David West Reynolds (author)


Biography


Reynolds became fascinated with the world of Star Wars at age 13 and created a drawing of how a lightsaber worked while in middle school. After earning his PH.D in archeology from the University of Michigan, Reynolds and a friend traveled to Tunisia to test his skills by discovering the shooting locations for the Tatooine sequences from the original film. After six weeks in the Tunisian desert they had discovered "a couple dozen" locations, using archeological techniques to narrow down the vast search area and Reynolds wrote of the findings in the Star Wars Insider magazine.

At around this time, George Lucas was planning the prequel trilogy and learned from his archivist that the details of the shooting locations had not been recorded. Lucas discovered Reynolds article and realized that he was possibly the only person in the world who had the GPS coordinates. He officially hired Reynolds as a location scout and then later as a full time employee.

While writing reference books, he designed the cross section of a lightsaber, based on his previous drawing, with the addition of a lightsaber crystal, introducing the idea that choosing their crystal is a test of the Jedi's force sensitivity.

He wore the Boba Fett armor at the opening event for Star Wars at the Smithsonian.

Bibliography


Sources


  • Star Wars: Boba Fett

Appearances