Managing the making of Avatar,  from Incite 70

Avatar is the biggest grossing movie ever, it may have only won 3 Oscars – one of them by our own Richard Baneham, an animation supervisor . This was a massively complex project costing over $310 million for production, and $150 million for promotion. The film was released for traditional two-dimensional projectors, as well as in 3-D. The stereoscopic filmmaking was touted as a likely breakthrough in cinematic technology.

If you sat through the endless list of credits for Avatar, you saw that Richard had about   3,000 colleagues working on the CGI epic, which has now grossed more than $2.5 billion worldwide, shattering box office records and reinventing cinema for the digital age. The boss of all those people was director James Cameron.

Rebecca Keegan sat in on sets while researching her book, The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron, and comments

“I watched the director’s often controversial management style up close. One of Hollywood’s most innovative filmmakers, Cameron is also one of its toughest taskmasters, a man who ran notoriously grueling sets for movies like The Terminator, Aliens and Titanic. After Titanic, Cameron spent years away from the movie business indulging a lifelong passion, deep ocean exploration. The experiences he had leading groups on the open sea tempered the director’s management style. But working for Cameron is still roughing it by Hollywood standards.”

From a seat on the Avatar set, she observes the rules that James Cameron manages by:

Break New Ground
“It’s Avatar, dude, nothing works the first time,” read a whiteboard in the spare Los Angeles warehouse that served as the sci fi film’s motion capture soundstage. Breaking new ground is Cameron’s raison d’être – nothing interests this man unless it’s hard to do. But innovation has also become a way of bonding his teams, both on Avatar and on his deep sea expeditions. “We’re out in the wilderness working far beyond the borders of the known,” Cameron says, comparing his CG and undersea projects. “We’re doing extraordinary things that outsiders would not even understand.” For Cameron, a sense of exploration isn’t just personally enriching, it’s a crucial tool for motivating and uniting his teams.

Firing Is Too Merciful
Everyone who has been part of Cameron’s cast and crew has bitter war stories about working for him, and yet they all seem to forget them when they’re clutching Oscars and cashing cheques. Many Cameron alumni will share a story from their first film with him, a day they were sure they were going to be fired, almost hoped for it. But Cameron rarely fires people. “Firing is too merciful,” he says. Instead he tests their endurance for long hours, hard tasks, and harsh criticism. Survivors tend to surprise themselves by turning in the best work of their careers, and signing on for Cameron’s next project.

Lead from the Front
Cameron is almost comically hands-on. He does things elite directors don’t do – hold the camera, man the editing console, sketch the creatures, apply the makeup. The truth is, he would do nearly every job on a movie himself if he could. But any film, much less one as ambitious as Avatar, relies on collaboration. Forced to lean on others, Cameron sets the pace. Among his 3,000 strong stable of artists and engineers, he’s the first to try a new challenge, the last to quit at the end of the day, and the hardest to please.

Good Enough Isn’t
Avatar took more than twice as long to make as an average film. Much of that added time was due to the film’s Herculean design demands and its reliance on untested technologies, but some of it was thanks to Cameron’s perfectionism. Hours were spent on the smallest details, like getting alien sap to drip precisely right. A column in one special effects shot annoyed Cameron. After 15 minutes debating its placement while teleconferencing with weary Weta Digital artists in New Zealand, he declared, “That column is worth $50 million of the domestic gross!” shaking his head at his own obsessiveness. It’s hard to argue with Cameron’s nitpicky style, however, when audiences thrill to immerse themselves in the richly detailed worlds he creates.

Hire People People
Aware that he can be a hard man to work for, Cameron wisely surrounds himself with amiable deputies. “I have my bad days, and on my best days I’m no Ron Howard,” he admits. Cameron’s closest associates, his producer, Jon Landau, and the head of his production company, Rae Sanchini, are management savants. They know when an exhausted crew needs a pep talk, when a wounded artist’s ego needs soothing, when an anxious studio executive needs reassurance. And — a talent never to be underestimated — they know when to order the pizza, and tell the boss to quit for dinner.

Trench warfare

What can we learn from Cameron’s management style?  Possibly to surround yourself with managers who can manage people better than you? Apparently his approach has been likened to that of Gordon Ramsey, he has been described also as  “a wildly successful, hard-driving perfectionist.” Cameron admits that he’s not the best leader himself. “I think I’m a good filmmaker, but I’m not a natural leader. I’ve had to teach myself that as I go along.”

Whilst working for two years on pre-production Cameron explained that phase of making the movie, “We finished with the actors…. We’re just in this kind of CG hell – trying to create a world from scratch,” he explains. “It’s like trench warfare. We’re working with computer-generated characters that we want to be photorealistic. It’s been tough. We’ve set the bar high. We’re just now getting the confidence that it’s really going to work.”

And it has. I am off to see the movie on Friday, enjoy!

Billy Linehan, Celtar business and management consultants

References

Rebecca Keegan author of The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron

Harvard Business Review blog http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/03/how_james_cameron_leads.html#comments

Firstshowing.net

http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/10/15/james-cameron-compares-avatar-work-to-trench-warfare/

Wikipedia.org

For more on us see www.Celtar.ie

 A lesson in response management, not!

Recent issues of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have been particularly rich in their commentaries of heretofore magnificent corporations who have fallen on hard times, American writers have particularly enjoyed commenting on Toyota’s problems. We look at Toyota and how it is responding to issues arising from its product recall, is the company doing enough to reassure its customers?

The Toyota Prius, official car of the 2010 Olympic games in Vancouver

Toyota

The financial impact on Toyota Motor Corp. from its global recall could total more than $5 billion over the next year, due to increased incentive campaigns, litigation costs and marketing efforts by the embattled car maker, analysts say.

The critical question facing the world’s leading car maker is how long the fallout from the recall will affect sales in North America, its largest market. After a slow start, Toyota is biting back at its critics and has launched an aggressive sales campaign in the U.S., featuring a 0% interest five-year loan offer, competitive lease prices and free maintenance across 80% of its vehicle line-up.

Despite the onslaught of negative media coverage from late January, Toyota’s market share in the U.S. only slipped to 12.7% in February from just above 14% the previous month. “”How much they can rebound and at what cost will be critical going forward.”

Toyota’s toughest mission is to continue to woo new customers to its brand, and to change the minds of those sitting on the fence. According to CNW Market Research, an automotive marketing research company, 7% of consumers previously intending to buy a Toyota will not do so now.

“It’s the people that are sitting on the fence that Toyota is trying to convince,” said Christopher Richter, autos analyst at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. “Toyota still has a significant core audience, but a smaller percentage of people are still moved by safety concerns.”

The company also has to continue its pace of sales to avoid an inventory build-up or idling its plants in the U.S. Toyota had been facing excess production capacity…even before the recall problem occurred. If its sales drop, this capacity problem will increase its fixed-costs.

The Japanese car maker has sweetened lease deals on many models by increasing the “residual values”—the projected value of the car at the end of the lease contract—and dropping finance rates. New Camrys are on sale for as little as $179 a month. The Lexus luxury division is promoting discounted lease offers as well, which vary by region and dealer. In China, Toyota is also offering a combination of sales incentives, including zero-percent loans, free insurance and fuel and roadside service.

With more than $29 billion in cash on its balance sheet and very low levels of borrowing, Toyota has a comfortable cushion to absorb the blows, and doesn’t stand out as a credit risk. Toyota and its president, Akio Toyoda, have embarked on a media offensive, after being criticized for its slow response to the burgeoning crisis. Mr. Toyoda last week aimed to rally the troops by speaking in front of thousands of Toyota dealers, suppliers and management.

From an American viewpoint James T.Berger comments “The temporary demise of Toyota is particularly interesting in that this company was the “poster child” of such techniques as “lean” production and state-of-the-art sourcing and procurement.  They took many of the key premises of the Japanese business culture and fashioned a global marketing superstar.  However, they might have taken a page out of the American business culture’s crisis management doctrine.

The fall of Toyota is not so much the fault of shoddy sourcing and quality control, it is the lame and inadequate response management has taken to the media barrage. Apparently, the Japanese culture doesn’t figure for the need for accountability to customers and regulatory agencies and the need to address problems honestly and quickly.

All of this will accrue to the benefit of Detroit.  Now that Toyota has a black eye people who want to buy cars will now give Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC a chance.   They may discover that GM builds pretty darn good cars at extremely reasonable prices”. A patriot speaks of course!

Interestingly I visited a hushed Dublin Toyota dealership last week, customer service was poor and I had to go out of my way to get attention from a sales rep. Few new and second hand cars were evident in the showroom or outside, and the model I was interested in wasn’t available. 

Sources

Wiglaf Journal www.Wiglafjournal.com

Wall Street Journal www.wsj.com

Billy Linehan

Celtar business and management consultants

 Better business road show review – no boot camp*

The SFA and several corporates have been on tour around the country offering a “boot camp road show” to SME owner managers. Attending the final one in the series last night in Eircom HQ with me were about 100 business people. We listened to a series of PR type presentations and sales pitches (six in all) from the following sectors, insurance & pensions, energy, a telecom,  a waste company and a bank.

Many tips were shared by the corporate speakers, most which were fairly obvious – it was talk and chalk, there was no interaction, or space for questions. Information stands were well staffed with sales men and women.

Like most SFA events it was well run, though there was no encouragement to stick around after as no coffee or provisions were provided so little networking was done then. (A pint with a potential client in Ryan’s of Parkgate Street sufficed).

Ulster Bank were there in force demonstrating their commitment to the SME sector, promoting the message that they are open for business and presenting themselves as the “third pillar” in the banking sector. The senior guys there echoed the comment of their CEO recently, that the bank is open for business but they want all your banking business, and do wish not for customers to cherry pick products from several banks. The straightforward approach is positive and encourages me to refer clients to them to try them out.

As a business consultant I am bemused by large companies who advise us on how to buy less of their products, the ESB wishes to sell us less electricity and Greenstar wish us to provide them with less waste. Both thus displaying confidence that their revenues and prices have only one way to go, up.

I like the SFA and continue to be a member, though I think they are over enthusiastic in titling these events as “boot camps”. There is no big learning opportunity for owner managers, we have cut costs and don’t need to be told how to do so again and again. Some attendees thought that the events were more focused on offering sales platforms for large companies, rather then on meeting the real needs of SMEs: such as how to grow your business, how to be competitive, advice on exporting and meeting new customers.

Being part of IBEC the SFA has a challenge in meeting the needs of its members in the small business community. These needs are very different then those of the corporates, MNCs and semi-states. Does the boot camp series of events assist in maintaining the SFA’s credibility? I am not sure. Who speaks for small business?

Billy Linehan

MD of Celtar management consultants, Dublin, Ireland

For more on Celtar see www.celtar.ie

*boot camp is usually defined as a short intensive course of training