Entertainment
“Levitating” Star Wars Speeders Win Halloween
Youtubers Jesse Wellens and Casey Neistat are well-known on Youtube for creating real-life version of fantasy items that utilize special effects and optical illusions to make them look like they’re working just like they do in the movies/books/comic-books/video games.
In the past they’ve created full Silver Surfer costumes and a “real world magic carpet” and while those were awesome in their own right they may have topped themselves with their Halloween costumes this year.
Taking a page from Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, the couple created Speeders that appeared to levitate thanks to mirrors that covered the wheels of the motorcycles they were mounted atop. They took their creations to the streets of New York and filmed everything, something you can watch here:
“Every year, Jesse and I usually do a video where we ride around the city doing something a little bit crazy. One year it was Aladdin, Silver Surfer, one year we snowboarded around the city. And this year, Jesse had a different idea,” Neistat says in the behind-the-scenes video they made to document the creation of the video about the creation of the speeders.
The video was filmed over the course of two days in Manhattan while using Super 73 motorcycles (which are the same bikes that they used in another one of their famous videos, The Burning Man video). It took about three weeks to create the speeders over the bikes, using fiberglass shells, cardboard, engines and a few extra parts (and paints).
In a tweet supporting the creation of the video, Wellens said: “I think we might win Halloween” and it’s safe to say that they did.