A while ago a manual on the job of a Production Assistant (制作進行) was published by the Association of Japanese Animation (AJA), defining what this job is and what it entails, so I thought this is a good opportunity to talk about it and the production department in general. It’s not that interesting of a job to be honest, but I think talking about production assistants is important considering the essential role they play in the anime industry, and the production department is involved in really every step of the process. This post is mainly based on the aforementioned report, although you can find a lot of what I’m going to write here through other sources, and I generally recommend reading the manual if you can.The main 3 roles in the production department are production assistants, Production Desk (デスク) and Producers (プロデューサー). Production assistants are considered the lowest ranking among them so let’s start there.Production Assistants (制作進行)Simply put it’s the person responsible for making sure that the production of a single episode is going smoothly. That means among others checking that every process is moving according to the schedule put by the Desk. Production assistants don’t handle whole projects or TV series, just single episodes, with multiple production assistants in rotation during a TV series, which helps the production assistant understand and learn all the details of every step in the process since he is more directly involved in it this way. This is important for the future career of a production assistant.As for his/her main tasks, they include: Communication between the different departments, preparing meetings (such as a meeting between the director and the animators), transporting and preparing production materials and a lot of other organizational tasks. Hundreds of people are involved in each single episode, so there has to be someone to act as a link between all of them, which also means that production assistants need good communication skills. Transporting production materials, such storyboards and drawings, is also a vital task, since the industry is far from being all digital and time is critical, and a lot of creators are freelancers working from home. All of those “simple” tasks are absolutely necessary for the industry to function properly.Production assistants’ work starts before production, since one of the first things he has to do is search for the remaining staff the director needs, mostly animators. Not an easy task considering the scarcity of animators in the industry, and it only gets worse when one animator has to drop out mid-production for one reason or another, and the production assistant has to find a replacement as soon as possible. You hear stories about production assistants resorting to asking sakuga fans online if they knew any animators available.It’s also said that during the early days of TV anime and till the 80s it was even harder, because aside from the scarcity that was present even then you had the “rivalry” between the two largest anime studio at the time, Mushi Pro and Toei Doga, which led to two factions emerging in the industry that don’t cooperate with each other. Mushi Pro is said to have paid animators more than Toei, causing some talents to leave Toei, and there was the thing with Otsuka leaving Toei too, so there may have been some real “competition” to secure animators back then. Toshio Okada (while I don’t like him, you can’t deny his experience and insider-knowledge) said in a recent video of his it was so fierce production assistants actually raced each other just like the opening scene of Shirobako, explaining the scene that I found a bit weird myself, if we were to believe what Okada said at least. He also mentioned a rumor he heard back when he first joined the industry, talking about how Sunrise, after receiving hundreds of job applications driven by Gundam’s success, made applicants run a marathon carrying a box filled with paper, and hired who came first. Some of this might be exaggerated, but it holds some at least truth I think. Okada’s video is interesting and I’d recommend myself, he provides some interesting comments sometimes.Anyway, back on topic. One more thing to mention about the production assistant role is how it acts as training for new people in the industry. It’s widely known that the anime industry lacks most forms of training institutions or anything of that kind, and it also mostly doesn’t require a certain degree or level of education to join, so most of learning the ropes is done by actually working. The position of a production assistant is an important “training job”, not only because it gives you a good overview of the whole process, but also because it allows for a lot of possible future prospects for the production assistant. A production assistant can decide to become a director, producer, scenario writer and many more. In fact, a lot of the popular anime directors started as production assistants, such as Yuzuru Tachikawa (Deca Dence - Mob Psycho 100) and Tomohiko Itou (SAO). Animators in comparison have less flexible career prospects. Sure things get mixed up in the industry and there’s no general rules, but it’s at least rare for animators to become producers for example.This sadly leads to devaluing the position of production assistants (despite their essential role in the process) even to the point of dehumanization. It might not be as bad as with in-betweeners, but that’s not that high of a bar really, and they still get some of the lowest salaries in the industry, without a work environment suitable for you to continue working as a production assistant even if you wanted to. It’s not a job that affords you a liveable wage, and the mentality in the industry is that this isn’t a stable job, but a sort of trial period you have to succeed in. Even the aforementioned manual treats it as such. Anime fans are also kinda guilty of the same, you see all the sakuga fans praising a single animator for a single scene for hours, yet a bad animator may ruin a single scene, while a bad production assistant may ruin the whole episode. I mean, it is hard to blame anyone for not getting excited for the job of a production assistant or what they do, but that’s just the sad reality of their position in the industry.SourceProduction Desk (デスク)It’s the person responsible for the schedule of the whole show and oversees the work of all the production assistants. There’s usually only one Desk in each project. It’s the next step of the ladder if the production assistant decides to take the production career route, and generally isn’t much different than a production assistant in what he does, just with more responsibilities and wider scope. The Desk may also get involved in choosing/finding animation and episode directors, which highly influences the quality and look of the episode.Producers (プロデュサー)It’s generally the top position in the production department. The main supervisor for the whole project and the person involved in all the business talks and the likes between the different companies involved, as each company in the production committee is represented by one of its producers, including the animation studio. Anime is a medium that combines creativity and business, so a good understanding of both the creative process and business is necessary. There are multiple types of producers, the most common among them being:Line Producer (ラインプロデューサー): Responsible for maintaining the production “line”, as in communicating with the different companies involved such as the backgrounds studio, recording studio and animation studio etc, facilitating the work among them. Animation/Creative Producer(アニメーションプロデューサー/クリエイティブプロデューサー): Responsible for the production process itself and the quality and direction of the project, and sometimes gets the chance to starts projects based on his own ideas and vision.Business Producer(ビジネスプロデューサー): Responsible for stuff like contracts, monetization, merch etc.One producer might fill multiple of these roles, and some of them have the production assistants or Desk involved, so as always the borders between each role aren’t as clear and defined as you might think. It’s funny that despite involving this large number of people in management roles, all responsible for drafting schedules and maintaining them, the anime industry and its schedules are still a mess.That’s all I have for this post, and I again recommend reading the whole manual if you can. It goes over the production process in detail, providing among other things the most detailed flow-chart of the anime production process I have seen.
Oct 25, 2020 • Subscribe
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