Shankar recognised Surendar and asked him to lend his voice for Nedumudi Venu as the latter was a Malayali. In the 2004 comedy film Aethirree, which featured Sadha in the female lead, Kanika played the second lead role of a "naughty" Brahmin girl. Shankar, apparently impressed with Kanika's performance in the film, asked her to attend a voice test. When the film-makers preferred Kanika's accent and modulation among the thirty females whose voices were tested, she was selected to dub for Sadha's Brahmin role. Technical crew The film was produced by V. Ravichandran under his own film production and distribution company 'Oscar Films' (presently 'Aascar Films'). The screenplay was written by Shankar and the film had dialogue written by writer Sujatha. Shankar retained Sabu Cyril, his production designer from Boys, to handle the set design; the scenes were edited by V. T. Vijayan. While the action sequences were orchestrated by Peter Hein and assisted by Stunt Silva, the dance sequences were choreographed by Raju Sundaram, Kalyan and Ahmed Khan. Film institute student Prabhu Raja Chozhan, who would later turn director with Karuppampatti (2013), joined Shankar as his protégé and worked as his assistant. Shankar, who grew up admiring the works of cinematographer P. C. Sreeram in films like Nayakan (1987), Agni Natchathiram (1988) and Idhayathai Thirudathe (1989), desired to collaborate and was in talks with him to handle the photography. While Sreeram was intent on working in Anniyan, he could not accept the offer due to prior commitments. It was initially reported in the media that Sreeram had been recruited; however, Shankar chose V. Manikandan as the director of photography, impressed with his work in Main Hoon Na (2004). Manikandan had earlier collaborated with Shankar when he shot the music video of the song "Secret of Success" in Boys. Manikandan gave six months of bulk dates for the project; but, when the production was troubled by delays, Shankar demanded three more months to complete the film. Manikandan walked out in October 2004 citing scheduling conflicts and Shankar replaced him with Ravi Varman. During the casting stage of Boys, the film's cinematographer Ravi K. Chandran was temporarily unavailable and his then-assistant Ravi Varman handled the camera to film Genelia D'Souza's makeup test. Subsequently, Varman nurtured a desire to work with Shankar. Before Shankar commenced work on Anniyan, Varman expressed his desire to work in the film and was hopeful of landing