senckađ
Group745
Group745
Group745
Group745
Group745
Group745
Company Profiles in association withCompany Profiles on LBB
Group745

Inclusive Motion Design: How BIEN Mapped Out the Blueprint for a More Diverse and Creative Industry

09/05/2023
Animation
Los Angeles, USA
556
Share
Founders Ricardo Roberts and Hung Le tell LBB how their unique approach to their craft - InMoDe™ - is providing opportunities for diverse talent and changing the future of post production

“Our goal is simple - Be a top 10 studio through inclusive motion design (InMoDe™). That’s a much tougher challenge than just making it to the top ten list without.”. 

Speaking to Ricardo Roberts and Hung Le, the co-founders of LA-based motion design studio BIEN, one quality shines through clearer than any other: Focus. For Ricardo and Hung, inclusivity and diversity aren’t buzzwords that end up crowbarred onto the final page of a yearly report; they’re the beating heart of their business. 

Having coined the term in 2017, the duo have proceeded to imbue every aspect of BIEN - their work, their people, and their culture - with the principles of InMoDe™. “There are two key pillars to it”, explains Ricardo. “Firstly, representation. Both on-screen and behind-the-scenes. Secondly, accessibility. It’s about bringing people onboard and empowering them to make meaningful contributions which change the dynamic of a project or of your team”.

Ultimately, the pair have summed up the philosophy of InMoDe™ in four simple words: “Designing with, not for”. 

For Hung, it’s an approach that adds an extra layer of purpose and satisfaction to BIEN’s work. “As creatives, it can sometimes feel as though our work isn’t contributing to the greater good of the world”, he says. “InMoDe™ changes that”. 

That commitment to representation and accessibility also gives BIEN a unique identity within the wider context of the post production landscape. Whilst official figures for representation in the industry are hard to come by, there’s a universal acceptance that much work needs to be done. It’s challenging to find concrete and current statistics for representation in post production and motion design, but according to research carried out by Statista 82% of employees within the US’ ‘motion picture and video industries’ identify as white. 

By contrast, 69.3% of BIEN’s team is non-white, and the majority of staff at the studio are female. This hasn’t happened by accident. “I’ve heard people say that the industry’s talent pipeline isn’t the problem… well, I call bullshit on that in motion design”, says Ricardo. “That’s why we’ve started focusing on junior designers, because they tend to be so much more diverse. If we spent all of our time looking at the most experienced and qualified creatives, we’d end up with a skew towards white males - because that’s the industry’s skew. To change that, you have to work from the ground up. There’s no other choice”. 


As proud as Ricardo and Hung are of BIEN’s diverse credentials, however, they’re just as likely to be found celebrating the work produced by artists across their team. Across the extraordinary and diverse talent at BIEN, a slew of eye-catching projects have been making the case that inclusivity and quality fuel one another. 

“The Evolution of You, for Facebook and 3Q/DEPT, felt like a milestone for us”, recalls Ricardo. “It was a huge spot with a big budget, and our first Double the Line project.” 

Double the Line is an initiative from AICP that, predominantly focused on live-action productions. But, as Ricardo notes, BIEN wasted no time in adopting its principles for themselves. “To participate, you’d bring on a junior BIPOC to shadow a senior crew member. For The Evolution of You, we brought on a junior cel animator”, he recalls. “The result is that the junior gets to work on a high-level project, learn, and build their portfolio. In this industry, you gotta have the work to get the job. So, that’s us. And we haven’t stopped doing it ever since”. 

More recently, the BIEN team have been applying their inclusive philosophy in work connected to the world’s biggest footballing event. In an ad for Instagram, beautifully-made animation pops out of the screen as viewers are treated to a sparkling, hyped-up visual tour of one of the planet’s most-watched sporting events. 

Visitors to the famous Getty Museum in Los Angeles will also be familiar with BIEN’s work, with the studio helping put together a series called ‘Two Minute Time Machine’. Aimed at middle-school-aged kids, the entertaining films whistle past a series of intriguing and eye-catching quirks from history, all brought to life thanks to the motion design expertise of the team at BIEN. In fact, it’s precisely the InMoDe™ philosophy that has been helping the museum connect with more underrepresented kids in LA county. 

With such a stellar and growing portfolio of work, the central focus of BIEN’s message becomes inarguable: Inclusivity leads to quality. In a sense, it’s not rocket science - BIEN’s work is so diverse and strong because the team behind it is strong and diverse. 

But, as Ricardo and Hung point out, they have no intention of letting that core focus slip. “The way I like to describe it is that it’s just as much about processes as it is about people”, explains Hung. “A simple example of that is how we’ll break down some of the industry lingo in our kick-off calls with junior talent, so that they feel they can contribute meaningfully to conversations later down the road and don’t feel frozen out. That means you avoid silos, and younger people can become part of the team so much quicker”. 

For Ricardo, that feeds into another goal for the medium term: “I want to see BIEN become a kind of ‘bridge studio’, where we’re able to connect people to other companies and help them to find work and a path into the industry”, he says. “We know that our impact can only be so great when we work alone. So I’d love to connect with other studios and create this network, or this web, for diverse talent. There’s no question that there’s an appetite for it, and every day we become better at making it happen. So, yeah, I’d love to work with more like-minded people all over the industry”. 

If that sounds somewhat idealistic, then it’s a fair reflection of BIEN’s outlook. But, after all, what’s wrong with a little idealism? After speaking with Hung and Ricardo, one gets the feeling that maybe the world really can change, and that these topics which have so often been paid little more than lip service are finally being treated with the kind of concrete practicality that’s been desperately needed. 

Perhaps the industry has been staring at the issue of representation for so long that it’s become difficult to imagine what a solution looks like. But, with their own inclusive team, a portfolio of great work, and a scalable plan for bringing more diverse talent on board, it might look a lot like BIEN. 

Ultimately, it’s hard not to root for Ricardo and Hung in chasing their original goal. If BIEN were to become one of the top studios in the world, the industry would be a much better - and more colourful - place for it. 

Credits
Work from BIEN
Holidays With The Symphony
San Francisco Symphony
05/12/2023
11
0
Let Me Tell You A Story
Health Equity
15/08/2023
28
0
Evolution of You
Facebook
15/03/2023
15
0
ALL THEIR WORK