Well, considering the kid who made this was 19 years old at the time and that short film got him a job at Lucas Arts designing video games, not too shabby at all.
For not having martial arts experience, their choreography was also actually more entertaining than the "art of the saber", IMHO, mixing various styles, including the cool ground work and a creating ending, though I saw it coming when they started the tug of war....
Right; I agree that it's totally awesome. I'm just saying that making the actual saber blades is not as hard as it seems. That's excellent news about how it accelerated his career, though.