This week: Austin St. John looks back on his first day as Jason, when everything from makeup to camera-friendly martial arts was completely new.
Before Austin St. John became the original Red Ranger, he was a high school student with no acting experience, a car that barely ran, and a very simple understanding of his new job: face the camera and do whatever the director said.
The original Power Rangers pilot became his introduction to acting, stunt work, wardrobe, makeup, and the strange reality of performing martial arts with a bowling ball.
It never aired as the official first episode, but for Austin, it will always be where Jason began.
His First Challenge Was Getting to the Set
Austin drove to his first day of filming in a 1981 Toyota Starlet with peeling gray paint and a habit of breaking down every few miles.
He left four hours early because he fully expected the car to fail at least twice along the way. Somehow, he reached the set with about ten minutes to spare, arriving with a backfire that announced him before he had even parked.
Once inside, he was immediately sent to makeup and wardrobe, two places he had never expected to visit.
Austin did not understand why a teenage martial artist needed makeup, and he was even less comfortable with several wardrobe employees adjusting his clothing. Cameras already made him nervous, and now strangers were touching him while a group of extras watched from across the set.
It was a lot to absorb on day one.
One thing you can never be afraid to do as an actor is make a fool of yourself. In fact, it’s kind of a requirement.
Austin quickly realized that everyone around him knew more about making television than he did. His job was to listen, learn, and become comfortable looking ridiculous when the scene required it.
Nobody Had Prepared Him for Bowling Ball Fu
The first pilot included a fight inside a bowling alley, where Austin had choreographed a sequence involving the characters who would eventually become Bulk and Skull.
At one point, the larger character was sent sliding headfirst down the lane with a skateboard hidden beneath his costume. Austin kicked him, he rolled toward the pins, and the scene ended with a human strike.
That part made sense to Austin.
What did not make sense was the director handing him a ten-pound bowling ball and asking him to do something “martial arts-like” with it.
Austin had spent years studying technical martial arts, but none of his instructors had covered what to do when a director suddenly requests bowling ball choreography.
I didn’t study bowling ball fu…
He improvised a dramatic pose with the ball, hoping everyone would move on and forget about it. Instead, the footage became one of the opening moments of the pilot.
Austin still struggles to watch it.
The experience taught him one of his first rules of working on camera: never perform something you are not prepared to see again later.
The Putties Were the Real Heroes of the Pilot
The bowling alley was only one piece of the shoot.
The cast also filmed action scenes near Vasquez Rocks in the California desert during the middle of summer. The production was operating on a low budget, and the original Putty costumes were essentially thick wetsuits painted gray and topped with rubber masks.
The stunt performers inside them were fighting, falling, and running in extreme heat with very few breaks.
Austin remembers stuntmen becoming sick from heat exhaustion while the production continued pushing to finish the day’s schedule. When one performer could no longer continue, another was brought in to take his place.
The stuntmen who played the Putties on Power Rangers are the unsung heroes forever.
Their job was to make the Rangers look powerful, even when the conditions were working against them. Austin still credits those performers with helping the cast survive an intense and chaotic first shoot.
Jason Had to Grow Beyond Austin’s Martial Arts Training
The pilot was also the first time Austin learned that real martial arts and television martial arts are not always the same thing.
Austin had been trained to use precise techniques. His kicks, foot placement, and punches followed the rules he had learned in the dojo.
The stunt team wanted something bigger.
They asked him to point his toes, widen his punches, and add movement that felt less technically correct but looked stronger on camera. Austin resisted at first because it went against years of training.
Then he saw the difference on screen.
They screwed up my fighting too, because I was a technician. Then the stunt guys said, ‘Trust me. It looks amazing on camera.
He began learning how to adjust his skills for a television audience without losing the parts of himself that made Jason believable.
That process became the beginning of Jason’s character and Austin’s education as an actor.
Why the Unaired Pilot Still Matters to Him
The original pilot was never meant to become a lost piece of Power Rangers history.
It was created to sell the series to Fox, and it worked. The network ordered the show, the cast returned to reshoot the beginning, and the series became a global success before the unaired version was eventually released.
By then, Austin had already learned how to work with cameras, deliver comedy, adjust his fighting, and build a character who could last longer than a single scene.
The pilot captured him before any of that experience settled in.
It also included Audrey Dubois as the original Yellow Ranger, early versions of familiar characters, and a cast that had no idea what the project would become.
It was a beginning for my character, and it was a beginning for me as Austin because I didn’t know a damn thing about acting.
The broken-down Toyota, the uncomfortable wardrobe fitting, the overheated Putty performers, and the unforgettable bowling ball pose all became part of the strange first step toward creating Jason.
What is your favorite moment from the original unaired pilot? Share it in the comments, then watch the whole video here to hear Austin tell the full story, including the moments he still cannot believe made it on camera.
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