Remember "Zyu2" is just a name a fan came up with when he heard about the footage. We never had any such name. It was all part of the MMPR package. It wasn't anything separate from MMPR. It's part of the Saban/Toei deal to make a show for Western kids as cheaply as possible and sell as many toys and products as possible.
Toei's job was to provide monsters and zords for the show that could be made into toys and products. They had an assembly line type set-up in Japan for this. It was ultra cheap compared to Hollywood. Using this kept the costs way down and made the show very profitable. It allowed us to shoot multiple shows per week. No one else could do that.
The reason for extra Zyu footage is because there were already product deals and toys in place using those suits as characters. We couldn't suddenly change over to all Dairanger. That would make those toys sit on the shelf while parents waited for the "new & current" versions.
When I came on board I began shooting longer fights with the actors and adding more and more action to the Zyu footage. Eventually I just shot everything and Toei began sending Dairanger monster footage.
I got all of the previous monster suits to play with. It worked well. During that time I shot 60% of every episode made (according to our editor) and MMPR generated 1 billion dollars in only 12 months. This at a time when the entire film industry made 5 billion. We had a formula down by this time. Others tried to imitate Saban's success, but failed. They discovered that there was a lot more to it than simply buying some Japanese footage.
In the 'behind-the-scenes of Sentai' that I posted you can see White Ranger was only 4 feet tall. He was a jumpy little kid in Dairanger. So we only got to use close-ups and him jumping onto his Zord from Dai (which is the shot of him riding on top of the bus). All of the White Ranger fights and acting footage I just shot myself.
I recall how funny it was to some of the Japanese stuntmen when I had the tallest guy in a White Ranger suit talking to a Zyu Ranger. It was like the Twilight Zone to them. Sort of like when Stan Lee made a deal with Toei for them to use the SPIDERMAN character. I watched the Japanese version of Spiderman and went, "Whoa... what the heck is this? Is that supposed to be Peter Parker?" LOL
All of the questions I've been getting about the show since my first Zyu2 upload I'll try to answer when I can. You guys have really brought back a lot of memories for me. I'm very proud of the work done on the show both in Japan and the USA. I think it turned out pretty good. Thanks so much to all of you for watching and making the series a hit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZs9...i5syctt0pszw0k
01/07/15, 09:54 PM
The REAL reason the Dairanger suits weren't used
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