DecipherArchive:decipher.com/content/2004/07/The Making of the Weta "Book Cards": Swords, Rings, and Palantiri
In the previous "Making of..." article, we saw some of the concept art for the Weta "book cards," along with backstage shots of the makeup process and character photo shoots and some of the cards that came out of those shoots. But Decipher's Creative Director, Dan Burns, had another goal in addition to getting shots of the non-movie characters.
TCGs aren't built of characters alone – generally speaking, those characters want to have a cache of weapons, and other possessions and artifacts, at their disposal to aid in their quest. And heaven knows there were plenty of swords, axes, knives, palantiri, rings, and other "things" seen in the three Lord of the Rings films. Trouble is, the majority of them were seen too briefly or not prominently enough on screen for the existing stills to be useful for illustrating a TCG card. And some, like Arwen's daggers, were made but then never seen in the final cut of the films. But just about all of those props are sitting in Weta's warehouse, so, says Dan, "The Game Studio specified a huge list of cards" that they wanted him to get closeup prop shots for.
So Dan sorted through the thousands of props he had access to, and between character shoots the photographers would set up and shoot prop images. Not too surprisingly (considering the huge battle scenes), the stock leaned heavily toward weapons. Dan captured a small portion of the arsenal in the photos below. While they all look suitably lethal (even in closeup), in general only the so-called "hero" wepons were forged from steel. Some were cast aluminum; the Witch-king's mace was rubber; and some of the very large weapons were cast from resin to keep the weight down.
Pieces of armor were also in abundance, and such items as armored gloves, while perhaps not of interest for a separate prop shot, were still in demand for the hands of the model wielding a weapon or holding a palantir in a closeup shot.
Shots of the Witch-king's hands holding the Ithil Stone (included in Reflections, shown below) and various weapons (to come in later sets) were in fact modelled by Ben Price, who played the Witch-king in many scenes in the films.
Several "Denethor" prop shots, including those of his palantir (also in Reflections) and sword, were modelled by Dan Burns, standing in for Denethor in his furred robes.
Noting that these Reflections cards, while created from specially shot closeups at Weta Workshop, didn't have the Weta logo, I asked Dan how it was decided which cards were "Weta book cards" and which weren't. "It's mostly decided by the Game Studio," he said. "Those cards where Weta had more input into the creation – particularly the characters which didn't appear in the movies – would be 'book cards'" and get the Weta logo, while fairly straightforward prop shots, especially for props that appeared even fleetingly in the films, would not. The Witch-king weapons, for example, will not be "book cards," because even though the actual card images weren't in the films, the weapons themselves did in fact appear on screen.
Did Dan have a favorite prop amongst all those he oversaw the photos for? He mused for a moment, then replied, "Probably that would be Denethor's ring, which I had on for the sword and palantir shots. The palantir itself was very cool, too." Like many of the weapons, the palantir was not quite what it appeared. "It was made of painted wood and very heavy." (Lighting effects were of course added later in the art studio.)
I had one final question. Did he get to keep any "souvenirs" from the shoot? With a brief look of regret, Dan answered, "No, everything was inventoried and strictly accounted for."
Related links: The Weta Book Cards (Index)
Kathy McCracken
Web Writer
July 29, 2004
