Visting Decipher

In the tail end of September, 2000, Decipher Inc, the makers of the Star Wars™ collectible card game flew Timothy Zahn and me out to Norfolk, VA for a photoshoot connected with their upcoming Reflections II card set. Previously that month they’d shot pictures of a model portraying Mirax Terrik, Corran’s wife, and at the shoot they invited Tim and me to attend they were shooting the guys who would become Talon Karrde and Corran Horn.

Decipher was great to me from the beginning. Tom Lischke picked me up from the airport, got me squirreled away at the hotel, then took me to Decipher and showed me around. Decipher has offices on several levels of a renovated office building, and they are quite stylish. I renewed acquaintances with a bunch of folks and got to see people in the art department working diligently on creating cards. I’d not before seen them merging shots with backgrounds from the films, adjusting things and getting them set up before. It was very cool.

In the art department I got to look at the shots from the previous photoshoot, which included Mara Jade, Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mirax. Shannon Baksa, as always, was stunning as Mara. Thrawn looked very good and the woman they got to play Mirax, well, I was singularly impressed. They found a woman who matched up with the depiction of Mirax from The Phantom Affair comic. I got asked about details they might add in as they manipulate the card art, but I was just pretty much blown away by seeing her represented by a flesh and blood person.

That’s one of the weird things about being a writer. I might have an image in mind for who someone looks like, but until there is a picture, it’s all kind of hazy. Sometimes I can look at a picture of a character and say, “Nope, not right.” With Mirax, though, the woman was dead-bang on.

This made me hopeful for the next day’s shoot.

I had breakfast with Tim Zahn and the two of us were like school-boys on holiday, just tickled pink that Decipher had brought us out. Chuck Kallenbach took us over to an Army/Navy surplus store from which they get pieces for their costumes. We had to pick up a flight suit for Corran. We also got a few other things, one of which got used as a CorSec insignia, though I’m not sure how well that detail will appear on the card. Things do get pretty small. After that we had lunch and went to the studio.

The stuff done in a photostudio is really magic. At first glance, the guys they got for Corran and Karrde were right, in general. Good on the overall dimensions, hair color, eye color, etc., but they were just guys off the street. Then the hair and makeup folks went to work. Karrde got a wig and a full makeup job, which sharpened his features and totally changed him. By the end of the process — during which Tim’s camera was clicking almost incessantly, I was believing the guy was Talon Karrde.

Once Karrde was made up and costumed, he was taken onto the photostage and lit. That’s a fascinating process. If they put a yellow filter on a light, the light is considered “hot.” A blue filter makes it “cold.” The art director, photographer and photographer’s assistant all discussed and debated, pulling lights this way and that, setting them up at angles, getting the model to look here or there. Then they took test Polaroid shots and digital shots and finally agreed that things were right. It was almost anticlimactic when the shooting got done, but the results were great. Talon Karrde lived.

Shannon Baksa actually did Corran’s makeup, then he got lit and shot. One of my concerns had been that the model was a bit older than Corran would have been at that point, but the makeup and lighting slashed 15 years off him. And the models, they put up with a lot. At one point, while folks were off debating how Corran should be lit, the guy who had done Karrde’s makeup commented that Corran was just sitting there rock-still. Corran said, “I’d move, but I’m afraid they’d have to re-light me.”

The third shot we got to see that day was a card featuring Karrde and Mara having a discussion at a table. After that we had some group shots with all of us together. I can’t wait to get that film developed.

As a perfect cap to the day, Tom and Chuck, along with their wives Kathy and Cheryl, took Tim and me to dinner at a great restaurant. Decipher gave each of us a case of cards that had set in which characters we’d created appeared. That was just one more really classy touch, and great way of saying thanks for our participation. (Tim and I were overjoyed to do this, of course, as you can tell in the interview we did for Radio Free Decipher — whenever they get it up on their site.)

The trip was a really fun time. Watching photoshoot wasn’t something I’d done before. (I didn’t exactly watch the one for Wasteland — I was IN it…) I’m really looking forward to the Reflections II set coming out in December. It will be very cool to have a card of a character I created and have spent so much time with — one more opportunity Star Wars has afforded me, that I never would have dreamed of in a million years.