Artistic License

Ben Dossett, a 1984 film-school graduate, met Meiert Avis while working on a music video for Bruce Hornsby. The two decided to form a film-production company and soon produced videos for performers such as U2 and Bob Dylan and television commercials for companies including Coca-Cola and Lexus. Their sometimes-eclectic employees--who include artists, musicians and computer programmers--are not confined to specific job titles, and their unorthodox company structure lacks standard management hierarchy--but they say that is how it works best. Dossett was interviewed by freelance writer Karen E. Klein.

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As soon as we started hiring employees, we required them to do multiple jobs because our staff was so lean. We didn’t have one accountant and one person who handled contracts, but we had people who did all those things and also took out the trash. We started giving all our employees a lot of responsibility and a lot of freedom to decide what their responsibilities would be.

Because of that, our company is seen as a very desirable place to work. We can’t compete financially with the heavily backed studios for employees, but we draw in talented people because we allow them to fulfill themselves creatively.

For instance, our accountant likes to build things. So sometimes she works in the art department designing and building sets. Our computer-graphics animator is also interested in drawing, so we allow him to draw storyboards. And he gets to work on a project all the way through from pre- to post-production. Our employees stay with us a long time and are very, very loyal.

We hire people who are unsatisfied with the narrow scope of their existing jobs. We do many, many interviews and wait until we find someone who really wants to work here and can handle all the responsibility.

We always involve our clients in the work process. We don’t hide things from them or separate them from the people who are working on their project. Sometimes it can be kind of scary for them to see the successes and the failures. But it allows them to collaborate with us in a more efficient way.

That kind of scrutiny can make our employees feel vulnerable, but they like having their ideas either nurtured or killed in the early stages instead of spending four weeks perfecting something that the client rejects. This kind of open, direct communication brings us an enormous amount of repeat business.

Our office is a series of open work spaces, divided just enough to give people visual and audio privacy but not enough to stifle communication and creativity. My partner and I sit right out with everyone else so we’re accessible and we can walk around and have conversations easily.

We meet regularly with the staff. Because our business is project-oriented, we may go four to six weeks working 14- to 18-hour days and then have nothing to do. That’s when the staff explores ideas they are interested in. They all have different tastes in film and music and style and fashion, so we can explore 15 times as many trends as if we had one CEO who told everybody to follow his vision.

One night, one of our employees met a programmer at a bar who was writing some camera-reconstruction software. We told him to find out if it would hook up with what we were doing, and we ended up getting a jump on a new technology that only the major companies were using at that time.

I originally thought that this kind of philosophy would not work beyond about 15 employees. But as I see larger companies, it seems they have the same kind of chaos, but it’s masked over by middle management. So for now, we’re staying with the way we’re doing it. It has worked for us.

MORE SMALL BUSINESS: D4, D6

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AT-A-GLANCE

* Company: Windmill Lane Production

* Owners: Meiert Avis (standing at left) and Ben Dossett (seated)

* Nature of business: Film production and design

* Location: 1558 10th St., Santa Monica

* Founded: 1988

* Employees: 15

* Annual revenue: $8 million