Jackie Marchand as she appears in a 'NOH8' campaign photoshoot.
Jackie Marchand is a television writer and producer, best known for her work on the children's action/adventure series Power Rangers.
Background
Jackie Marchand was, as of Power Rangers Jungle Fury, the longest running veteran on the show since Judd Lynn, whom she shared co-writing duties with until he left at the end of Time Force. She started back in the third series of Mighty Morphin and was a casual fan of the show. She's also praised the sentai show Gingaman.
Taking a break from the show after Time Force, as she disagreed with "the executive producer's" decision to stick much more closely to sentai plots[1], Marchand was brought back by Doug Sloan in 2003 when Disney began filming new episodes of Power Rangers in New Zealand.[2] After contributing to Ninja Storm through SPD, she was promoted several times under Bruce Kalish and Eddie Guzelian: the story editor in Mystic Force, and then co-producer of Operation Overdrive, Jungle Fury (where she was responsible for the Spirit Rangers[3]) and finally RPM, where she served as the season's head writer for a time before breaking ties with the franchise altogether.
She worked under four different bosses with different demands. She has said Sloan used to give writers some footage to work from and asked for several concepts based on that, and allowed writers to make up their own stories. Lynn and Kalish had a more collaborative, writing room approach where all writers would get together and choose what to do. Some seasons required more adherence to sentai, with Disney demanding more stock footage used to save budget. ("There was one exec there that said 'just dub the whole show'.") She felt that this could undermine an episode if the fight scenes where repetitive (and could be exciting if the footage was exciting). [4]Tzachor was interested in high production values and when he allowed original stories, Marchand believed they could be the strongest stories on the show; Sloan's approach was humourous and "kid relatable".[5]
In her Toku Rants review, she's said her favourite stories were the shorter, more contained "cute little story" - citing "Diva in Distress" as an example.
Marchand also played an uncredited voice role in 1998's Power Rangers in Space, as the voice of the monster named Mamamite. Back in that period of the show, writers and crew were often asked if they'd like to make cameos or voice monsters.[6]
Marchand made an appearance at the Power Morphicon, the first Power Rangers fan convention, in June 2007. She was profiled by Yahoo.com Media as part of their coverage of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. In 2014, she admitted she'd have prefered not to have gone on strike but while she wasn't going to judge the fill-in writers, choosing to write during a strike was not what she would have done in their position. [7]
Myths
- Jackie Marchand is rumoured to have fought for a Ninja Storm/Wild Force teamup. In a Toku Rants interview, she denied this and said she thought it would have been a bad move as they were still setting up in New Zealand.
References
- ↑ Toku Rants interview with Jackie Marchand: 16:35 to 17:02
- ↑ Toku Rants interview with Jackie Marchand: 17:04 to 17:32
- ↑ Toku Rants interview with Jackie Marchand: 31:55 to 33:18
- ↑ Toku Rants interview with Jackie Marchand: 09:55 to 13:14
- ↑ Toku Rants interview with Jackie Marchand: 22:27 to 23:50
- ↑ [http://danstokurants.rangercentral.com/?p=3162 Toku Rants interview with Jackie Marchand: 08:00 to 09:30
- ↑ Toku Rants interview with Jackie Marchand: 29:54 to 31:57