SomethingStarWarsRelated said:

OK, an actual “small detail” I never noticed until a week or two ago (also involving Liam Neeson):

You’ll need to go frame by frame to see it. As he whips his lightsaber out, his robes move in such a way as to indicate that Liam had the entire thing, blade and all, underneath his robes.

Yeah, you can actually see the tip of the prop poking out from beneath the robe for a few frames.

I don’t see why they did it like that though, since the droids are CG Neeson could’ve just swung the hilt-prop and it would have saved them the time needed to paint out the “stick”. Maybe it saved them the trouble of having it figure out exactly where the blade should be? However, I’ve seen photos where they used a shorter “stick” for animation reference, but that also allowed the actors to “cut through” stuff and move more freely, however I can’t remember it those were used before or after TPM.