Image by Jeff Sampson Photography.
“Get ready to stop every 5 minutes,” Mike Galer said, dressed as a Stormtrooper.
Five minutes was an understatement.
The assortment of characters took their first steps onto 8th Street downtown when the hollering began and the people started to flock.
“Can we take a picture with you?” was pouring out of the mouths of the ogling crowds as they ran up to the iconic figures with cell phones and cameras. At one point a car full of people came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street to snap a photo. It was palpable that “Star Wars” is still making an impact.
Seeing as it was Labor Day when we shot the October cover, an older couple walked by with confusion plastered on their faces, and the woman asked a question that sometimes rubs the group the wrong way.
“Okay, it’s not Halloween for a while. What’s with the costumes?”
These most certainly are not Halloween costumes. These costumes are a very time-consuming and passionate hobby.
“Some people go hunting and fishing, and some people paint on canvas,” said Rob Keisacker, dressed as Jedi Kit Fisto. “You can call us a seamstress or artist; we just use a different medium. Our art doesn’t hang on a wall.”
Keisacker’s mask and gloves alone have been in the works for the last 9 months. The original mask cover three-fourths of his face, so Keisacker eventually combined two masks and used bits of one of them to create Kit Fisto’s hands.
“I’d rather be able to have a mumbled voice but look more accurate,” he said.
And there are sites to help them create each costume to get as close as possible to the real deal on the silver screen.
“Each one of these costumes has got its own website with like-minded individuals that just pour over the detail sitting there looking at screen shots of the movie trying to figure out how to make it as accurate as possible,” Mike said.
To read the rest of this article, pick up the October issue of 605 Magazine today at your nearest location!
