Hideaki Anno 2004 Interview

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Hideaki Anno 2004 Interview

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Mon Nov 02, 2020 10:22 pm

I found a translated excerpt from a 2004 interview with Hideaki Anno here. Its obviously a small, small, portion of a much larger interview, but there's still some neat stuff in there.

I like how Anno is bemoaning the fact that his live-action projects weren't attracting the large budgets that his animated projects were. This explains why he was so excited about Shin Godzilla's large budget.

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Re: Hideaki Anno 2004 Interview

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Postby dzzthink » Fri Nov 06, 2020 4:31 pm

'But when I was working on The End of Evangelion, I came to the conclusion that it had to be a live-action film.'
I guess anno has ambitions to make evangelion more life-like but I doubt it could have worked in any other way except for that surreal montage at the end. So many of the classic old animes are being turned into live-action movies right now (ghost in shell, akira, death note, cowboy bebop and one piece) but Eva just would not translate well to the 3-D world.
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Re: Hideaki Anno 2004 Interview

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Postby Arcadia's legacy » Fri Nov 06, 2020 5:04 pm

I dunno. Shin Godzilla showed Anno's style of film making translates nicely to big-budget cinema, and Shinji Aramaki's short film, while not live action per se, also showed how an Evangelion Unit would appear in a photo-realistic setting
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Re: Hideaki Anno 2004 Interview

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Postby BusterMachine4 » Fri Nov 06, 2020 5:09 pm

View Original Postdzzthink wrote:I guess anno has ambitions to make evangelion more life-like but I doubt it could have worked in any other way except for that surreal montage at the end. So many of the classic old animes are being turned into live-action movies right now (ghost in shell, akira, death note, cowboy bebop and one piece) but Eva just would not translate well to the 3-D world.

Are you sure about that, though? I actually think Eva could potentially translate very well into live action, since it’s by far one of the most realistic anime out there. It would certainly translate better than One Piece, not sure what the Netflix execs were thinking when they came up with that idea.

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Re: Hideaki Anno 2004 Interview

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Postby Blockio » Fri Nov 06, 2020 8:18 pm

I mean, Pacific Rim and Alita have proven that anime plotlines can work in live action. BUT. Considering the rest of the track record of live action adaptations, I would not trust anyone outside of Anno, Del Toro and Cameron with it. Especially in the case of Eva, it is a very delicate balance to strike in all sorts of ways, and these three are the only people I think are capable of doing it without having it turn into a complete trash fire, and even for them, Eva is a big ass name to attach to a live action movie, so the expectations it would have to live up to, and ways in which it can easily go the wrong way would be ENORMOUS
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Re: Hideaki Anno 2004 Interview

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Postby Zusuchan » Sat Nov 07, 2020 2:38 am

^
Absolutely. Eva is very hard to get right. I personally don't like the idea of a live-action Eva, because for me most anime adaptations look strange and unrealistic in a bad way.

For that matter, I don't think Anno wants a live-action Eva, either. He maybe wanted EoE to be more lifelike, but looking at the interview, he clearly says that his revived interest in live-action started from shooting the live-action parts of EoE (this decision came out of a feeling of wanting to express something closer to reality, that could not be done through animation) and then in his own mind completely failing. I don't know if you know, dzzthink, but the sequence was originally longer and even involved versions of Asuka and Rei. Most of this was deleted from the finished film. (A good call in my opinion-as far as I'm concerned, too much ''gritty reality" would have upset the tone of EoE to a perhaps unwieldy degree, making the following scenes look cartoonish in comparison). There was also a interview which I can't seem to find in which Anno clearly said that he considers Eva something that works best as an anime. So I'd say Anno considers live-action to be a bad choice for Eva over-all.

Also, I don't mean to sound pretentious, but both Pacific Rim and Alita were way easier to get right. The first is a completely original work, while the second doesn't have the tone tip-toeing, internal psychological darkness and more 'artistic' qualities of Eva.

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Re: Hideaki Anno 2004 Interview

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Postby dzzthink » Sat Nov 07, 2020 6:22 am

I agree that the technology is there to get an awesome looking Eva unit. I think I've heard about the deleted scenes, and I just searched it on youtube and watched the clips, but yeah good thing it was cut out. Other than the content difference between Eva and pacific rim/Alita, there is also the vibrant colour and visual effects (which I can only describe as post-modern Christian mecha fantasy and made evangelion pleasing to watch aesthetically) that may require audience to get used to in a live action movie.
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Re: Hideaki Anno 2004 Interview

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Postby Blockio » Sat Nov 07, 2020 3:45 pm

That is true, PacRim and Alita definitely were easier to make narratively, but I also kind of feel like you could make a worthwhile Eva movie that doesn't go super hard on the things that make Eva so difficult to adapt, if the core themes are there and just overall feeling of the movie is right. It's kinda hard to nail down, but I do think that it could be made to at least be worthwhile
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Re: Hideaki Anno 2004 Interview

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Sat Nov 07, 2020 6:18 pm

Anno referring to the EoE live-action scene:

Hideaki Anno wrote:So I thought as one of the ways to make the viewer aware of their own reality would be to use a mirror. The footage of the audience part was the image of a mirror. When I made the VHS, I used a completely black screen. If the screen was black, it would reflect your face as you watched it.

So, the VHS version doesn't have the images of the theater, but of a black screen? Is this black screen also in the LD version that was include in the Japanese Blu-ray?

It's weird, because I knew that Anno was trying to present that "mirror image" by presenting an empty theater to the viewer in the movie, but always wondered "Does this translate well to home video? I have to imagine myself in a theater in order to feel the intended effect." Showing a black screen worked back when we all had CRT screens, since the glass bubble of the TV would reflect the room it was in if it wasn't displaying a bright image, but not many TVs and screens have a matte finish to them that attempts to get rid of those reflections, so playing the "Black Screen" version of EoE back on a modern flat panel TV or monitor wouldn't create the same effect.

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Re: Hideaki Anno 2004 Interview

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Postby robersora » Sat Nov 07, 2020 7:06 pm

^
you never know where it's being consumed on. Of course the theatre thing would only work in a theatrical setting and if you watch the movie on a projector at home you're out of luck as well, so to say. But if watched on a phone (sacrilege, lol) you'd still get the Black Mirror effect, by tuning the screen off.
Or... if the movie was somehow able to turn on the front facing camera, it would generate not only a similar but an even more impressive effect.
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