In some cases the fights are going so fast that you can hardly see all this, but if you slow it down, you can see that every move is for real. Both Ewan and Liam got into this so deeply that they became literally as fast as our stunt guys. They were incredible. Gillard was very concerned to avoid what he sees as common pitfalls in cinema swordplay. Gillard worked intensely at avoiding any trace of telegraphing in his Jedi fights.
Every strike is at a target.
And we all took a few knocks working it all out. There are no punches pulled in these fights. Presumably, this explains the stunt team's tendency to wreck a large number of lightsaber props during the course of filming. For all the work that has gone into making these fights as complex as a chess game between masters, Gillard is most pleased about the way in which the lightsaber battles support the story. It's all subtle, and I suppose no one will ever notice this sort of thing, but every fight has a story structure in it.