Fanworks Creator Interview (Danish Feature, Part 2)
(source: Thomas Borgstrup, dk.starwars.nu, 09-04-03)
Hot on the heels of the "mini portrait" article over at Dk.StarWars.Nu, Thomas Borgstrup has put up the second of two articles on his Danish-language Star Wars site, featuring an interview with Fanworks' Nathan Butler. For those who aren't from Denmark or can't read Danish, the English translation, provided by Borgstrup, follows:
Nathan Butler, the man behind Star Wars Timeline Gold, ChronoRadio, Second Strike and a bunch of other contributions to the Star Wars fan culture--and the subject of a mini portrait in last week’s column--was kind enough to let me steal a little bit of his time in order to do a small interview and hopefully find out a little more about the “hows” and “whys” of what he’s doing:
We all have our own “This is how I got into SW” tale. What’s yours?
I got into SW thanks to my mother, I think. She tells tales of taking me to see a re-release of The Empire Strikes Back when I was too young to remember, and I can vaguely remember having seen Return of the Jedi in theaters at least four times when I was about 3 years old. I think she got me into the movies and suggested the toys, then I just sort of "ran with it."
[This part was copied more or less verbatim into the translated version]
The Star Wars Timeline Gold is incredibly detailed and spans about 1,200 pages. With all the research this thing must take an awful lot of your time?
It does, but it doesn't. In the past, it took up a lot of time, but now that it went to "Gold," I generally just have to add a few things now and then, rather than catching up on tons of old materials. Still, I find I have a hard time keeping up sometimes, so I took on Matthew Periolat recently as a partner. Between two of us, I think we can keep up with new releases. At least, I hope so.
[A bit of paraphrasing for the Danish version, and I didn’t mention Matthew Periolat by name, cause the readers wouldn’t know him anyway . . . Heck, even I don’t have a clue, who he is!]
So you went from text in Star Wars Timeline Gold to speech as well on ChronoRadio. How long does it take you to put an episode of ChronoRadio together?
That really depends on the episode. If it's one that I can do off the top of my head, I can do one in a day. Usually, though, especially lately, I tend to record it in segments over the month following a new release, then spend the second month before the next release editing the show to remove a lot of "uh"s and that sort of thing. Basically it's one month of recording a little each week, and then one month of editing and "tightening up."
[Danish version is very close to the original here]