Sunday, September 21, 2008

The GKA Times Interviews Scott Page Pagter

originally posted February 26, 2006

GKA:It`s a pleasure to have been given the chance to
interview one of the many folks responsible for bringing
Power Rangers to life. A voice actor and muscian Scott
Page Pagter is talented, capable of many things so let
us take some time to get to know him just a bit better


Life

GKA Times:So lets hear about your life before we get
into the more geek portions of the interview.
This first question might sound generic, but tell me
who Scott Page Pagter really is...

Scott Page Pagter:Well, I am a bit of a nut, like to have fun. Love music, people and scuba diving.


GKA:How long does it take you to write a song?

SPP:Anywhere from a few minutes to a few years. If I ever finish my 2nd album, at least one of the songs started many years ago and when I heard it years later it inspired me to finish it.


GKA:I`d like to hear what are you favorite music genres and artists

SPP:I love lots of different styles, from old progressive Rock, Yes, Gentle Giant, Genesis/Peter Gabriel to old R&B, Stax, Ray Charles & Buddy Guy, and I love Kevin Gilbert a lot. I like a lot of new music as well. Guster (great song writing), Ben Folds of course, Dave Mathews, Children of Bodom (talented many-noted players, except for the “singing”), Green Day, Audioslave, U2, Ben Folds!! And the Ohms. A little of everything I guess.


GKA:Are you at all a spiritual

SPP:Yes. In my own way.

GKA:When did you decide you wanted to pursue working
in the entertainment industry.

SPP:Very young, maybe 11 or 12 I was in music and wanted to be a rock star!! I did a few things and got close, but not close enough. Then I wanted to stay in the biz so I learned how to become an audio engineer to pay the bills while I kept trying to get music work. I did a lot of music for films and TV, but still not enough to support a family. I eventually got into Saban Entertainment as an engineer, which led to directing, writing, voice work and eventually producing. I used to tell people that my job as producer of the show was actually my high paid waitress job.


GKA:A writer in Marmalade Boy and director in Tenchi
Muyo! 3. Done work on other animated shows...sounds
like animation is in your blood.

SPP:I love cartoons. Well good ones at least. Don’t see a lot out there right now.


GKA:Could we have a short list of a few of the shows
you`ve worked on? From the top of your head

SPP:Way too many to remember…..here’s a partial list
ADR Director / Producer
(partial list)
Tenchi Muyo Funimation
Daigunder ABC Family
Power Rangers Disney / Fox / Saban
VR Troopers Fox / Saban
BeetleBorgs Fox / Saban
Masked Rider Fox / Saban
Mystic Knights Fox / Saban
Teknoman UPN
Grimm's Fairy Tales Nickelodeon
Mapletown Syndication
Maya The Bee Syndication
Noozles Nickelodeon
Ox Tales International
Peter Pan International
Little Women HBO
Wowser Syndication

Voice Talent
(partial list)
Power Rangers Porto, Pirantishead, Oysterizer
Big Bad Beetleborgs Wolfgang, Various other guests
VR Troopers Various Guest star roles
Masked Rider Various Guest star roles
Digimon Grillmon, Growlmon (not sure about this, I found it online)
Daigunder Various Guest star roles
The Twelve Kingdoms Kouya + bits
Gun Grave Henchman
Ai Yori Aoshi Enishi Professor Itsuki
King Gainer Tan
Shin Chan Sven + Various Bits

ADR Writer
(partial list)
Power Rangers / VR Troopers, etc Disney / Saban
Tenchi Muyo Funimation
Mars Daybreak Bang Zoom
Fafner Bang Zoom
B-DaMan ABC Family
Duel Masters Cartoon Network
Marmalade Boy Tokyo Pop
Daigunder ABC Family

GKA:Derek Steven Prince said in a 2001 interview that
he owes a you a lot for where he is now as a voice
actor. How does it make you feel to know you`ve made
an impact on people`s lives and careers?

SPP:It’s really flattering and makes me feel great that people credit me with helping them get started. Mr. Prince is an immense talent. I’m honored to work with him. I have a number of VO people who credit me with getting their careers started, it’s really nice. I have worked with a lot of talented people, and made a ton of really good friends.

GKA:You played Wolfgang in Big Bad Beetleborgs and in
PR, Peckster, Oysterizer and Pirantishead which are
four of some of the greatest monsters of either of the
two shows. Not to mention Porto. What do you do to get
into character when you`re behind the mic?

SPP:I just try and have fun. I really like doing the silly character voices. I have a lot harder time doing straight traditional anime voices. The Peckster was my first big role, I’d only done bits until then. I did it so I would better understand how the actors felt when they had someone directing them from the other room. I was really scared but wouldn’t let the engineer or Doug Latislaw (the sound supervisor and guitarist in a band I play in now) know it.

I pulled it off and it still remains one of my favorite voices. Btw, I played Wolfy in the first season and then Frank Adelia (who was in the costume) played the second season. Very odd teaching him how to do my voice, but I was really glad he got to do it.

GKA:Of course you worked on VR Troopers, Masked Rider
BeetleBorgs and Mystic Knights in conjunction with
your Power Ranger work. What was it like on the set of
any of these shows and after they were over, what
lessons did you take from them?

SPP:I always enjoyed going on the sets. They were all fun. Rangers was weird in the beginning since it was so popular, the security became very tight. We had people saying they were involved and trying to sneak on sets. They usually got caught.

I learned so much on the sets. I was mostly in post production until then and it was great to learn the other side of doing a show. I got to direct some on camera stuff with Power Rangers, that was fantastic!! I also learned about budgets, lighting, film, editing…great lessons. It’s been really helpful in trying to produce my own shows of late.


GKA:Would you say VR Troopers storylines were just too
high brow for kids to really understand at the time?

SPP:I didn’t think so at the time. I mean we had a flying car and a talking dog, not very highbrow stuff.

GKA:Masked Rider wasn`t what some people expected.
There is a long standing rumor that the original Kamen
Rider`s creator Shotaro Ishinomori was seriously
critical of Saban, stating that the series ended up
being not so much to his liking. Does this hold up any
truth or is it just fan speculation?

SPP:It was my least favorite of the bunch of different shows we did. I did not hear anything about anybody being upset

GKA:Next to the Rangers, the BeetleBorgs were one of
Saban`s biggest hits on Fox Kids. I was a huge fan of
the show back then and was sad to see it go away when
it did. I have two questions on this
-Was there a third series planned?
-Were the BeetleBorg and Rangers exploits in the same
universe?

SPP:There was talk of a third season, but from what I heard and saw, the Japanese footage was less than what we were looking for. And as for PR and BB being in the same universe, that’s your choice I think. I thought so. We shot ‘em both at the same studio after all!!

GKA:The last topic before we get the Rangers is of
course the last major live action series Saban
produced outside of PR. The Mystic Knights Of Tir Na
Nog
. How did this project start and what was it like
for an American studio producing a show as far away as
Ireland.

SPP:MK was the brain child of Bob Hughes. He set up all the Irish connections. I went over there for 3 months helping them get the ADR (automated dialog replacement, it means recording the voices after something is shot) going. It was amazing working there!!
I loved it. Great people, great beer!! Bob did a few other productions there too, movies and such.
GKA:Now we get to the good stuff I`m sure everyone has
been waiting for, the Ranger questions.


GKA:Describe how Power Rangers came to be from your
perspective. Starting from when you signed on, to the
airing of the first episode.

SPP:Haim Saban had been trying to get something going with the Japanese footage for a few years. I saw the first version once a long time ago, it was really odd. Once they got the last pilot shot I got involved in the studio when they did the original ADR. Tony Oliver was directing and I was engineering and helping. That’s when we figured out the original voices, Rita, Goldar, Squatt, Baboo and Alpha 5.


I still remember Richard messing around with the Alpha voice and he and I laughing so hard over the Ai yi yi stuff. Haim was there and he loved it and it became his signature thing to say. We thought it was just silly. I also remember the original Rangers coming in for their first ADR sessions. It was funny, they were all so nervous. Especially Amy Jo and David.
I did things here and there after that but didn’t really get full time involved until halfway thru the first season. On another note, most of us at the studios thought the show would never make it on the air. Boy were we wrong.

GKA:So whats the truth about some of the actors
departing from the series? Such as Austin St. John,
Thuy Trang and Walter Jones. And of course the swift
exit of Jason David Frank, Catherine Sutherland, Nakia
Burise and Johnny Young Bosch in the early Turbo eps?
These departures have always raised questions among
many fans and it would be keen to hear about it from a
producers perspective.

SPP:You need to understand that when the show started it was really low / no budget and all the actors were getting paid very little. When the show got big they wanted to get a lot of money too, which was totally fair. Austin, Thuy and Walter had a bad manager telling them that they should get stuff that was not fair and they said they had to get it or else.

They got or else. David thought that he was the star of the show and walked off the set in a huff one day. That was funny because he was replaced on the spot with only about a 5 minute delay in production. They just gave all his lines to Alpha. There was more to it than that, a money issue of course, but the point was the same.

I tried to get him to come back in a do his voice work but he wouldn’t return my calls so I just got whoever was near at the time to do his voice. It was a runner actually. When I saw David later at Thuy’s funeral and tried to talk to him about it he was less than pleasant, as usual.

Once he walked out of the studio because he didn't’ want to do his laugh at the end of a show, he just said, ‘nah, I’m not gonna do it, just let everyone else do it”..Well, of course we got that recorded and played it for all the other actors. We made a great recording of everybody else on the show making fun of David reacting off his line. It was hysterical. Unfortunately the computer we did it on crashed and we lost most of it a long time ago.

I was really sad to see Catherine and Johnny go (I taught them both how to scuba dive!) but the show was beginning to do like the Japanese at this point and changing actors every season. These were not my decisions, I was only producing / directing the voices and ADR scripts at that point. I still speak with Catherine every now and then, and Johnny and I are sure to cross paths soon as he’s a big Anime VO guy now.

GKA:We`ve pretty much gotten the gist of who Haim
Saban was, but tell us about Shuki Levy, Doug Sloan,
Judd Lynn and Jackie Marchand.

SPP:Shuki was the creative side of Haim. They worked together all the time. Shuki was the one who gave me my producing credit on PR, I was very thankful for that.

Doug Sloan and Ann Knapp are good friends of mine. They to me were the fun of the show. I remember many times Doug, Ann, Jackie and I sitting in Shuki’s old office on the PR set watching things and laughing trying to bring different elements of humor into the show.

Jackie was Doug’s assistant and has worked her way up to the big cheese now. She’s fantastic. We used to work together by me giving her my ADR scripts and she would fix them so we kept the conventions in line. She also made sure to scold me with my spelling and grammar mistakes.

Judd’s a great guy too who took over for Doug and Ann. I was a bit distant at first with him because of my close friendship with Doug and Ann and my sorrow at their quick exit, but we eventually got over it and I loved working with him.

GKA:In early 2001 Dark Horizons posted news that Fox
had plans for a third installment of a Power Ranger
movie basing it on Time Force. What the heck happend
and if Disney asked you to produce a new movie based
on the newer series would you do it?

SPP:I heard rumors about a third movie, but that was all. There are so many levels of management and accountants that we sometimes don’t get the real story until it’s already been decided. I would love to be involved with PR again. It was a really fun time in my life.

GKA:It`s been a few years since PR moved to New
Zealand, what did you think of Doug Sloan and Ann
Knapp`s Dino Thunder series? They sure gave the old
PR days some great nods.

SPP:I love Doug and Ann and they tried really hard to keep me involved but couldn’t get it to happen. I can’t say that I watched it much. I think I had seen PR enough for a while. I did something like 400 episodes. Though what I did see, I thought the action and fun was back, but obviously, I thought the ADR was incredibly weak compared to what we did, but I am a bit jaded there.

GKA:Now that Doug and Ann are no longer apart of the
series, you still tune in?

SPP:Not really, I may glance at it as the channels change. See above.

GKA Times:Lets hear some questions from the fans

What was your timetable when it came to adapting the
various episodes to PR?-JustAnotherBlueRanger

It varied on how much of the footage was useable. First the story people would choose the footage and try and figure out a way for it to fit the new story arc, then it goes to writers for a few weeks (including re writes). Then they pre for shooting, shot, edit, go to network for their “input” before it gets locked and then gets to me. I usually got a rough story and we had to figure out how to make the story make sense. Gave it to my writers to do that, then came back to me for review before going to the studio and recording the voices. The short answer is a good 6 weeks.

What's your view on PR now run by Disney?-nickraman

I’ve heard that it’s a lot more difficult working with Disney from friends, a lot more time spent in meetings. We really had it good with Saban, by the end he pretty much let us do the show without much input from anyone else.

Any chance you might come back for '07?-nickraman

Haven’t been asked, but I do miss it sometimes.


Did you have to audition for your voice roles on
Power Rangers, or did you get to take liberties as the
ADR director?-Puperazzi

When it was a guest star like The Peckster, I just got to cast myself. I tried to only do it once or so a season, but for Porto, I had to audition just like everyone else. I was the most surprised when I got picked!!

Was working on PR the best or worst time of your
life?-OmegaRanger468

It was without question a great time in my life, also painful at times, but a great time. The best time is still to come I’m sure!

Out of the various monsters you voiced (Peckster,
Oysterizer, Pirantishead, Face Stealer), which was
your favorite? If you can recall, that is.-MarZeo

It’s a tie between The Peckster, Porto and Wolfy

What challenges did you face just getting MMPR
started and the early episodes done, considering this
sort of show hadn't been done before?-Charles RB


Besides the fact that we were figuring out how to do a show like this as we went along, the only challenges I can remember was really believing that the show was as big as it got. I remember going to a live show for D.A.R.E. in downtown L.A. once and couldn’t believe my eyes, the place was packed full of screaming kids, like a Beatles concert or something. The kids from the show “Home Improvement” were there as guests as well and they were freaked out to meet the Rangers. I knew it was big time at that point.

Which is easier to work with- a recurring cast like
there was from MMPR to Turbo, or having a new cast
every season?-Charles RB

Depends on the cast, some casts were not as fun to work with and others are still good friends. Some I would have kept for the entire run and some should have never been there, you’ll have to try and figure which ones on your own!!!!

GKA:We like to let the guest have the final word in
the interview, so go head, the floor is yours Scott.

SPP:I really want to thank all the fans, especially all those who helped me and supported me when the move to New Zealand was made, it meant a lot to me.

Special thanks to Terri Ann for the website, Chris & Jarod for their website hosting, and especially a fan who became my good friend, the White Tiger!! As for Rangers, so many of them have become friends and I value their friendship and wish we got together more often. You know who you are!!

No comments: