Category: Work

  • The Film Impact Summit

    \\\\\\\Hey gang! For the last few years I’ve wanted to find ways for Distant Moon to invest in organizations, brands, and nonprofits who are also fighting for human flourishing around the world. Our mission at Distant Moon is “Human Flourishing through storytelling,” and we want to help you become more effective at reaching your audience!

    So, I’m really excited to personally invite you to the Film Impact Summit, hosted by Distant Moon on September 12, 2025! I even recorded a little video about what you can expect if you attend.

    This one-day event is limited to the first 50 people to register, so secure your spot today.

    In-person will be far more insightful and impactful than watching it online later. You’ll have the chance to be in the room and engage directly with executives from:

    • Kingdom Story Company
    • Hillsdale College Online Courses
    • Freethink + Big Think
    • Top agencies behind successful nonprofit and issue-based campaigns

    This is where the future of story-driven impact in education, philanthropy, and media converges.

    And I want to give you a sneak peak!

    I thought: how can I keep this from being just a “marketing email?” How can I bring value even to those who won’t be able to be in the room with us?

    So between now and Monday, I’m going to send four simplified insights from our upcoming event straight to your inbox here. These are insights that you can use right now to transform the way you think about film, story, and impact.

    On Monday I’ll talk about:

    • Using true stories to turn viewers into advocates (and)
    • Turning Your Story into a Box Office Success

    And today I’m discussing:

    • How to leverage audience-powered film instead of blind storytelling (and)
    • Finding your niche, accepting risk, and leading your industry.

    Let’s jump in!

    1. Audience-powered film outperforms “blind storytelling”

    Most filmmakers and storytellers wait until their project is finished to invite the audience in. That’s a mistake. Audience participation shouldn’t start at release of a film or video; it should begin in the earliest stages. When people help bring the project to life, they don’t just watch the film, they own it.

    How to put this into practice:

    • Message-Test Early: Share short written versions of your message (taglines, one-minute pitches, concept art) on email, social, or in small focus groups. Ask: What part sticks with you? What feels forgettable? Don’t wait until the whole film is locked to learn what resonates.
    • Develop with Feedback: Create rough teaser clips or short prototypes of your story in different formats (animation vs. live action, interview vs. narrative). Put them in front of your audience and ask them what emotion they felt watching it. Did they laugh? Did they feel hope? Did they feel nothing?
    • Always Share the Why, Not the How: Nobody falls in love with a process. People connect when they understand why this story matters and why their involvement will shape the outcome. When you communicate purpose, your audience feels part of the mission instead of spectators.

    (This is something my friend Allen Thornburg and I have been shaping for months: Audience-Powered Filmmaking. I’m working on a much more thorough walk through of this process. If you’re interested in getting an in-depth first draft of this guide, let me know and I’ll pass it along when I have the first draft finished!)

    2. Find your niche, take the risk to invest, and become the front-runner in your industry.

    Hillsdale College didn’t just stumble into millions of learners. They took a bold risk. Years before there was evidence of demand, they poured time, money, and energy into developing cinematic online courses. At the time, the idea of turning a college lecture into a binge-worthy video series sounded untested (even risky). At the time, nobody except a new startup called “Masterclass” was even trying to create this new category. Hillsdale took the plunge. They created a new category: Cinematic Online Learning like Masterclass, but with a documentary-style immersion and a classical liberal arts devotion to truth. Nobody was doing this. Now, eight years later, everyone tries to copy them.

    The lesson: there is no meaningful storytelling or audience-building without risk, but the best risks create their own category and define it as the first entrant.

    How to apply this mindset:

    • Find your WHY, create an industry-defining product, and invest before you see returns: Past performance doesn’t indicate future success, but Hillsdale is a case study in defining a new category and then taking calculated risk to invest before there’s a guaranteed audience. Make your story as if millions will watch, even if only a hundred do at first.
    • Bet on Quality: Hillsdale didn’t just record professors at a lectern. They built sets, filmed with professional crews, and treated education like cinema. That upfront risk created an experience audiences actually wanted.
    • Understand That Risk is the Soil of Growth: If you’re waiting for certainty before investing in film, you’ll always be behind. Risk is the unavoidable price of breakthrough.

    Hillsdale’s courage created a platform that now serves millions annually. Their success proves the power of creating your own niche and then being willing to take calculated risks. This combination is not optional. It’s essential.

    OK! So those two insights are just a sneak peak (and trust me the presenters at our event are going to be way more gripping and insightful than my little summaries)! Next week, I’ll share how the most effective campaigns use true stories to turn passive viewers into lifelong advocates, and why even blockbuster hits follow a set of storytelling “rules” you can’t afford to ignore. These two insights could change not only how you tell your story, but whether anyone actually listens.

    I’ll see ya then! But in the meantime, sign up for our in person summit now before seats fill up!

    Here’s to Human Flourishing!

    –Ian

    Join Us at the Summit!

    These are just starting points. At the Impact Film Summit, we’ll dive deeper into frameworks, show examples from inside campaigns, and give you tools to build films that inspire and sustain growth.

    📅 Date: September 12, 2025
    📍 Location: Hotel Burg, Leesburg, VA
    🎟 Register Now—Limited to 50 People
    👉 Want to learn more? Watch the video below!

    https://distantmoon.com/film-impact-summit/#video

  • Breakthrough! How Brands Can Reach Audiences in the Age of Distraction. 

    Breakthrough! How Brands Can Reach Audiences in the Age of Distraction. 

    Ok, gang. this is a long one, but I think it’s valuable. I also think that if you start practicing what I unpack below, it could start serving your organization, projects, and storytelling immediately. I hope it’s as valuable to you as it has proven to be for me and the team over the past few months. So with out further ado, here we go!

    Introduction: The Problem No One Wants to Admit

    In mid-May 2025, I had the honor of attending the Webby Awards in New York. (I promise this is the last time I’ll mention this in our newsletter, ok!?) Our team at Distant Moon, alongside our technical and agency partners, had just won Best Multimedia Storytelling. It was a moment of celebration, of creative validation, and of anticipation – because I was about to meet the minds who had supposedly shaped the internet over the past year.

    But what I encountered instead was a culture standing at the crossroads.

    One by one, the honorees paraded on stage. Not for their world-changing vision or stories that stirred the soul. But for content that was – at best – amusing. TikTokers. YouTubers. Instagrammers. A guy who went viral posting squirrel videos. A woman whose performance art could be summarized as “very demure, very mindful.” There was no shortage of attention, but I couldn’t help wondering: To what end? Where were the stories that shaped people’s lives for the better?

    Ironically, at my own table sat people whose work did that – projects that gave voice to peacemakers from every nation, or helped viewers understand the experiences of others from radically different backgrounds. But they weren’t the creators on stage. The spotlight went to the spectacle, not the substance.

    Why?

    Because Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan were right. “Who are Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan?” I’m glad you asked, more on them in a moment, but in short, they’re famous for the well-known aphorism: “The medium is the message.”

    Today’s dominant media – TikTok, Instagram, YouTube – were built for attention, not transformation. These platforms reward brevity, not depth; spectacle, not soul. And when you try to tell meaningful stories in a medium designed for distractions, the medium wins. This is not to say that NO longform and insightful content can capture attention on these mediums. In fact, as you’ll see, we’re convinced that with strategic and mindful (but not demure) processes applied to the traditional film and content creation process, you can co-opt inherently distraction-prone media platforms for soul-enriching and message-delivering content.

    But this requires a rigorous and often ignored approach. One that helps brands with something truly worth saying break through all the noise.

    Section 1: The Hidden Architecture of Modern Media

    In his prophetic book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman warned us that the greatest threat to truth wasn’t censorship, but entertainment. He built on Canadian philosopher, Marshall McLuhan’s insight that the form of communication – the medium – shapes the content it conveys.

    McLuhan put it bluntly: The medium is the message.

    Postman took it further: in a television-dominated world at the time of his writing, even serious subjects become entertainment. In our era, the dynamic is supercharged. TikTok doesn’t just favor the trivial. It penalizes the profound.

    The result? Content that actually matters struggles to survive. It gets buried under waves of viral fluff.

    And this is where many brands (especially purpose-driven ones) get stuck. They have stories that matter. But they try to tell those stories through platforms that trivialize everything.

    Section 2: Why Traditional Film Still Doesn’t Cut It

    Some might say, “Just make a long-form film. Invest in quality. Tell the story cinematically.” And sure, that’s better than a TikTok video. But traditional film storytelling, when applied to messaging and brand-building still carries a fatal flaw:

    It’s broadcast. Not a conversation.

    Even beautiful films can fall flat if they’re built on assumptions about what an audience wants or needs. Films that are made for an audience, but never with them.

    This one-directional approach often leads to heartbreaking outcomes: high-effort films that miss the mark, don’t connect, and fade into oblivion.

    The brand-building and media landscape is littered with more examples of failure than success. Just look at the graveyard of branded videos on YouTube and Instagram that never reach beyond a few dozen views. For every viral campaign that breaks through, there are thousands of high-effort, high-cost pieces of content that vanish into the void. But this dynamic isn’t unique to marketing; it’s foundational to the entire storytelling industry. Hollywood, the very machine built to manufacture dreams, is structured around failure. In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say the business model of Hollywood relies on the rare success subsidizing a sea of flops. According to industry analyses, only about 20% of Hollywood films manage to achieve profitability, leaving approximately 80% failing to break even at the domestic box office.

    This means that most films lose money. And I’m not talking about obscure indie projects. I’m saying some of the most anticipated, studio-backed films with A-list talent and nine-figure budgets regularly underperform or outright bomb. The 2023 box office saw colossal losses on titles like The Marvels, which had the lowest opening of any Marvel Cinematic Universe movie and lost an estimated $237 million, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which, despite massive marketing spend and global recognition, is estimated to have lost over $100 million.

    So if even Hollywood, with all its data, budgets, and storytelling talent, struggles to connect with audiences, what hope does a mission-driven brand have of breaking through without a radically different approach?

    Section 3: A New Way Forward – Audience-Powered Film

    When considering these hurdles, I began talking with a good friend of mine who is a well-respected audience-analysis expert who has spent over 25 years in experience marketing. We  started discussing what filmmakers can do to overcome the significant risks that clients face in funding new film projects. The result? Something we call Audience-Powered Film.

    It’s a storytelling model rooted in Human-Centered Design (HCD). At its core, HCD flips the creative process on its head: instead of assuming we know the answer, we design with the user, not just for them.

    We’ve adapted this approach for film on several projects over the last year, and the initial results have been extraordinary.

    Here’s how it works (warning, the steps seem shockingly obvious, and yet few people practice them):

    1. GATHER (Insights)

    • Interviews with stakeholders and subject matter experts
    • In-depth interviews with real audience members
    • Audience, story, content, and format hypotheses

    2. IMAGINE (Co-creation)

    • A 2-day concept summit with creatives and clients
    • Co-creating multiple film concepts
    • Testing the best ideas with audience members
    • Final script and story plan crafted with real feedback

    3. DEVELOP (Film & Experience)

    • Shoot and edit a rough cut
    • Screen that cut with audience members
    • Revise based on real-world reactions
    • Deliver a final film shaped not just by creative vision, but end audience

    Section 4: Why This Works When Nothing Else Does

    We don’t just connect with audiences. We build with them.

    That’s the difference.

    • When an audience sees themselves in the development process, they’re not just viewers – they’re participants.
    • When the story reflects their real fears, hopes, and beliefs, they don’t just watch it – they share it.
    • When the medium is tailored to their habits and their hearts, it doesn’t just break through – it lands.

    Section 5: Who This Is For

    This isn’t for every brand. But it’s exactly right for:

    • Cause-based organizations that want to shift minds and move hearts.
    • Philanthropic leaders who believe storytelling can scale good.
    • Culture builders who know that the best ideas don’t go viral unless they’re designed to connect.

    Section 6: How You Can Use Audience-Powered Film

    Feel free to steal anything of value in this newsletter! First and foremost, I want to bless all of you reading this, so if something sticks and is helpful, it’s yours to use!

    But if you’re thinking, “This sounds like a lot of work and I don’t want to do this myself,” we’d also love to help you. We’re offering a limited number of Audience-Powered Film pilot projects, with early-stage pricing to refine and validate the process.

    Timelines:

    • GATHER & IMAGINE: 2-4 months (driven by availability and audience access).
    • DEVELOP & GO-TO-MARKET: Varies by scope but typically 4-12 months.

    If you’re leading a brand or initiative that has something truly worth saying, let’s build something that actually breaks through.

    Here’s to Human Flourishing!
    – Ian