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21 Jump Street Rangers

Click on the picture to access 21 Jump Street Rangers on YouTube.

tokuAsia brings to you an interview with Shamus Kelly, Executive Producer of the 21 Jump Street Rangers, a short film made in his TV Production class at Paint Branch High School, Maryland, USA. Shamus is better known online as Rider Jetfire on several communities, including tokuAsia, Henshin Justice and JapanHero.

21 Jump Street Rangers is a full-scale production by Shamus’ very own Obscure Reference Productions, which draws upon source footage from Takara’s Tomica Hero Rescue Force and concepts from an 80s’ television drama known as 21 Jump Street.

Read on as Shamus answers questions about the production, his school and his future in the production industry!

tA: Well, tell us more about yourself Shamus.

Shamus: I’m just finishing up high school now and am going to college in the fall. I am very much into science fiction, Tokusatsu, and obscure television. This is where the idea for my production company (Obscure Reference Productions) actually came from.

tA: How has the response towards 21 Jump Street Rangers been so far?

Shamus: Overall it’s been pretty good. People seem to have enjoyed it and they especially seem to like the editing and pacing. Although the universal part everyone seems to love is the “pillar of justice” line.

tA: We understand that it premiered at a rather big event at school. What was it called and what went on during that event?

Shamus: The event was called the “Paint Branch Media Festival”. The event was basically an opportunity for all the things the students made in Television Production this year to be shown on the big screen in our auditorium.

21 Jump Street Rangers was one of two productions that actually premiered at this event.

tA: Any notable recollections from the festival?

Shamus: Many people told me they had come to the Media Festival for the sole reason of seeing 21 Jump Street Rangers. Many people were in awe of the way I was able to transition from my own footage to that of the Rescue Force footage.

tA: What course/module allowed you to do something like this?

Shamus: At our school we have two classes, “Introduction to Television Production” and “Advanced Television Production”.

tA: Tell us more about the course/module.

Shamus: “Introduction” teaches the basics of filming and editing, starting off with such assignments as making storyboards and watching certain clips from movies to see different styles of film making.

It then moves into making commercials and music videos, each one teaching a new element to film making.

“Advanced” involves both making productions and news. At our school we have our daily announcements we broadcast over the school live. We all rotate through different positions to learn how to run the live news show.

We also supplement this with news packages about clubs and events at school, and original productions we create ourselves.

tA: 21 Jump Street Rangers, was that your own idea?

Shamus: It was originally my idea to create a send up to Toku to air on our morning announcements and I started to search for a suitable series to use.

While doing this my friend KC Lanigan and I were listening to my iPod and the “21 Jump Street” theme came up. He suggested we use that for our theme song, and that’s when incorporating elements from 21 Jump Street fell into play.

So while it was originally my idea to do a Toku type production, it was both KC and I who created the actual basic idea for the project itself.

tA: We understand that 21 Jump Street was a drama series from the 80s, can you tell us more about it as it was never shown in Singapore?

Shamus: It was the first big hit for the FOX network when it first started out, and it involved a group of youthful looking cops who, thanks to their youthful looks, could go undercover in school’s to help stop crime.

Many of the shows dealt with an issue of the day, such as homophobia, child abuse, hate crimes, and alcoholism, among others.

It was also the show which launched Johnny Depp into the national consciousness, although he wasn’t a big fan of the show and left the show at the end of it’s fourth season.

tA: How did the idea of integrating it with Rescue Force come about initially?

Shamus: When I first came up with the idea for doing a Tokusatsu send up I first had to obtain Raw footage which didn’t have subtitles or the time code you usually see in Japanese Television. I really didn’t want to use any footage from Sentai since people would automatically associate it with Power Rangers.

Rescue Force came about because when I watched it I saw their was enough footage to work with, it was a completely raw copy, and it didn’t have many Japanese people in the shots I wanted to use, which was lucky, because Rescue Force usually has many Japanese people in the background since the characters are rescue workers.

tA:
Did you face any problems when looking for cast and resources? Were the cast your own classmates?

Shamus: When I first started putting together a pitch for my TV teacher (Mrs. Green), I originally had some else in mind for the part of Rean, but I realized she wouldn’t be able to commit for filming so I went with Grecia and she did a wonderful job.

Resources were never a problem, since our school’s technical supervisor (Mr. Burgos) was very gracious and allowed me to use all the equipment I wanted pretty much whenever I wanted. Without him I would not have been able to get actually filming/voiceover work done as easily as I did.

tA: How about during production, were there any major hiccups?

Shamus: Their weren’t any major hiccups, one minor hiccup was I had to re-record some of James (Dwayne’s) lines because they had not been recorded the first time through and I wanted him to redo some of the ones I all ready had simply because I wanted him to try them a slightly different way.

tA:
Post-production can be a headache sometimes, but we see that you used Adobe Final Cut Pro for editing. Why it and not any other program?

Shamus: There were two big reasons for using FCP. The first being is it’s the best one to use for serious editing in my opinion. It has multiple audio and video tracks, something I very much needed, particularly because I had to basically create my own soundtrack of music and sound effects.

The second being I had very easy access to it at my school so it was a no brainier to use it. After years of using Windows Movie Maker for making music videos, FCP is like a god send. It really takes it to a completely different level. I also plan on being an editor later in life, so it was good practice to use industry-standard editing equipment.

tA: In all, how long did the whole production process, from pre-production to post-production last?

Shamus: Pre-production took much longer than it would have because I was in a school play at the time, which slowed me down for about two months. I also worked on several other productions during the time, which slowed me down as well.

Even so, during this time I edited all the fighting footage together and started on assembling the sound effects and music. Although when I really entered full production it was a very quick filming processing, lasting only about two days overall, which I accredit to my wonderful actors and crew who were either very experienced or were fast learners.

Post production lasted about a month including ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording) and making sure everything was the way I wanted it.

tA: Is there anything else you wish to say? Or people you’d like to thank.

Shamus: In life, we may not get to do what we want to do, but with 21 Jump Street Rangers, I was really able to combine my love of obscure television and the superhero programs of my youth into something I loved doing.

I had wanted to make something like this since I was a kid and being able to make one of childhood dreams come true is one of the best feelings the world.

I would also like to thank everyone who helped in production, especially Jared Adkins, who helped to write some of the best parts of script, including the “Pillar of Justice” line.

Also, Mrs. Greene and Mr. Burgos who were very supportive of the project and helped me out whenever I needed.

And finally, my girlfriend Camille, who encouraged me throughout the whole production process and always kept my spirits up.

tA: Can we expect more from Shamus Kelly and Obscure Reference Productions?

Another production I worked on con-currently with 21 Jump Street Rangers was one Jared Adkins, KC Lanigan, and I all wrote, called “Goering My Way” which premiered at the media festival alongside 21JSR. It’s on Facebook now and may be on YouTube soon as well. Jared really was the brains behind that operation with his own production company, “Spell For Me Productions.”

Well I myself am kicking around several ideas for other productions although I doubt you’ll be seeing a sequel to 21 Jump Street Rangers in the future, although if I get a good idea we’ll see.

If you do see something from me, it will more than likely contain lots of obscure references, as per my company’s name!

Keep on rockin’ tokuAsia and thanks for letting me speak my mind about 21 Jump Street Rangers. It means a lot!

tA: We thank you too Shamus, for bringing us this awesome fan-production!

Interview conducted by Basil Yeo

Tags: 21 jump street rangers, Interview, obscure reference productions

Just a random ‘Thank You’ note…

On a random look at the YouTube Insight feature at our online tokuAsiaTV channel, we discovered that for the month running April 21 – May 21, our channel has been viewed mostly by Japanese users, and thought that it might be appropriate to send out a big ARIGATOU GOZAIMASU to all our Japanese friends and supporters.

Here is a list of countries where our channel has received the most views:

Japan – 0.21%
Malaysia – 0.2%
Hong Kong – 0.15%
Singapore – 0.12%
Thailand – 0.07%

According to YouTube, “Popularity is a relative measure between 0 and 100 of how the aggregated video views for your channel compare to all other channels,” which means that we actually receive quite a substantial amount of hits from YouTube users in the aforementioned five countries.

Once again, thank you very much for your support and despite our current state of inactivity on YouTube, we would like to inform our viewers and supporters that we have been making good progress on Project: GREED.

Do stay tuned.

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