Anno's involvement in the orginal series

[ApolloIVtv]

Of course he's the chief director of the entire show, and has written almost all of the episodes, but there are so many other people involved as well. So many that I don't even think he directed a single episode himself at all except for 26'.

I started wondering about this after watching ep 4, one of my favorites of the show, and I was thinking "wow, anno's really amazing with the atmosphere and the writing, blah blah blah," but the credits show that someone else wrote it completely.

I know this is a completely normal thing for anime, but we always talk about Anno when we talk about the production of the show and such, but what about the other guys? How much did they contribute except handling and producing the animation? Were all those iconic shots Anno's or the individual ep director's?

Just something thats been nagging at mean.

[kuribo-04]

Anno was very involved himself, but obviously he couldn't have done all of that alone. But everything was controlled by him. He said in an interview he would always write the final version of an episode.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

The first half of my post from this thread is valid, so I’ll quote that portion of it here.

Film is a very collaborative business art. I wrote/produced/directed a short film for Christmas last December (with hopefully more to come early this year) and I couldn’t have done any of it without the help of everyone who volunteered their time, effort, and creativity to the project.

So, yes. Something as large in scale and scope as Eva needs to input and creativity of a lot of people. Anno, being the head writer and director, had the most input of them all. That being said, the other ideas being expressed by the other collaborators need to be approved by Anno, since he was the head writer and director. In some cases the creativity may not have come from Anno himself (I heard he let someone else take over the writing for Ep 4, for example), but regardless of whether or not he realized the reasons for the creativity of the others, he approved of their art being included in Eva. If there were other animation directors approving animations of the show, Anno had to approve of them being on the project based on what he thought they were able to bring to the project. (And even then sometimes the director will check the work approved of an animation director ad either approve it again or deny it. Denying it usually results in the director finding a new animation director.) Unless the studio (GAINAX at the time) decided to come in and remove Anno from the project, the buck stopped with Anno’s power and ability to approved certain elements into the TV series. For these reasons Anno does need to be recognized as having the ultimate authorial authority when it comes to Eva.

Though clearly this thread focuses on this aspect a bit more on this than the other thread does, so I’ll expand upon this point a bit more here.

The importance of the creative input from the staff surrounding the director is really important. It’s one of the chief reasons why many dislike Ridley Scott’s more recent productions. Scott seems to purposely take on scripts that are fundamentally flawed as though its purely his direction of the cast and crew around that flawed script that will turn it into a masterpiece. Unfortunately for him, that’s not the case. Many enjoyed his earlier works like Alien and Blade Runner because he took an idea that was already good and turned it into something amazing to watch in a theater. Nowadays he just makes over-produced, really bad movies. It seems pretentious in a way.

Now Ridley Scott as the director has the power to assign better writers to fix a flawed script, or to even re-write the flawed script himself to make it a better foundation for his directorial skills. But that’s not what he does. He takes a flawed foundation and builds a flawed movie upon it.

Hideaki Anno, on the other hand, realizes the importance of the creative team around him. Heck, almost all of his non-Eva projects are derivative of some older manga, anime, or novel. He realizes the importance of the input of his creative team and the solid foundation upon which he’ll build his directorial work. As Chief Director of NGE, he had the power to assign certain writers to Episode 4, and by God he did just that. A lesser director wouldn’t have realized that, and would have possibly just started building on a flawed script instead.

[kuribo-04]

Now Ridley Scott as the director has the power to assign better writers to fix a flawed script, or to even re-write the flawed script himself to make it a better foundation for his directorial skills. But that’s not what he does. He takes a flawed foundation and builds a flawed movie upon it.

Prometheus.

[Dream]

It's probably worth noting that Anno said in some essay or interview (check the Evageeks interviews page) that he felt Gainax was "only able to do it (produce Evangelion) because we were an elite few".

I don't know if the comparison with Ridley Scott is accurate, because while Scott is probably very good (haven't seen any film of his) Anno is, quite simply, a genius. So not only he has a wider "eye" so to say, but can pull things off that most others couldn't. That said, part of his genius certainly comes from listening from his staff as well, surely.

On how much control he had, i think he had somewhat more control than that typical of the director role.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Details on Episode 4 are in this RT from our Evageeks Twitter, actually:

tweet-body

— twitter-user (@username) date

[Jäeger]

It's probably worth noting that Anno said in some essay or interview (check the Evageeks interviews page) that he felt Gainax was "only able to do it (produce Evangelion) because we were an elite few".

I don't know if the comparison with Ridley Scott is accurate, because while Scott is probably very good (haven't seen any film of his) Anno is, quite simply, a genius. So not only he has a wider "eye" so to say, but can pull things off that most others couldn't. That said, part of his genius certainly comes from listening from his staff as well, surely.

On how much control he had, i think he had somewhat more control than that typical of the director role.

Without good source material and a well assembled team Scott can't do NOTHING. That's why I hate the post 1982 BLADE RUNNER versions. Scott is not an autheur, he acted like he was the one who writed the script. Everybody (writers, actors) except him accepts that Deckard is human, but his ego made possible those re-eleases.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

^ To be fair, the original author of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” didn’t write Blade Runner. Instead, he wrote “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”, which clearly is not Blade Runner. If the two were the same story, then they would share the same title.

So, in this sense, Scott is an author of Blade Runner, but is certainly not the author of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”.