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Inside the Creative Clubhouse of BENT Image Lab
By Anthony Vagnoni
The concept of a lab usually conjures up images of earnest scientists in white smocks, bent over microscopes, carefully noting the changes in the images they’re studying.
If you take three words from that preceding sentence, then apply them to a wildly eclectic mix of animation, stop-motion, CG and live action content coming from a collegial studio up in the Pacific Northwest, you’ll have a pretty good idea of the zeitgeist behind BENT Image Lab.
 Founded in 2002 by Directors David Daniels and Chel White and Executive Producer Ray Di Carlo, BENT has consistently produced notable work in a range of genres and disciplines, encompassing everything from TV commercials to broadcast promos and IDs, short films, music videos, web animation and videos and the occasional web site design project. BENT boasts a wide range of directorial talents, and over the past year added two notable animation and VFX stars—Ken Lidster, former co-owner of Loose Moose in the UK, whose Chips Ahoy ads became sing-a-long sensations, and Nando Costa, the well-known mograph guru who merged his studio, Nervo, into Bent in the spring of ’09 and who now runs NANDO@BENT. In addition to Daniels, White and Di Carlo, BENT's list of principals also includes Costa and vice president Tsui Ling Toomer.
Among the studio’s recent clients are Verizon, for which it produced the hysterically funny "Misfit Toys" spot; BC Dairy in Canada, for which it produced a series of web spots in the award-winning "Must Drink More Milk" campaign; Microsoft’s Zune, for which Costa produced a series of arty web shorts; and a cozy little European campaign for Tetra Pak. Other clients getting the BENT touch include Cartoon Network, Airwick, Kellogg's, Alltell and Diet Dr Pepper. .
The studio’s list of projects has earned recognition from top film festivals and shows, including SXSW, the Clios, Cannes Lions, Sundance, the Chicago Film Festival, AICP/MoMA, the Rosey Awards (the local Portland awards competition), the Bessie Awards, and the Broadcast Design Awards. BENT work has screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Florida Film Festival, among others.
How do they describe what their studio is all about? “David’s goal has been to build what’s essentially a creative club house, and that’s kind of what we have here,” says Di Carlo. Adds Daniels, “A lot of it revolves around giving the artists a little bit of dream time to come up with ideas, designs and characters. That’s very important for a studio like ours, as you can sometimes lose sight of that when you’re one hundred percent focused on getting a job done. So a lot of time it’s what people do on their down time where they are allowed to dream that makes a difference. That’s what the whole creative club house concept is—it’s time to be given a chance to play.”
That playfulness is apparent in their work, much of which reflects a kind of giddiness that people often associate with animation. Its recent Diet Dr Pepper campaign from Deutsch is a great example: The spots, directed by Lidster, place a Diet Dr Pepper delivery guy in a series of encounter groups populated by icons that often find themselves not being believed in by large segments of the public, such as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, a leprechaun and Bigfoot. See, no one believes him when he says that Diet Dr Pepper is a diet soda that actually tastes good.
The studio is populated by a community-oriented group of people who, like many in that part of the US, are focused on social causes and mindful of environmental issues. It’s reflected not just in the work the studio does—including animation for environmentally-themed documentaries such as “Deep Green,” or White’s work for Live Earth—but also in their personal habits. “It’s an amazing group of talent that we have here, and it’s one of the unique things about being based in Portland,” says White.
It’s a group that the partners are highly committed too, as they are to the entire production community in Portland. “One of the things we follow through on to this day is that we’ve done about ninety-nine percent of our work here,” says Di Carlo. “We have to go to LA sometimes to shoot, but on the larger scope we’ve had a lot of opportunities to move the work out of the country but have chosen not to. It’s an interesting position to take in this kind of economy, but it’s what we’re based on.”
In the seven years since they opened their doors, the trio have been charting the kind of changes that are impacting the work they do. For example, they’ve been doing a considerable amount of work for the web, obviously; what they’ve noticed about this work is that it’s been impacted by the ability of advertisers to track viewership. Says White, “In the last few years, the way clients are measuring effectiveness is really interesting, and it’s having an effect on all of us.”
"What’s more interesting is that it’s the director who’s concerned with effectiveness and client ROI, not the executive producer." Di Carlo laughs as he points this out. “We’re very lucky in that our personalities are made for the way the marketplace has been over the last few years,” he observes, noting how he and his partners frequently find themselves switching roles. “We call ourselves a lab because David, Chel, and I love to try new things, to explore mixed media and new technology. For example, sometimes we’ll take on a job because we’ve just invented a technique that we haven’t been able to use yet.”
“Being eclectic is seen as a positive here,” says Daniel. “When I try to sum up a philosophy about our approach, I always think that ‘never twice the same solution’ is an apt way to describe it. We truly have a storytelling mentality; our approach is not completely art driven, and not completely business-driven.”
 The trio have noticed that one factor impacting the choice of animation in commercials has to do with whether to work in CG or in more traditional techniques. “One concern we hear is that clients want to work in CG because they want to be able to affect or revise the animation while it’s in the process of being produced,” says DiCarlo, “as opposed to, say, working in stop-motion.” He says agencies often tell them that, while they love the look and feel of the stop-motion form, they don’t have a script nailed down yet and the air date is looming, leaving them to believe that the long lead time required will rule it out.
In response, BENT came up with a technique that marries the handmade feel of stop-motion with the flexibility and speed of CG; to date, they’ve used the technique on spots for Apple Jacks cereal, among other brands. “It’s one way to keep doing something we love to do,” says Di Carlo. “It still has that nostalgic look to it and has a different effect on viewers than straight CG.”
Another interesting development that the BENT team is finding is that the global marketplace for talent now has their work showing up in markets all over the world. Last year, a campaign they produced for the Al Balad newspaper and Leo Burnett Beirut was a winner at the Dubai Lynx awards, the Cannes Lions-sponsored competition for creative work emanating from the Middle East.
Di Carlo says their increased workload from abroad is no accident. “We were looking at the economic scene about two years ago and were worried that something was going to happen,” he says, “So in early 2007 we started looking to diversify outside of the US. I would say ninety percent of our work was domestic prior to that, and the reason we hadn’t looked elsewhere was that we were growing and couldn’t take on other work. But when we got wind that the economy was going to slow within a year or so, we pushed into other markets.”
 The move has paid off, as the studio started producing considerably more jobs for international clients in the early part of 2009. Among the countries where BENT has produced work are Russia, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Australia, Dubai, Argentina, Brazil and Canada, as well as several Asian markets. “We’re in production on another spot for an agency in Dubai right now,” says Di Carlo. Adds White, “I think it’s really great that our work has such worldwide appeal that we have to get up at 5:00 AM to do conference calls.”
What will 2010 look like for BENT? Will White be able to start sleeping in? “I’m super-conservative about things like this,” says Di Carlo, “but we’ve been growing rapidly every year. In '08 we continued to grow, and 2009 was much better than I projected. I'd have to say at this point that if we match our 2009 numbers we'll be fine, and I think that’s what will happen.”
Published January 14, 2010
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