Stories shape the world. We shape the stories.
At Distant Moon, we believe the right story can change everything. Our mission is to foster human flourishing through film—by bringing together two worlds that need each other to thrive. For brands, studios, and agencies, we deliver access to world-class film directors, crews, and storytellers who create work that captures hearts and moves audiences to action. For filmmakers, we provide the network, resources, and logistical muscle to unleash their full creative power. We are the bridge—representing today’s most exciting emerging talent and delivering end-to-end creative and production services for projects that aim to change the world.
The world-changing PArtners who trust us.
Our Mission
Storytelling should do more than entertain. It should move people to think, to feel, and to act.
Distant Moon is a film production studio dedicated to promoting human flourishing through storytelling. We empower our partners with films that challenge audiences to grapple with life’s essential questions, deepen their understanding of the world, and connect with the Creator who made that world.
Wrestle with Life’s deepest questions
Understand the World around them more deeply
Come in Contact with the Creator of that World.
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Mission Control is our multi-pronged process that captures your key objectives, risks, and messaging, ensuring that the project is a success.
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Hey all! A few posts have gone viral over the last couple weeks, so I figured I’d introduce myself to all the new friends here. And share a note of encouragement.
Here’s the TLDR: Don’t cut your journey short. This industry is insanely hard. If you’re called to create, stick with it. I’ve been at it for 22 years. Sounds crazy when you say it like that. haha (I’m 36. And, yeah, I started when I was 14.)
I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker when I was 11. I Started getting paid for video work at 14.
After 10 years of working at it in 2014 at 24, I went freelance full time. (Three months before my wife and I had our first son.)
For the next four years it was a GRIND. I had tons of panic attacks, felt incredibly lonely, and even though I was growing in my craft and becoming more financially steady in many ways I was miserable. At this point I felt like I needed to start building a team around me.
2018: hired my first team member at Distant Moon. @jesseeastmancreative
2026, eight years later: we’re 26 people (and hiring 3 more right now)! woohoo. haha
The crazy thing is that when you look forward, all you can see is how far you have to go to get to your dream. But looking backward can be shocking, because my guess is you’ve come way further than you usually realize. Thats definitely true for me. As I work on several feature docs, a feature film script, and a multiple streaming series right now, I think about how 2 years ago it didn’t even feel like I was close to this level of projects. And yet, I’m still SO far from my ultimate dream (maybe more on that in a later post).
So the thing I’ve been thinking about lately: this is a lifetime journey. And the dream usually feels further away than it actually is.
If you’re early on your path and like me 12 years ago when I went freelance, I’d say, chill. Stay with it. This industry will test you. Some partnerships WILL go wrong. None of that means you’re off course.
Don’t cut your journey short. Stick with your calling.
Glad you’re here. Hope you stick around!
@distantmoonhq
In honor of the 250th Independence Day, I wanted to post some opening shots from our documentary “Revolutionary America.” It’s not in theaters any longer but @hillsdalecollege made the generous decision to release the film for free during the month of July.
This morning I’ve been dwelling in the opening lines from our script. Perhaps will resonate with you as well: (no formatting changed, so enjoy the bts! Haha)
NARRATOR [SELLECK]:
Writing at [age] sixty-five, Benjamin Rush looked out over a bustling Philadelphia – its revolutions settled, its currency strengthening, its confidence rising. Yet thirty-five years after Rush and fifty-five other patriots pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to independence, the country was already beginning to forget.
METAXES:
Human beings are predisposed not to remember. […] You see, the founders. Already noticing that we’re […] forgetting, because the founding generation is dying out,and we need to remind ourselves of these basics, lest we drift away and lose our liberties.
LOVELL:
Our founders were no fools. They recognized how bloody history was. […] There will always be tyrants and foreign armies. They don’t just live and let live. That’s not what tyrants do all of world history, is red with blood. It just is. Peace is the outlier. It’s not the norm.
@jeremiahreganhcoc @distantmoonhq @ryanmoorecomposer
How does color temperature impact the realism of lighting a scene?
This was the question that I asked our DP @mikecurry_dp last year when we were on set of Hillsdale College’s upcoming course “The Odyssey.”
For this project, we built one of the largest sets we’ve built yet, and yet lighting it turned out to be pretty par for the course. (Pun intended. Sorry!) check out Mike’s response as he breaks down color temperatures, and how they can impact the look and feeling of a scene.
Find the Light (part 2).
Continuing my post from yesterday, all of these frames are from a recent documentary. I shot in Ecuador with a micro crew. None of these shots had any lighting or G&E. The most we had was a bead board for close-ups, but we shaped the light through selection of angles and locations in times of day.
Slide one we framed wide using shadowed for ground elements to focus the viewers eye and negative fill to create a sense of shape on close-ups.
Slide two we were on the top of a mountain overlooking a volcano in the Andes and shot using just natural blue light, positioning the talent under a street lamp to create color contrast between the blue environment and the warmth of the tungsten bulbs.
Slide three, showing locations where we chose backgrounds and places where we could use the sun as a backlight, filming from the shadow side to create a sense of separation between our subjects and their backgrounds.
Thankful for the killer team who made it all possible!
@globalspeaks @johndarnell3rd @jay_vida @timhedberg_ @julian_keene19 @brandondetraglia @nathanbittnerfilm @yettanother @distantmoonhq
Find the light (part 1).
On documentary work, especially when we are working with real life people and not professional talent, I’m always looking for locations that feel cinematic and provide a lot of their own lighting.
Often we think you need the perfect location. But usually you need to simply convey a story beat or an emotion. In this case, we needed to show two missionary partners working closely together and debating the next steps for their mission.
This room provided dramatic, lighting, and a sense of a lived-in-world with the children’s art on the walls. We filmed this entire scene in about 10 minutes in an already packed day involving two company moves and over 30 different set ups in the day. The only lighting was from the window you see in the first shot and we cheated angles for the over-the-shoulders to get the lighting to wrap nicely on the subjects’ faces.
With @johndarnell3rd @jay_vida Allen Thornburgh @timhedberg_ @distantmoonhq @julian_keene19 @brandondetraglia @nathanbittnerfilm @dist
For the next several posts I’ll be posting frames from a documentary proof of concept we shot back in October of last year.
Here’s the problem facing most filmmakers and organizations: “big swing” projects like feature films and streaming series are the sort of plays that reach audiences and capture cultural attention. But those are also the projects that carry the biggest sense of financial risk for funding organizations.
So over the last two years @distantmoonhq has been building out a structural model for carrying out big swing media plays across multiple stages. We call this the apogee model. I’ll talk more about it over the coming weeks, but in the meantime, here are a few frames from the proof of concept/development film we produced with @globalspeaks.
These shots were filmed with the red raptor and t1.5 lenses, using flashlights to light the scene. I wanted it to feel natural as they walked to the Napo riverside in rural Ecuador to tell stories of life and death in the Amazon. With talent shining flashlights into a beadboard off camera, the talent was essentially lighting themselves with the led flashlights they were holding.
Killer team: @johndarnell3rd @jay_vida Allen thornburgh
@timhedberg_ @julian_keene19 @yettanother @nathanbittnerfilm @brandondetraglia @snjohnson1014
Anamorphic on Instagram. Just like Nolan intended. 😂
New trailer for our upcoming online course with @hillsdalecollege about Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey.”
This sort of projections possible without all the incredible people who poured their talents into it.
EP: @jeremiahreganhcoc
Director: 🙋♂️ and Caleb Symmons
Producer: @kacie.lynn_ @maktrob
Prod Designer: @d_cool20
DP: @mikecurry_dp
Everything: @julian_keene19
Sound: @_huntervickers_ and Andrew Pearl
Post supervisor: @brandondetraglia
Trailer Editor: @smgvideoeditor
Editors: @jongrahamcreative segarsj
VFX: @eli.ohearn
Motion/2.5d: @thumbsupman
Copyright: @mariahcormier
Admin/operations: @snjohnson1014
Join our team!
@distantmoonhq is on a quest to change the world through film.
Our mission is outrageous: to become the most impactful film studio of the 21st-century by helping audiences wrestle with life’s deepest questions, to understand the world around them more deeply, and to come in contact with the Creator who made that world through every film we make.
If that sounds exciting to you, check out the positions we currently have open! We’re hiring for both Production and post Production departments!
More information at distantmoon.com/careers!
Filmmaking vs iPhone.
I often hear people conflate cinematography and videography, and that’s always pointed to a misunderstanding (I think) about the difference between the two.
I’m a product of the Vimeo era of the early 2010s, where so many young people were working their butts off to learn the art of lighting and composition and good storytelling and all of the techniques and trappings of cinema.
And for many of those kids (many of whom are now filmmakers at the height of the industry), videography was “grab a camera and film what is there.” “Filmmaking” or “cinematography” was envisioning something different and making it come to life with lighting and as much production value as you could muster for each frame.
It’s always been a journey. Every year you get closer to how you envision it. It reminds me of Ira Glass’s famous discussion about taste building and how the life of the creative is about pursuing the skills to craft how you see it in your head.
These shots aren’t particularly unique but they do show how the final frame looks after lighting, lens choice, composition, set dressing, hmu etc. vs the iPhone shot of “how it looks” without all the other behind the scenes work.
With @thejonathanhay @julian_keene19 @distantmoonhq @ndufoundation
Interview set up for a shoot we did back in December for a series on film history.
The inspiration for this set up was that throughout the early 2000s and through much of modern cinema, filmmakers have leaned towards a color theory that balances orange and blue as complementary colors in the lighting and coloring of their movies. So we placed dozens of small hard “orange” sources throughout the deep background to contrast blue color washes to create the color contrast that has become so common throughout Hollywood filmmaking.
We wanted this shoot to feel like a polished behind the scenes on a film set, which was easy to pull off considering the sound stage we were filming and already had two complete sets that we could frame in the background to feel like we were talking about the history of Film on an active sound stage.
@contemplativedad standing in. Caleb Symons co-directing with me. @mikecurry_dp as DP. Props and all sorts of fun Easter eggs by @d_cool20 and @julian_keene19.
Post sup: @brandondetraglia
Abel. Dallas, 2023.
All natural light. Captured for a documentary. Playing with spaces and compositions.
@distantmoonhq
Throwback to an interview we shot a couple years ago for a documentary in Texas. First slide frames from the interview second slide the lighting set up.
@distantmoonhq #lighting #documentary #behindthescenes