Why do studios/networks hire a creative team anyway?

[Antiyonder]

I've been looking to post this for a while. With the higher ups, tending to step in and force their changes on shows like American Dragon or movies like The Ant Bully why do they bother hiring a creative team.

They obivously think they know what's required for a show, they should just produce programs on their own. Saves money, and keeps more talented writers from getting critisim.

[Undrave]

Pressure from unions? ^^;

[Neo Ultra Mike]

The thing is that most executives tend not really be all that creative. Yeah they force changes on shows, but that's only when the show/movie is general is formed and they have something to work around they're "changes" to make it more age approriate/marketable and what not. The exeucitves and higher ups can't come up with the ideas on they're own, and sometimes creative teams come up with real merchandisable, highly rated stuff that the execuitves don't even have to come down on. (Like with The Simpsons. American Dragon however was sagging in it's first season rating enough to need a considerable makeover and I don't know about Ant Bully but they probably wanted it to be more marketable and that didn't even work out anyway). Although it's sad there are more executive based/higher up ideas out then there have been in toons for quite awhile. Yeah there are a still a lot of creator/creative team based stories, but there's also stuff like Ben 10 and Scooby Doo Get A Clue which feels very executive based at least in the conception phase.

[Golgo13]

Executive can't be that creative. They only know how to pick apart ideas, not concieve them.

[PowerZord]

Sometimes most of them don't really have the experience or the expertise on the field to produce on their own, so they hire the staff to produce it, like in Power Rangers.

Some of them only have degrees in Marketing or Business Management.

[judyindisguise]

I think they do it to justify their high salaries. I remember reading a book written by an advertising copywriter, and he told of meetings he'd have with the people he was pitching a commercial to and watching good ideas being discarded and bad ideas being picked almost every time. So somebody told him about the "six-finger trick" - where you deliberately put in an idea so very bad it's too obvious even for a company vice president to miss. Like showing a drawing of a housewife holding up a can of tuna or something and she's got six fingers. The vice president can then say "Hey! She's got six fingers! You gotta change that!" And then he thinks he's done his job and leaves the good ideas alone.

So the meddling from network/studio suits might work the same way. They think they have to have some input into the production or they haven't done their jobs. That's my take anyway.

[Jave]

Can you imagine a cartoon drawn entirely by executives?

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

So the meddling from network/studio suits might work the same way. They think they have to have some input into the production or they haven't done their jobs. That's my take anyway.

This reminds me of an anecdote from Chuck Amuck, Chuck Jones' memoirs. One of the early producers of Looney Tunes cartoons was Leon Schlesinger, on whom the voice and character of Daffy Duck was based. Schlesinger was rather clueless about this whole animation thing, but he did eventually notice that all the animators would "flip" their drawings to ensure that they would animate properly. So, one day, Schlesinger marched into the room with great purpose, grabbed the musical score off the table, "flipped" it like the animators did, grunted his approval, and walked off. Afterwards, Jones and the rest of the folk at Termite Terrace would ensure that Schlesinger could flip the score for each new cartoon to his approval.

A lot of Jones' stories involved how to get around Schlesinger or some other nimrod studio exec. Some things change, but the average density of a Hollywood executive is constant, if not increasing over time.

-- Ed

[Lutochris]

Can you imagine a cartoon drawn entirely by executives?

You don't have to imagine. See Ben 10. Or anything currently on Nick besides Avatar.

[Simon Trent]

You don't have to imagine. See Ben 10. Or anything currently on Nick besides Avatar.

Ben 10 wasn't drawn by the executives.

Personally, I envision that sort of cartoon being entirely in WACKY! colors with BADLY-USED! teen slang and GROTESQUE! product placement.

"The only way we can defeat the totally evil Dr. Yellowblueorange is to use this cool explosion ray that I got at WENDY'S...dude!"

"Awesome. Right on, dude. We're totally kickin' it. Yo!"

[judyindisguise]

You don't have to imagine. See Ben 10. Or anything currently on Nick besides Avatar.

Well, I see what you're getting at, I really do. Certainly things like "Space Jam" had corporate fingerprints all over it. But "Ben 10"...that's a lot of fun, wherever it came from.

[Leviathan]

There are scads and scads of 1970's and 1980's shows that perfectly demonstrate what executives (and parents' watchdog groups, and two-bit psychologists) will produce without a creative team. Sure executives have tons of "creative input" on today's cartoons, and some cartoons are definately assembled by corporate comittee (Ben 10), but artists are much more important to the production process now than they were in the 70's (to play on an old saw, today's cartoons aren't camels so much as they are purebred horses

[Hordesman]

http://www.lkessler.com/mumlondon.shtml

[Bubblegum Girl]

I think Disney used to have creative teams that work on those movies like Lion King, Aladdin, etc. right before they closed the 2D animations studios...

Also I think Pixar has creative teams to work on their movies.

[Golgo13]

I think Disney used to have creative teams that work on those movies like Lion King, Aladdin, etc. right before they closed the 2D animations studios...

Also I think Pixar has creative teams to work on their movies.

Actually, pretty much any studio making a CGI movie/TV series has a creative team seeing as how the director, writers, modellers, TDs, animators, and renderers can get together to review dailies on a daily basis in the same building.

[Lutochris]

Well there's obvioulsy no doubt that even the most shameless corporate concoctions need SOME kind of creative team to actually physically come up with the neccessary components to create the show. Someone has to actually write a script, actually design the characters, etc. The problem is, with cartoons like that, the creative people only exist on the periphery, and there is no central creative driving force. The driving force is marketability, so the creative team, no matter how good they are, are still forced to come up with ideas that the market will favor the most, not neccessarily the most innovative or artistically relevant ideas.

[judyindisguise]

Well there's obvioulsy no doubt that even the most shameless corporate concoctions need SOME kind of creative team to actually physically come up with the neccessary components to create the show. Someone has to actually write a script, actually design the characters, etc. The problem is, with cartoons like that, the creative people only exist on the periphery, and there is no central creative driving force. The driving force is marketability, so the creative team, no matter how good they are, are still forced to come up with ideas that the market will favor the most, not neccessarily the most innovative or artistically relevant ideas.

That is oh so true.

[Shredder565]

Although it's sad there are more executive based/higher up ideas out then there have been in toons for quite awhile. Yeah there are a still a lot of creator/creative team based stories, but there's also stuff like Ben 10 and Scooby Doo Get A Clue which feels very executive based at least in the conception phase.

If we ever get that David Wise interview rescheduled I'll see if I can get him to explain the full story behind the creation of Dregg....but Dregg, banation of Shredder and KRang = Executive.

[Dudley]

Also I think Pixar has creative teams to work on their movies.

From what I've heard, the creative team at Pixar outweighs that of the executives in terms of power.

And that's why they rock so much.