Voltron Legendary Defender NYCC 18' Panel Recap
Ahhh okay here’s the recap post I promised! It took a little while to transcribe all the individual videos I had (I think almost 11 in the end? lol). So, normally I’m not a morning person at all, but as soon as I saw NYCC announce the Hammerstein panel and realizing this might very well be the last VLD panel ever, you can betcha that I got up at the crack of dawn to get my ass down to Hammerstein this morning pfftt. I got there around 9ish, and while there was already a line it moved fairly quickly after a quick bag check. Since I was by myself, I managed to get a pretty decent seat, actually much than I anticipated, located in the early middle-ish of the ground floor seating.
The panel began with the moderator (I forgot his name, sorry mod! D:) with introducing the cast and crew: Joaquim Dos Santos & Lauren Montgomery (Executive Producers), Josh Hamilton (Story Editor), and the VA’s for Allura (Kimberly Brooks), Pidge (Bex Taylor-Klaus), Shiro (Josh Keaton), and Lance (Jeremy Shada). Keith’s VA (Steven Yeun) didn’t make it, but I’m assuming maybe this was because he had prior commitments to promote BURNING at the New York Film Festival this weekend?
Joaquim and Lauren started off the panel regarding the Shiro and Adam storyline in S7, and some “understandably hurt reactions to it.“ Joaquim stated that they emphasize with everyone’s reactions and "really do feel for you,” while Lauren added: “so we clearly can’t change what’s already happened, but this experience has stirred conversation about what meaningful representation is, and we hope that this leads to better representation in the future.”
VLD Show Retrospective & General Fan Appreciation
Lauren then changed gears to take a moment to say: "how proud we are of our crew who has worked so hard, and our amazing cast who has bought so much life to these characters over these past four years,” and a “huge thank you to all of the fans who have just showered us with so much love and support.”
Joaquin added that they wanted “our final New York Comic Con, really our final con of the entire series to be a celebration of everyone’s hard work. And a really awesome look back at what came before this and an awesome look forward to our final season, of a show that we’re so proud to be a part of, and had you guys along for the ride.”
The moderator asked what it’s been like throughout the years to get to this specific part (season 8) and Joaquim said: “It’s amazing for us. It’s grown every single year, you guys [the crowd] is the best. It’s been an absolute honor working on the show.”
Josh H. (VLD’s Story Editor) also noted: “It’s weird being in the office alone, maybe five of us writers in one room,” and they question what will or will not work story-wise, but “then you come to Comic Con and people start to cheer because they love a moment so much.”
"It’s so different when you’re alone by yourself as a writer, and then when you’re with an awesome crowd of people. It invigorates you.“
Josh K. (Shiro’s VA) added that it’s been amazing for him to meet and work with the cast, but specifically highlighted his appreciation for seeing all the "incredible talent that’s been peppered throughout the fandom.
Specifically emphasizing how the cast and crew "see so many amazing cosplay, so much incredible art, videos, everything. You guys [the fans] really dove into this show and we love it. We’re just as much fans as all of you, and we love sharing the show with all of you. It’s been a fantastic experience and I’m sad it’s coming to an end.”
Jeremy (Lance’s VA) chimed in: “You don’t to be part of many shows like Voltron in your career, so it’s been a blessing to be a part of this show. Everybody here puts in so much hard work into their craft and what they do, but you never know what’s going to do well or not, and this show DEFINITELY did very, very well.” And this was because of the fans, particularly highlighting the passion and dedication, and how “it means the world to us.”
Jeremy then pointed out this was a crowd where there actually seemed to be more cosplayers than non-cosplayers, prompting Josh K. to note: “I love going to these cons and looking at everyone cosplaying, and pretending in my head that Voltron is real and now I’m at Space Mall.”
Bex (Pidge’s VA) chimed in to say that she would make things a little more selfish since: “I’ve always wanted to play a cartoon character so this was very literally a dream come true for me.” But not only to play a cartoon character, but to play a powerful female warrior.“
Bex additionally noted how amazing how that’s what’s resonated most is "for young kids to see themselves in Pidge and Allura. It’s just been the most heartwarming experience.”
Kimberly (Allura’s VA) then spoke to the experience among the cast and crew and how they’ve become good friends with one another, and how it’s “bittersweet that this is our last convention, but it’s been amazing.”
Season 7 Retrospective (General Storytelling Approach & the VA’s Favorite Moments)
Josh H. started off that: “S7 was meant to be putting our paladins at a disadvantage.”
So the writers came up with the concept of a 3 year timeskip and “all these stories about going home, and Hunk with his family kind of sprung up naturally from that.”
"There’s also a story about Allura. It’s kinda subtle, but Allura lost Altea, and now she has a chance to redeem herself and help save Earth.“
"A lot of these personal moments start to pop up when we got this new angle, so starting off with this 3 year time gap really helped us.”
Joaquim noted it was cool seeing the fan buildup with getting the paladins back home to their families, and “knowing for us, from a story perspective that it was coming down the line, and seeing everything get to that fever pitch point. It was a really great payoff to see it all play out.”
Lauren switched gears to comment on the “insane logistics” of the whole big Galra attack at the end. They had some initial trouble figuring out how the Zaiforge cannons were supposed to work.
Josh H. chimed in to note that Joaquim kept coming to the writers room to say that something needed to be different about this Galra attack, so he and Mitch Iverson would kind of go on walks and try to figure out how the Zaiforge cannons worked.
While Lauren noted that the logistics was a “massive headache, they were still pretty happy with how it turned out since "it was pretty suspenseful, never a dull moment.”
Josh H. added that plot-wise, he liked how the storytelling perspective got to stay on Earth. “We knew that there were going to be seven, Earth-centric episodes,” so that gave a lot of time to “meet some new people and come up with MFE pilots.”
The writers really enjoyed cracking who the MFE pilots were individually, particularly with the way that Leifsdottir thinks and speaks, so “having this time to stay in one place and time was really fun.”
Jeremy noted that they were really happy to have AJ LoCascio (Lotor’s VA) still stick around and voice James Griffin in S7.
Joaquim mentioned that for a show of this nature, with all the focus on action-adventure and big explosions and giant robots, it was unusual to “take two episodes and just focus on the logistics on what’s going back on Earth while madness is happening. Essentially you had all these meetings going on for what’s ostensibly a kid’s show.”
In terms of trying to find a fine balance between the Earth storyline and Paladin storyline, Lauren and Jaoquim did wonder whether they could spend that much time on Earth without “seeing Voltron punch something” (ROFL) but they knew it was the right decision as they were reading the scripts when they came in, and it just felt right, and “that’s ultimately been a testament to the show. Just going with your gut.”
Favorite, Standout Moments of Season 7
Bex noted that her favorite episodes of S7 were the Earth-centric ones where “we got to experience what was happening on Earth while we [the paladins] were gone. It was everything I got to see and nothing I got to see in the scripts since we weren’t there.”
Kimberly noted that the Hunk love was amazing, since he’s so “lovable, and we got to see where he was inspired to cook and do all the things that he does, and why he’s such a cool guy.”
Josh K. added that Hunk really proved himself as the heart of the team.
Jeremy noted that the VA’s knew that the Atlas was going to be a thing through the scripts, but they weren’t aware of what it actually looked like beforehand.
Bex humorously chimed in to offer that “Atlas is thiccc. I needs that workout routine, okay?” (omfg)
Jeremy agreed that it has a “nice big booty. It’s a thick robot.” (And at that point, everyone in the audience started wheezing, shrieking, or cackling).
Josh K. added that the day the episode aired, there was a group chat among the VA’s where someone just texted “Atlas is thiccc” and Bex admitted that she had this saved to her Tweetdeck for a longgg time.
Josh K. admitted that while he’s probably biased, this was still his favorite episode, since Josh wanted Shiro to have everything that he deserves, and he loved how “everything was falling apart and everyone was looking for Shiro to lead.”
And in terms of the words and the stage direction, Josh remembered just even reading the script just made him swell up with pride for Shiro and think: “This is amazing. Everybody that didn’t believe him in the Garrison came back, those that strapped him to a gunnery, and didn’t want to listen to him about Voltron is now looking at him to save them.”
Bex added the part where Coran calls Shiro ‘Captain’ for the first time was one of those moments.
And when Shiro finally makes that connection and is able to transform the ship, Josh knew that while this moment was going to happen, he still had no idea how the Atlas transformation was going to look like beforehand.
Josh fondly recalled that he was hoping to see his wife’s reaction to the Atlas transformation for the first time, but he missed her whole reaction since he himself couldn’t take his eyes off the scene.
Entire Show Retrospective: Favorite Moments and Why
Jeremy’s Pick (Lance and Keith rescuing Shiro in ep 1): “It’s special to me, because I think this may have been one of my audition scenes, but it was really one of the first scenes where you get to see Lance’s personality and I love these little moments where he’s just very kinda funny and such a goofball, but he still has this goal and is a loyal person. So, when we were recording this scene, I thought: 'Ok I get the character now and this sets the tone for what I wanna do with his character.”
Bex’s Pick (Pidge confessing her true identity as a girl): “I love this part. This was something that was in the very beginning not in the audition side, but the character breakdown of Pidge’s masquerade as a boy in order to find her family. And who doesn’t want to play Mulan? So, it was something that I was waiting for and I remember going back and forth on whether this scene was going to happen in episode 4 or 7. It was really exciting when we got to that part of the script and how we were doing this, and I loved how easy it is.”
Josh K’s Pick (Shiro rescues Slav): “The thing we know about Shiro, at least in the beginning, is that it seems like there’s nothing wrong with him. He seems perfect, he can do no wrong, he’s a nice guy, and can kick butt. So sometimes you think, 'can he do no wrong? What’s his deal?’ and in S2, Shiro meets somebody named Slav and it’s once meeting Slav, you start to see that Shiro is not completely perfect. Shiro can get upset, and there definitely is a crack in that paladin armor.”
Josh H’s Pick (The 'Slipperies’ Scene): "Tim Hendrick came up with the concept of the slipperies as Coran sweating too much and slipping everywhere. Everytime I watch this scene I still legitimately laugh even though the script went through several rewrites.”
Kimberly’s Pick (Allura and Coran and the milkshake origin): “I think the clip is self-explanatory in terms of our reaction to it.”
Lauren’s Pick (When the Paladins hoot fun-sentry into space): “So my clip isn’t any moment in the series, but a moment that embodies what our crew does when it comes together, and everybody brings their own thing to it, so it culminates into something so much more.”
How Much of the VA’s are like their Actual Characters
Josh K. noted that back in 2014, he had just become an actual dad, so he made that weird transition from “living for yourself to having a life were you hold someone else’s life in your hands.
”So, he drew a lot of Shiro’s "dedication to his team from that feeling. That’s really where it all came from.”
While he confesses to generally being more like Lance in real life, still with age and parenting, Josh admits that he’s become more of that "space dad type of guy, having to wrangle kids and all that."
Likewise, he’s always liked telling bad dad jokes and now revels in still being able to tell them as an actual dad.
Bex admits that for her, she feels that "Pidge is so powerful in her own way and so confident, which is so rare for someone so young.” So, while Bex isn’t sure if she’s entirely become the Pidge that she wants to be, but she’s getting there.
Kimberly notes that she strives to be like Allura (Jeremy interrupted to say that Kimberly is a queen and has gotten the queenly wave down).
What Kimberly finds appealing about Allura is that she’s a flawed character, but also beautiful, generous, smart, and strong - “these are all things I strive to be, and I feel like I’m becoming more and more like Allura as the show progresses."
Kimberly also added that Allura is her favorite character that she’s ever had the pleasure to voice. Even after recording many, many sessions, Kimberly still had no idea what Allura physically looked like, so the first time she was shown the character concept artwork, Kimberly was "so choked up and blown away,” since she had no idea what her skin tone was going to be and so on.
Jeremy confesses that he kind of leans into Lance’s personality in real life, but in a joking manner since he likes making people laugh. He finds Lance to be such a goofball and that 'adorkable’ type of person, and “that’s definitely me in real life, but Lance also has all that sensitive loyal side to him which I have and relate to as well."
"He’s fun to play, but while Lance tries hard to be very flirty at times, I’m not really like that way. Maybe with my girlfriend, I’ll try to say flirty jokes and she’ll just laugh and tell me to keep trying.”
The Existence of the Voltron Scratch Reel
Lauren explained the concept of a scratch reel where in between the storyboarding, animating, and voice acting process, sometimes they realize that they might need some additional lines, maybe lines get condensed, change names, and so on.
But they don’t always have time to get the actors back in, so “a lot of times, it falls upon one of us to put in some temporary dialogue and fill that space, they animate to it, and then we get the animation back and the actors replace the dialogue and it sounds great. But in the meantime, we get to watch some ridiculously horrible acting on behalf of the entire staff - editors, assistants, etc.”
Bex noted: “It’s always breaks my heart a little to dub over the scratch tracks, because it’s so beautiful,” while Josh added that he’d love to see an episode just entirely of scratch tracks.“
Joaquim chimed in that they had two seasons of the 'Scratchy Awards,’ where they handed out staff awards for the best scratch tracks produced (hahaha), where Mitch Iverson spraypainted a bunch of backscratchers with 'Scratchy’ Awards’ on it.
After they aired the scratch reel, Josh H. noted that there are still some times where scratch ends up being in-screen and it’s an unexpected surprise when they’re reviewing the editing process.
The most popular scratch reel choice among the VA’s is Director Steve Ahn, who had a lot of the 'Ok, calm down’ scratch scenes, and Steve Yeun once asked: "Could I get that as my ringtone?"
Jeremy said his favorite parts of the scratch reel were when half the scene were the actual VA lines, and then it was one non-VA word.
Benjamin Kaltenecker did all of the 'moo’ sounds for Kaltenecker.
Josh K. noted that Joaquim voices a pretty decent Shiro, and "that’s why you didn’t see any scratch scenes of that because it’s not bad.”
Bex noted that she loved it when Lauren had to voice some of the Galra men for the scratch scenes.
Lauren noted that most of the scratch scenes were recorded late at night and the cast & crew weren’t really fighting to do a scratch scene, and “we’re not usually fighting to voice a character, but it’s more like 'who has to do it now? Who hasn’t done it in awhile??’
“While we’re in shame of our bad acting…poor Rhys [Coran’s VA] had to sit through and be insulted since nobody can actually pull off Coran’s accent.” Though, Joaquim pointed out that Jeremy does a decent Coran impression which he then demonstrated for the crowd.
Joaquim added: "The hardest thing to do is to record scratch in the booth and it’s played back to the actual VA’s and we can’t hear them because their mics are off, but they’re pantomiming the loudest laughter.”
Kimberly reassured that the VA’s loved hearing the crew’s voices for the scratch reel.
Josh K. added that “it’s like hearing your friends do an impression of you and makes ADR sessions fun, since they can be so technical at times. It’s like getting to watch bloopers.”
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