How can you create a light blast that “whites out” the screen? 
Honestly, that’s something you should be doing in a compositor…so you have realtime control over it, and it’s easily editable later. If you don’t have any kind of compositor, you could just make a light without shadows and just have it’s intensity skyrocket, but that’s a pretty inferior solution.
Thanks, vapulus. Do you have any recommendations for a good compositor? Thanks, again.
Well, after effects is what i’ve used for years, but that’s not a free program. I know there’s gotta’ be at least a decent compositor or two floating out there in the open source world. Maybe somebody else on the forums here uses one and can recommend one?
Either way, any compositor should give you the ability to mess with levels on the footage. Basically, you’ll want to boots the light levels over time and give it an artificial “bloom” effect. An even simpler solution would be to have a simple white frame over the footage and animate its’ opacity. Either way will send your image to white over time, and I believe that’s what you want. =)
You might wanna’ check this out:
http://www.zs4.net/
I just searched google for free compositors. 
Who knows if it’s any good…but it’s free for personal use. =)
Even better, i found this on sourceforge:
http://www.jahshaka.org/
Seems to be fairly high quality, too.
yes, Zwei Stein is very powerful for free. Also try Jahshaka. Each take a bit of time to get used to the interface
Haha, right as I edit my post to say that. 
That’s funny, because the person I am working with on this project uses after effects. Unfortunately, they think I can pull this crazy stuff off better in my 3d program.
They also want video clips projected on a cylinder. I’m thinking that’s not going to happen. 
Still yes…clip no. But hey, if you know how to do that please let me know.
Thanks, again.
video clips on the cylinder can be done, if you take the video file and convert it to a .tga sequence you can put it on the cylinder, not sure but i think Virtual Dub can make a .tga sequence out of a .avi and it can be done in the Video Sequencer in blender by adding the movie file and clicking the “Do Sequence” button under the animate button. make sure you select a proper out put folder and select TGA from the output options make sure the each frame is named correctly, like name_001 name_002 etc. then just add a material to the cylinder then add a texture to that material. go to the texture button under materials and set the type of texture to image and depress the movie button in that area. then right click select the whole sequence and bingo, your done. not sure if thats exactly how you select the images. someone around here could clarify.
Thanks, HEADCHEESE! 
I will try it.
Video Clips on a cylinder? A real cylinder, or one created in Blender?
If created in Blender, use an AVI file as the texture on the cylinder.
Spin - Yes, a cylinder made in Blender. I guess you apply the AVI as a texture like you would a JPG or TGA. I could UV map it on.
Since you’re using Blender I think I can safely assume that you don’t have a lot of money to spend. However, just for reference, you might want to know about some of the higher end compositing suites, namely Combustion and Shake. For them, you’ll have to lay out a few grand.
No, I’m just thrifty. I like Blender and the community. There isn’t that “I’m better than you” attitude. May be I should buy one of these. It may pay for its’ self in the future.