“If it were easy, everyone would do it.”
Nathan Ashton taught audio production at Oral Roberts University for nine years before launching out as a freelance engineer focusing on audio postproduction for motion pictures. He met his wife Lydia while at Bible school in Sweden; they now have three kids who love to play Tickle-Bear with their father. Nathan claims to remember life before kids and moviemaking as having a great deal of free time for reading science fiction, traveling, and actually watching movies.
Pendragon was Nathan’s first feature project. He volunteered to create sound effects when the film was... smaller. Nathan recalls, “I carried around an early Pendragon DVD my dad sent me for weeks. I just couldn’t put it down until I called Chad and asked how I could help. When I watched the final cut a year later, I knew the audio would have to be first rate to match the video. I had to call God and ask Him to help me!” In the end, Nathan spent almost eight hundred hours creating the Pendragon soundscape - rustling, chopping, screaming, yelling, digging, walking on old audiotape, then mixing the final product.
“I remember standing in a hardware store rattling chains up close to my ear when a saleslady came by and asked ‘Can I help you?’ I replied, ‘No, I’m just trying to find the right size chain.’ Only then did I realize how crazy I must look!”
Nathan worked sixteen feet underground in a studio without windows, a clock, or a telephone. Time was marked more in terms of computer restarts than hours. Other members of the Pendragon crew joined Nathan near the end to help grunt through the massive amount of work and oversee the mix.
“I greatly respect Chad’s ability to keep the vision in sight. I’m also glad for Dustin, Aaron, and Nick’s ability to keep me sane there at the end.”