Undercity Interviews - Mark Newbold
Lightsabre.co.uk é um dos mais antigos e mais famosos sites de Notícias, Reviews, FanFiction (principalmente) e local de reunião dos fãs Ingleses (e não só) de Star Wars.Entrevistámos o fundador e webmaster Mark Newbold para conhecermos as pessoas e o projecto.
Aqui vai na íntegra e na língua original.
Fan Force Portugal- Tell us a bit about yourself, who is Mark Newbold and how did he wake up to the Star Wars galaxy?
Mark Newbold- I first became aware of Star Wars when I was 7, back in 1977. Everyone was talking about it at school, we all started to get the figures in 1978, the comic started. It began so many things for me, my love of reading, imagination, comics. I can't imagine not having Star Wars in my life. It also got me into fiction writing, which I have been doing since 1982. I'd guess there probably hasn't been a day since 1978 when I haven't either read, listened to or written about Star Wars. Which may be incredibly sad, but I just love it. If I could only make a living from it!
FFPT- What is Lightsabre.co.uk? What are your objectives?
MN - The objective with Lightsabre is to bring Star Wars news to the fans, interviews with people from the movies and other fans and show as many folks as possible our own part of the Star Wars universe, the Setnin Sector, which has been growing since 1982. I'm very keen on building the site to include chatrooms and forums and to have audio dramas, comic books, guest authored stories - as many ways to bring Setnin to the masses as possible. But right now we are best known as an interview site, which is fantastic as LFL have been brilliant in helping us get some interviews and are always very cool to deal with.
FFPT- Your site is fan art oriented, ever thought about publishing the work?
MN - Sadly due to all the licensing issues that's not an option, but I am more than happy spending my time writing Star Wars, and hopefully one day a great original idea will come to me and I'll have the skills to bring it to fruition. But as it is, I find working on Star Wars ideas relaxing and fun, and having such great people like yourselves to chat to and mix with makes it all worthwhile. Maybe one day things will change, but I don't see it. Hopefully someone high up at LFL or LucasBooks will spot the site and the stories and decide to use one of us. Or, one of the artists who helps us will get spotted and move on to bigger and better things.
FFPT- Fan artists complain a lot about copyright issues. We have seen some projects being targeted by law for copyright issues with LFL. Ever had such problems? What do you feel about these issues?
MN - We've not had any issues as yet - although I was told at Celebration Europe that our comic strip was good, TOO good, and we might have someone contact us about it. But I hope it's clear that what we do is done out of love for the movies, and that it's clear that we're not profiting from it. In fact, we have recently started to raise money and awareness for Cancer Research UK, and so the only money that the site has raised in 8 years has gone to charity. I know LFL are aware of this and we're very happy to do it.
FFPT- We can all feel Europe is steadily growing (again) to the star wars phenomena. But, of course, we're still far from the American fandom. How do you see Star Wars in Europe in a few years?
MN - I think after the success of Celebration Europe LFL will bring their conventions over here a lot more often. It was such a great time, the atmosphere was great, everyone was having fun and the exhibition was amazing. It's worth remembering that the original trilogy was filmed in Europe, and the prequels had large scenes shot in Italy and Spain as well as the UK, so the home of Star Wars is as much Europe as it is America. And many of the actors from all 6 films were from Europe and the UK.
FFPT- Of course, the main event in Europe was Celebration Europe. How was it, in your perspective?
MN - As I say, it was a fantastic three days. We had a stand in the dealers area with Gerald 'Tessek' Home as our guest and he gave half of what he made towards our charity efforts. It's was brilliant, all the guys from the official site were great fun and very eager to chat about anything and everything and the fans were all so eager to have the convention that it was really sad when it all ended. I have no doubt we'll all be getting together again in a couple of years, but before then I guess we'll be having Celebration 5!
FFPT- What are "lightsabre.co.uk" future projects?
MN - We are in the midst of our comic strip adaptation of Quest for Freedom, we're writing and planning a studio drama for next year which will be half an hour long and the first of three episodes. We have more plans for stories, as we haven't had time to concentrate on them much since we relaunched back in 2005. I am targeting some more big guests for the site and am hopeful that we'll be able to get more big interview guests on Lightsabre, and hopefully get them to visit or chat room too.
We are in talks with a number of other sites about starting a UK Star Wars fan site network, along with www.jedinews.co.uk and a handfull of others, and if we can organise it we may also be looking at getting a convention together for summer of 2008, although that's in the very early stages and may have to wait until 2009.
Apart from that it will be business as usual at the site. Setnin Selects, new stories, news and reviews.
FFPT- Do you know Portugal?
MN - I have always wanted to visit Portugal and have never had the pleasure. I got married late last year and it's on my shortlist of places to visit. In fact, we have a big family holiday being planned for late 2008 so I might suggest Portugal. Being a big Iron Maiden fan I know there's a bar called Eddie's Bar somewhere in Portugal, so I would have to check that out!
FFPT- Have you seen our work at http://fanfictionpt.blogspot.com? What do you think?
MN - I've browsed through the site, and it's very neat and clean to look at, which is always great for online fiction sites. I like the breadth of story eras you cover, and the mix of languages as well. With Lightsabre being (in my mind anyway) a fan fiction site, I always like to look and see what other fiction sites do, and yours is a great example of how it is meant to be done. Keep up the great work!
Thank you Mark. All the best for you and Lightsabre.co.uk.
Passamos a incluir o Lightsabre.co.uk nos nossos links laterais.
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