from youtuber spreadingthemuse:
Here is an explanation of the perennial science fiction weapon. LASERS. Every show uses them but do any of them really know why? Here I explain the formula behind their power, and using video clips from many recognizable science fiction sources (and other surprises), I segway into another science fiction weapon based on the formula for Kinetic Energy. This weapon isnt what sci-fi says, but it is exactly what it means.
Despite being my longest movie (10 mins on the nose, thanks for being patient) this one was almost one of my fastest. The plot and general formula for this just flashed into my head with a pang, and I spent a month writing it before I had the spare time to film it, which took me under a month. The whole thing was already in rough cut form in under 2 weeks, which goes to show how valuable pre-preparation is.
In addition to Lasers and Kinetic Energy, my original idea was to mention Nuclear Weapons far more extensively, using each weapon in the context of what TV tells us to expect vs what the disappointing reality will be. That idea is expressed in the laser section, but then dropped in favor of Kinetic Energy's history lesson, which I found more entertaining. I didnt plan on using Lord of the Rings footage when I started, but when in the middle of hard-boiled movie-making, the movie gives you its ideas and you had better follow. Choosing video clips is always half the fun. Interesting how the one clip from ALIENS which made me upload the movie in the first place was the one that I didnt use. And the one clip from ALIENS which I'd almost never heard of before was the one that saved my ending. I have the expanded edition DVD, with about 30 minutes of footage never seen in theaters. 1 min of that ended up here by accident, as I was totally stumped on how to end this thing until I ran across one expanded speech by Hudson which I had seen only once before in my life. If I didnt have the expanded DVD I dont know what the ending would have turned into. So much of this is plain random creation of the moment.
Movies are easy. Just the BEGINNING and ENDING is hard. The ending you see here was my THIRD attempt to get something I liked. First it ended with Babylon 5, then Space: Above and Beyond, then Buck Rogers, and on and on. Its the hardest thing in the world to wrap everything up in a concise way when you dont even know what to say. George Lucas once said that screenwriting was like watching a movie with the sound going in and out with a broken projector, and I understand completely. All your inspiration says is what it DOESNT like, rarely if ever telling you what you should do instead.
Due to its predicted length, which I always knew was going to be pushing it, I almost cut this one into a two-parter, where I would have had a quaint "To Be Continued" tacked on to the first one. I wanted that mainly to see if people watch short movies more often than long ones, but in the end it wasnt necessary, and one fluid narrative is best. Far more important was making sure that Bruce Boxlietner got screentime in two separate shows, one of which driving a lightcycle.
As I said, inspiration makes its own rules. ;)
So, after putting a half dozen clips from ALIENS in here, what was the one that was my original idea yet didnt use?
"LT, what do those pulse rifles fire?"
"10mm explosive tip caseless. Standard light-armor piercing round. Why?"
As with so much else, it looked good on paper. ;)
13 Comments
westyHe relies on the presumption with scifi lasers that they derive the power from one specific aspect of the laser Ie its consent frequency. it could be the case that a lser that ocilates from ultra low to ultra high frequency might be more powerfull it might allso be the case that lasers in scifi are combined with some sort of transport mideaum , in star treck for example thay have teck to travel faster than the speed of light , it could be the case that this is used to add mor energy to a laser and from the perspective of sumone watching the laser is one color but from the lasers perspective it is invisible.
Stuff i think is stupid in scifi is sound in space , blowing up things when no oxygen.
westyI think its good to mix the known and very plusable in the future with , the unknown and only logically
plusable. Every now and then you need some sort of bullshit way of recovering the plot when the writers/producer/director fucks up + I think its nice to have Totally out there ideas so long as u can create a frame work and internal logic that supports it
Farhad2000Chroma key FAIL. Remember kids you lit your subject enough to stand apart from the green screen. Nasaly voice is grating. But interesting.
PaybackSTOP MOVING YOUR FUCKING HANDS!
gwiz665He could have waited until his cold was over...
alizarinAren't we getting ahead of ourselves? We need aliens to shoot at first.
antPhew phew!
Buzman1Upvote for Babylon 5 footage.
kEnderMost space battles end up as a game of joust.
Starship Operators got it right (WARNING: dubbed). Lasers generate heat. A large amount of heat is hard to dissipate, color isn't a big deal since microwaves do just fine.
Kinetic energy weapons are deadly but "slow" ( relativistic momentum is complex) you could potentially doge something if you are really small/fast and have a telescope trained on them. Newtons third law is also a potential problem in space, no place to dig your feet in.
Lastly, photons have no mass but they also carry momentum: p = hcf.
ShakaUVMThe new BSG does a pretty good job with movie physics. (Besides the FTL drive, I guess.)
A friend of mine used to work for Cymer testing their million dollar lasers. He fell asleep during a test run and burned a largish hole through the wall that's still there today (another friend works in his exact job now... for some reason, my first friend is no longer there).
They're powerful enough, though, and the video gets the physics completely wrong!
E = hf is the formula for A SINGLE PHOTON, not for a laser. The energy delivered by a laser equals the energy put into the laser (minus any inefficancy losses). So a perfectly efficient zetawatt laser shooting through a vacuum will deliver a zetawatt of energy to the target, at any distance, at the speed of light. That's a pretty damn good weapon.
Also, he fucked up the mass section of the video also. Only massless particles can travel at the speed of light. So no kinetic energy for you traveling at the speed of light! (Photons carry momentum but not mass, and kinetic energy is defined by the mass-velocity product). Accelerating a asteroid or whatever towards the speed of light does not "cap out" at .5mv^2 -> mc^2. You can continue pumping energy into a asteroid heading towards earth. It's apparent velocity will not change, but it's apparent MASS will. Hence, conservation of energy.
Essentially, I think this guy doesn't know physics very well - that's all high school physics stuff.
CrakeAbout the particle beams - couldn't you just have a charged hull, then the beam would be repelled? Or you could even divert it into your own particle accelerator and shoot it back at 'em
VoodooV**length=00:09:59
siftbotThe duration of this video has been updated from unknown to 9:59 - length declared by VoodooV.
Discuss...
Enable JavaScript to submit a comment.