Creating deathstar laser shot updated

I feel that a basic cylinder for the laser my deathstar will fire is far too basic and have looked on the web for a few guides to help me clean it up and give it the effect I want I came across this tutorial on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwrAIqwTCNY&feature=fvwrel
And will be attempting to create the laser as shown.

After creating my cylinder I set the defuse colour to white and the self-Illumination to 100 after setting the material ID channel to 1 meaning that it will only affect things that have the channel ID of 1. Go to Rendering > Effects > then add Lens Effect.






After adding the Lens Effects add a glow then go into option > and in image sources check both Object ID and Material ID your effect will not update if these boxes are not checked and on the same channel as your laser.





Then change the Radial Colour you want your laser to be I went for green as a traditional laser colour. Now change the Size in Lens Effects Globals I went for a low size 13.0 this means the glow will be closer to my cylinder go back to Glow Element and adjust your laser accordingly.

Use Update Scene and Update Effect buttons at the top to see what your laser looks like.

This is the final effect of the laser I have created.