Bardel Entertainment Reviews

Pros

-Studio has a fairly consistent stream of incoming projects to potentially join, and some are really desirable -Some great people; super hard-working, talented, and friendly -Studio's putting in effort to create positive company culture/community through events and such -My first project was a good learning experience; the second was quite tough, but I learned a lot through it -Some opportunities to potentially advance through leadership tracks if you'd fit those types of roles

Cons

Summary: There's a word a lot of Bardel employees associate with the studio but are scared to say out loud...sweatshop. -The culture the company's trying hard to create and project contrasts the reality, which is that employees are too overworked to take part in any of the fun community-building stuff. I would've loved to partake in it, but I was too busy putting in tons of unpaid overtime to meet unreasonable expectations for a tiny paycheck. -Experiences can vary REALLY wildly depending on your project/team. On my first project, expectations and deadlines were reasonable, I almost never worked overtime, and I made a small but livable wage. Second project we were all burning out fast trying to hit insane standards and making barely a livable wage in such an expensive city. Some of my friends were on projects so easy that they were bored out of their minds; others worked every single weekend for no extra pay and it was entirely expected of them to do so. -Unpaid overtime was presented as our own issue that we had the power to control; if we didn't want to work nights and weekends, we just had to magically work faster and better and be more organized, even if we were already doing those things to the best of our abilities. As if it had nothing to do with the studio leadership and the client. -Same thing as above applied to a quota-based paycheck; management acknowledged that the "base pay" that we were guaranteed every week for hitting quota was not a professional salary, and that it was up to us to go above quota enough to make a decent amount of money. That's okay when going above quota is actually doable, but for some projects, it's just not. Especially since footage-based pay and deadlines didn't adjust to different difficulty levels of scenes. -Studio is not set up to be conducive to socialization at all. The old Beatty Street location was, since it wasn't too huge and had a big common area for lunch and special events, but the way West 3rd is set up, it's hard to naturally have interactions with your coworkers. -You may have to work completely in the dark. Beatty was in a basement, and the first floor of West 3rd is like a big warehouse space with only windows in one little section. No natural light, plus they keep it dark for the 3D lighting teams, which should just have their own dark space to work in. -Low-key sexism which is kind of inescapable in this industry, but there was a certain degree of bro-y culture which definitely favored male employees and gave them more opportunities to rise through the ranks.

Pros

The people are genuinely friendly, it can offer a good opportunity for someone to learn depending where they are in their career and the projects produced are relatively high quality. It's a small studio feel but at a large scale, which can be nice.

Cons

The upper management is a mess, there's absolutely no unified vision and the company is in a constant state of chaos, unprepared and last-minute decisions that end up hurting employee morale, client confidence and the studio's ability to consistently bring in work. The working conditions aren't great either given cramped spaces, inadequate furniture and mediocre wages. Not to mention the illegal practice of not paying overtime (which almost all studios have moved away from already).