Turbo: A
Power Rangers Movie
I had absolutely no idea what I was getting
into with this job. I'd heard of the Mighty Morphin Power
Rangers, remembering how a Saturday morning theater full of children
went insane when the trailer for the first movie came up before another
feature, so I was happy to be on a "legitimate" feature that people
would have heard of. But when I went to the 1st Unit script
supervisor's (who'd done the TV series for quite a while, as did most
of the film crew) house to go over notes, that's when I found out how
little I knew, starting with her referencing the change from her notes
to my notes when - and she'd twist her arms around with her wrists
together. Finally I said I don't know what that means, and she
laughed and said that's what the teenage actors did and then they'd
"morph" into their Power Ranger (Japanese men in costume) gear.
The Ghost Galleon
Okay, so our first week of shooting is on a galleon
"ghost ship" anchored off the coast of San Pedro, and I'm royally
psyched, save for the talk of noxious faux fog fumes (buy a $40 gas
mask, they suggested -- bag that) and the incredibly against-in-odds
seasickness (working on a boat is not the same as pleasure boat riding,
they warned). So I ditched the Dramamine they gave us and invested in
wrist bandages ("acu-pressure") and avoided all the heavy eating they
suggested we avoid before going out to sea. But that didn't
change the fact that we had a 6:30 a.m. call over an hour away.
Then we're told the night before that the time is moved up to 6 a.m. to
insure we'll be shooting by 7:30 (first shot was finally made at 10:30
a.m.) -- oh, and we can't park where we thought we were going to park,
so they moved us to another location and we would have to ride another
boat to the ship.
So I get there this morning at 5:40 a.m. because
they swore breakfast would be gone by 6 and the boat would be leaving,
and at 6:30, we're standing around eating breakfast. I'm
terrified of getting seasick, so I stick with plain white toast and a
little fruit (NO COFFEE, though I desperately needed it). I ask
our director, Kiochi, what shooting was like the day before on the ship
with 1st Unit. He stumbles a few feet to the right, and a few
feet to the left, and back again. He says, "You shoulda seena me
brushing my teeth last night," and goes into an imitation that looks
like Bugs Bunny after he took the Jekyll 'n' Hyde potion -- jerk left,
jerk down, jerk left, jerk right, jerk up. They only got half
their shots for the day -- the actors kept stumbling and the camera
couldn't stay straight. "The waves were that bad?" I ask.
"Oh, yeah, the ship was tossing and we thought it looked pretty funny
-- but it wasn't funny when you were standing on it."
I couldn't wait!
We had to move to this new location, we found out,
because the beach location required using a hovercraft to the ship, and
the hovercraft, according to a crewmember, "had two speeds: zero and a
hundred. People said, 'I ain't gettin' on that
thing.'" So we finally get on our "pleasure boats" and
begin the 45-minute trip around the cape to the ship, which is anchored
pretty close to the coast. At first the ride is mind-numbingly
slow, but then it picks up and when it hit waves, I think, Oh, yeah, I
could be in trouble. But it never gets worse and I enjoy the
lifting and dipping. When we finally get to the galleon, a
beautiful 45-foot long ship, it's moving up and down in some serious
height. I say with some concern, "Look at it pitching!" The
assistant cameraman says, "When it goes from side to side like that,
it's called rolling. We're
pitching." They tie a float (they called it a barge, but it's a
float) between our boat and the ship, so we have to step across three
hugely (4 feet) lifting and dropping things on the water, which
genuinely scares me -- I dread falling into the water and being the
only one on the ship in wet clothes for 14 hours and everyone shaking
their head at me. Amazingly, when it's time for me to step up
onto the ship, the top edge drops even with my feet and I step on and
it gently lifts up.
Pod Monsters
Okay, so we're all on the ghost ship and the ghost
ship sequence involves pod monsters and pod monsters involves slime and
slime involves constant challenge to gravity on a rolling ship.
Imagine if you will trying to walk on a narrow wet wooden ship's deck
among coiled ropes and cable while the rolling ship moves your left
side upward a foot or three, then down, and right side upward a foot or
three, while other people, often carrying stuff like, oh, big heavy
pointy poles and lights and cameras, are cutting a path right through
the middle of yours and your feet are slipping over the wet wooden
boards. Then imagine the special effects department pouring a
bottle of Palmolive dishwashing liquid (okay it was Slime, but it had
slippage equivalency) on the wet floor where the pod monsters' pods
were resting. It's very difficult to not look unobliging when
people ask you to move and you have to sit there for a few moments
trying to get your balance before you can get out of someone's way.
Then come the pods themselves from which the pod
monsters spring. There are varying degrees of pods (well,
two). The first ones are five floppy purple and green things that
resemble large deflated deep sea footballs with suckers on them and are
considered deadly by the crew only when the special effects guys pour
paper cups full of green slime on them, which not only makes the deck
walking treacherous, it stains your clothes. Then there is the
one big expensive pod (that each of the little ones will miraculously
grow into through the magic of quintuple-filming and trick
editing). This is the pod that will spring open, spattering more
slime and, depending on the take, revealing a monster arm or head
sprouting from it. The most scared I was on the boat the whole
time was when Sean, the Director of Photography, was walking around his
camera department, stepping over cables in the thick of them setting up
around the expensive open pod and the ship rolled and he went up on one
foot and hovered over the pod while everyone else near him had their
backs turned and were trying to keep their own balance. For a few
long moments he hung in air above it and the only thing I can attribute
to the pod still being in one piece is a Divine Hand reaching from the
Heavens and holding Sean's collar until the ship rolled back.
To get the open pod to squirt slime, the special
effects/puppet department put the open pod on a raised platform over a
hole and propguy Ivory has to lie on his back under the tiny platform
and pump slime through the hole with one hand while pushing some
buttons or whatever with the other hand to make the pod
"breathe." After the first take, the pod pretty much just
breathes. Sean's still got his eye on the camera eyepiece and
asks, "Where's the slime?" and Ivory's muffled voice drifts up through
the platform in resigned laughter, "It's all over me!"
What we are doing on this ship is simple: the
five teenage Rangers (and Blue's 12-year-old replacement) are riding a
ghost ship to the climax of the movie. Meanwhile, the evil
character has dispatched five pods after the ship, which crawled into
the ship and opened, and huge pod monsters grew from them (through the
magic of editing). And the American Power Ranger kids fight them
but start to lose, so they morph into the helmeted official Mighty
Morphin Power Rangers, which involves stop/start filming and five
martial arts men (two of whom wear "modified" uniforms to pass for
Yellow Tanya and Pink Katherine. Wardrobe Andrea's most used
phrase during Pink's scene was "Ooboo--your skirt!" because these
costumes are tight).
The martial artists who play the Power Rangers are
fun, but the ones who play the pod monsters are even more fun.
Since this crew has been together forever, they know the stunt guys
because they play the bad guys on the TV show. Initially, they
unnerved me to see them together talking, this angry looking group of
Japanese martial artists whom I'd hate to meet in an alley--especially
the long-haired Japanese guy with the pierced nose. Then they
finally talked to me and long-hair grew up in Texas, so he sounds like
Johnny down the street (I got a picture of him wearing monster pants
and a Curious George t-shirt).
The monsters are basically big purple and green
hairy things with rubber feet, stomach, claws, neck and head. So
monster guys, when suited up, can go without monster tops until cameras
roll, but they can't walk around without their monster pants and
monster feet. And they can't walk around with their monster feet
either. Their monster feet are huge rubber turtle feet which
makes maneuverability on the previously described ship rather
treacherous and more than somewhat comical. Whenever I saw one of
these martial artists heading near the narrow steps to the upper deck,
I'd watch for the fun of it. In the beginning, they would try to
stick a huge turtle toe in-between one of the steps and throw the rest
of their weight to the top, but the toe wouldn't hold and they'd slip
down the steps to the bottom. Eventually a couple of them
mastered holding the railing and pulling themselves to the top in one
jump. The other ones just stayed off the upper deck.
My favorite monster feet episode took place on
camera. Koichi lined up four of the monsters for a full shot of
menacing monsters on the center deck. We had two cameras on the
side, me and Koichi watching on a monitor next to the cameras in front
of the monsters, and the crew sitting around the set-up out of the
way. The special effects guys slimed the monster feet and cleared
frame. Koichi said 'Roll!' and 'AcTION!' and the monsters
waved their arms menacingly. Then Koichi instructed them to step
forward and it was at this point that one of the monster's rubber feet
started slipping in his slime. A quick little double side step,
solid, then a quick little triple side step, solid. Koichi kept
instructing them to move forward, then back. Quick double step,
double step, then both feet did a Jerry Lee Lewis and monster fell flat
on his stomach, totally face down, except for his face which was
attached to a long neck, so it sat chin to floor up at us in a
helpless Cocker Spaniel way and the crew died laughing.
The Hair
Okay, so we're at Valencia Stage, the official
office and stages for the Power Rangers production company, and we're
setting up a shot where Jason Frank (Tommy, the long-haired Red Ranger
- reminds me of one of the Red Hot Chili Peppers - and general set
troublemaker) is about to go into the morph sequence. So
everybody's setting up, he's standing on an apple box and Johnny Bosch
(Adam, the Green Ranger--general coolest, most shy and most loved guy
on the set, whose hair looks like mine, dark curly blunt cut at the
neck) is standing in front of him and they're talking and I'm working
on my notes. I look up, and everyone has stopped what they're
doing and are looking at me. Jason is smiling at me, Johnny is
glaring at me. I take a moment to make sure it's not my
imagination, that they are indeed looking at me. They are.
I say "What?!" The director Makoto, who hardly speaks any
English, leans to me and says quietly with a smile, nodding to Jason
and Johnny, "He say he look like you." I look up and Johnny is
semi-storming off in genuine embarrassment and Jason is beaming.
"Thanks. Thanks a lot, Jason!" I yell. "Hey! I just
meant you had the same hair!" Jason cried, laughing through his
lie. Johnny kept his distance most of the day, so I made a point
to wear a hat and bury my hair up into it whenever he and I were on set
together.
continued
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