.
14. CC Toner effects (highlights: choose a bright blue color, midtone: choose a darker blue color).
15. Effects> Glow, bring down intensity, adjust radius.
16. Duplicate another layer of the mask and place it above the fire footage layer.
17. Change the TrkMat to "Alpha Inverted Matte" so that the fire footage will also be behind the actor.
18. Hit "p" to show position and alt + click on the stopwatch beside it.
19. Delete the expression and parent it to the light saber's end position.
20. Set keyframes for the scale and rotation of the fire footage so that it follows the light saber.