
'Wallace and Gromit' Producer Aardman Animations Gives Ownership to Employees - walterbell
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wallace-gromit-producer-aardman-animations-gives-ownership-employees-1159351
======
andygcook
There’s two episodes of How I Built This with the founders of other employee-
owned companies that are worth listening to:

\- Bob’s Red Mill [https://www.npr.org/2018/05/17/612108005/bobs-red-mill-
bob-m...](https://www.npr.org/2018/05/17/612108005/bobs-red-mill-bob-moore)

\- New Belgium Brewing Company [https://www.npr.org/2018/09/07/645620049/live-
episode-new-be...](https://www.npr.org/2018/09/07/645620049/live-episode-new-
belgium-brewing-company-kim-jordan)

------
Theodores
When Aardman began to have the big hits with Wallace and Gromit they did not
have professional management structures, some consultants later and they had
all of these tiers of management with the enterprise becoming more like a
sausage factory. This was noted by people who worked with them creatively as
contractors, making content with them and collaborating.

So they went from being one of those happy companies where everyone knows
everyone and works as a team of one to one of those siloed companies with
people knowing everyone on their team in their department but not having a
clue as to what is going on in the next team. It kills creativity when all
communications have to go up three tiers of the management tree and back down
again to another department, who could be the guys in the next room.

Sometimes you wonder whether growth is really what you want with a company,
why do all of those adverts on the back of the legendary Nick Park stuff? Why
spread the brand out so thinly and why get the consultants and venture capital
in to make the brand go big?

~~~
egypturnash
> why do all of those adverts on the back of the legendary Nick Park stuff?

You've gotta pay the bills and keeps the lights on while you're painstakingly
crafting the next masterpiece.

IIRC ads are typically one of the places in the animation industry where you
can get the highest budget per second. You can turn out acceptable-but-not-
amazing work and save the big fee you got to extend your runway to work on the
huge projects - or you can experiment with some crazy ideas you've been
kicking around, on someone else's dime, without committing to an untried new
technique for the length of an entire short or feature.

This doesn't always work out well - see Richard Williams' _The Thief And The
Cobbler_ for instance, with years of amazing animation by some of the early
masters of the craft left on the cutting room floor, both before and after
Williams got investment money that came with a deadline he couldn't finish
that glorious mess of a film before - but it's a common pattern for animators.

There are of course many pitfalls. Once you staff up, you've got a crew that
you may be loathe to break up - they work together well, they're used to your
workflows. Do you lay them off, wish them luck finding the next gig, and hope
you can get a bunch of them back the next time you need help on a project? Or
do you come up with more stuff for them to do? There's lots of successes and
failures along both of these paths.

------
platz
An event that is encouraging to the model that Professor Richard D. Wolff
speaks well of.

~~~
bloudermilk
For those who aren't familiar with his work, Richard Wolff is the author of
[Democracy at Work][0] and strong proponent of worker owned and governed
businesses.

[0]: [https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-
Capitalism/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-
Capitalism/dp/1608462471)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Thank you for posting that, it sounds like an element of my own long held
thesis that I've been mulling over for a few years (I'm a communist of sorts
working mentally on the issue of transition from capitalist structures). Any
other authors/works along this line that you know of - namely moving away from
capitalist structure by reacquisition of ownership for workers and/or the
_demos_?

~~~
incadenza
Michael Albert - Participatory Economics.

