Baby Lion Media - Creative Production Portfolio Website

The Client

Baby Lion Media is a Black and Latino-owned creative production partnership company based in Los Angeles. Founded by Jerry Digby and Ramon Nuñez, they describe themselves as "culturally fluid disruptive storytellers who are built to move with a speedboat mentality." Their tagline - "Storytellers born fearless" - captures their approach to every project.

Their bilingual team of directors, producers, developers, animators, business affairs professionals, techs, and creatives creates multi-platform brand and entertainment experiences for some of the world's most recognizable companies. Their client roster includes BMW, Volkswagen, Google, Walmart, Lamborghini, UPS, Dove, KIA, Opendoor, Via Verde, and Sumol, among others. On the entertainment side, they have produced content featuring Taylor Swift (for ABC's New Year's Day special), worked on Sesame Street productions, and collaborated on projects for the Jimmy Fallon show.

Baby Lion Media was recognized by BestStartup.us as one of the top LA-based startups revolutionizing the advertising industry, highlighted for their unique combination of advertising, digital marketing, film production, and graphic design capabilities. They are humble, nimble, and fearless in the craft - and they needed a website that reflected that energy.

Industry: Creative Production / Advertising / Entertainment
Location: Los Angeles, California
Project Type: Custom WordPress Website Design & Development
Live Site: babylion.tv

The Challenge

Baby Lion Media needed a portfolio website that would do justice to their impressive body of work - production-quality video content, high-resolution campaign imagery, director reels, and behind-the-scenes photography for projects with major global brands. The website had to be bold, cinematic, and visually immersive, matching the creative caliber of the work it showcased.

At the same time, as a fast-moving startup that frequently lands new projects and needs to update their portfolio quickly, they required a content management system that their team could operate independently - without needing a developer for every new project addition. WordPress was the clear choice for CMS functionality, but it introduced significant technical challenges:

• Video-heavy portfolio requirements: A creative production company's website is fundamentally a video showcase. Baby Lion Media needed to display dozens of project videos (commercial spots, music videos, branded content, entertainment clips) across multiple portfolio sections - Directors, Experiential + Tech, Digital + Social, Creative, and IPS. WordPress was never designed to handle this volume of video content gracefully.
• High-resolution imagery at scale: Every project featured multiple high-resolution images - campaign stills, production photos, and brand assets from clients like BMW and Google who expect pixel-perfect visual representation. Serving these images without destroying page load times required careful optimization that WordPress's default media handling couldn't provide.
• WordPress CMS limitations with media: While WordPress excels at blog content and basic pages, its media library and rendering pipeline were not built for production-company portfolios. Default WordPress video embeds are resource-heavy, the media library lacks intelligent lazy loading, and theme templates often load all media assets eagerly - causing massive initial page weight.
• Performance vs. visual impact trade-off: The site needed to feel cinematic and immersive - large hero videos, full-bleed imagery, smooth transitions, and a dark, moody aesthetic that matches Baby Lion Media's brand. Achieving this visual impact without sacrificing page speed on WordPress required creative engineering solutions.
• Director-centric navigation: Baby Lion Media organizes their work by directors (Digby, Esca, Rachel Myers, Format67, Angel Gracia, Saxton Moore, and others), each with their own reel and project list. This required a custom content structure that WordPress's default posts/pages taxonomy doesn't natively support well.
• Mobile performance for industry professionals: Creative directors and brand managers who review production company portfolios often browse on mobile devices - in meetings, during commutes, or between shoots. The site needed to perform flawlessly on mobile despite the media-heavy content, with touch-optimized video playback and galleries.
• Brand identity requirements: As a Black and Latino-owned company with a bold creative identity, the website design had to reflect Baby Lion Media's unique cultural perspective and fearless approach - not look like a generic creative agency template. The design language needed to be as distinctive as their work.

Our Solution

We designed and developed a WordPress website using Elementor Pro as the page builder, combined with extensive custom code implementations where Elementor's built-in capabilities fell short. Every page was purpose-built to showcase Baby Lion Media's creative work in the most impactful way possible while maintaining performance that WordPress sites of this media density rarely achieve.

Elementor Pro + Custom Implementations

We designed a dark, cinematic visual language that mirrors the bold, fearless energy of Baby Lion Media's brand. Using Elementor Pro as the page builder gave us a solid visual editing foundation, but the media-heavy nature of a production company portfolio demanded custom code beyond what any page builder offers out of the box. We extended Elementor with custom widgets, wrote custom PHP templates for the video portfolio system, and added JavaScript for performance-critical features like lazy loading and on-demand video playback - achieving a balance between Elementor's visual editing convenience and the performance control of custom code.

The homepage features a dynamic grid layout where each project is represented by a striking visual thumbnail paired with the director's name and project title. The grid adapts fluidly across screen sizes - from an expansive multi-column showcase on desktop to an elegant single-column feed on mobile. Hover interactions reveal project details with smooth transitions, creating an engaging browsing experience that encourages exploration.

Video Portfolio Architecture

The video portfolio system was the most technically challenging component. We built a custom solution that:

• Loads video thumbnails, not videos: On portfolio pages, each project displays a carefully optimized static thumbnail image. The actual video player only initializes when a user clicks to watch. This single decision reduced initial page weight by over 80% compared to eager-loading video embeds.
• Uses WordPress custom post types: We created a custom "Project" post type with structured fields (via Advanced Custom Fields) for video URL, thumbnail, director, brand/client, project category, and description. This gives the Baby Lion team a clear, organized interface for managing their portfolio - just fill in the fields and publish.
• Supports director-based filtering: The portfolio can be browsed by director, by category (Experiential + Tech, Digital + Social, Creative, IPS), or as a complete reel. Each director has a dedicated profile page showcasing their specific body of work.
• Handles mixed media sources: Baby Lion Media's videos come from various sources - self-hosted files, Vimeo, and YouTube. Our player component normalizes the playback experience across all sources with consistent controls and responsive sizing.

Performance Optimization on WordPress

Making a media-heavy WordPress site performant required a systematic, multi-layered optimization strategy:

• Server-side page caching: Full-page caching eliminated redundant PHP processing and database queries for the majority of page loads. Cache invalidation was configured to trigger only when content is actually updated through the CMS.
• Image optimization pipeline: All uploaded images are automatically compressed, resized to multiple dimensions for responsive srcsets, and converted to WebP where browser support allows. Lazy loading with Intersection Observer ensures images below the fold are only loaded as users scroll toward them.
• CSS and JavaScript optimization: All stylesheets and scripts are minified, concatenated where possible, and loaded with appropriate defer/async attributes. Critical CSS for above-the-fold content is inlined to eliminate render-blocking requests.
• CDN integration: Static assets (images, CSS, JS, fonts) are served through a CDN with aggressive caching headers, ensuring fast delivery regardless of the visitor's location - important for a company whose clients span coast to coast.
• Database optimization: WordPress database queries were optimized with proper indexing, transient caching for expensive queries, and cleanup of post revisions and transients to keep the database lean.
• Plugin discipline: We maintained strict control over the plugin count, using only essential plugins and replacing plugin functionality with custom code wherever possible to minimize overhead.

Content Management for a Fast-Moving Team

Baby Lion Media's team moves fast - they land new projects with major brands regularly and need to update their portfolio quickly. We built the WordPress admin experience to match their pace:

• A streamlined "Add New Project" workflow with clear fields for video, thumbnail, director, client, and category - no guesswork, no broken layouts.
• Drag-and-drop portfolio ordering so the team can feature their latest and most impressive work at the top.
• Media upload guidelines built into the admin (recommended image dimensions, video formats, thumbnail specs) to maintain consistency and performance.
• Preview functionality that shows exactly how a new project will appear in the portfolio grid before publishing.

Technical Implementation

The Results

The finished website exceeded Baby Lion Media's expectations - delivering a portfolio experience that matches the production quality of the work it showcases:

• Sub-3-second page loads despite media-heavy content - a remarkable achievement for a WordPress site loading dozens of high-resolution thumbnails. This is faster than the majority of creative agency portfolios, many of which take 5-10 seconds to load.
• 80%+ reduction in initial page weight compared to a naive WordPress implementation - achieved through thumbnail-first video loading, lazy-loaded images, and eliminated plugin bloat.
• Self-service portfolio management - the Baby Lion team can add, reorder, and update projects without any developer assistance, keeping their portfolio current as they land new work with major brands.
• Consistent experience across all devices - from large desktop monitors used in pitch meetings to mobile phones used by creative directors reviewing reels on the go. Video playback is smooth and reliable across all platforms.
• Director-based navigation working flawlessly - each director's page loads their specific body of work, making it easy for prospective clients to evaluate individual talent within the Baby Lion roster.
• Recognized as a top LA advertising startup - with a professional digital presence now matching their creative output, Baby Lion Media's BestStartup.us recognition and client pipeline continue to grow.
• Scalable portfolio architecture - as Baby Lion Media continues to produce work for brands like BMW, Google, Walmart, and others, the portfolio system handles growing content volume without performance degradation.
• Strong SEO foundation - proper structured data, optimized meta tags, and fast Core Web Vitals ensure that Baby Lion Media appears in relevant searches for creative production companies, LA-based production studios, and specific brand + production queries.
• Brand credibility elevated - a polished, high-performance portfolio website reinforces Baby Lion Media's positioning when pitching to major brands. The website itself demonstrates the attention to craft and quality that clients expect from their production work.

Key Takeaways