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.
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.
Why We’re Different
Everyone says they’re different, so we’ll let our partners do the talking.
World-Class Filmmaking
From working with the White House to a grassroots nonprofit, we’re creating content that rivals Hollywood.
Unreasonable Commitment to Quality
Our team stops at nothing to make the best project possible.
We Care More Than You Do About Your Project
Sound ridiculous? See what one of our clients says.
An extraordinary creative partner from start to finish.
Turn Your Vision to film
Mission Control is our multi-pronged process that captures your key objectives, risks, and messaging, ensuring that the project is a success.
An interview shot that’s set on a recreation of the second deck of the famous wailing ship the Essex.
A set built by our Production team at @distantmoonhq , we wanted to immerse viewers of an upcoming series about Moby Dick in the world of whaling and give them a sense of not just the sort of environment that the characters of the novel would have found themselves, but to help frame their thinking about all of the events that take place in Herman Melville’s unbelievable epic novel.
The entire set with the exception of practicals and the key light was lit from outside of the ship using large @aputure.lighting LED‘s to imitate the look of the sun cutting through peepholes and grates on the upper deck of the ship.
The first two slides are shots from the series. The next shots are behind the scenes videos and photos showing what the set and lighting set up looked like.
cinematography by the always amazing @mikecurry_dp and featuring a stand-in blocking video with my friend and producer @jeremiahreganhcoc
Anytime that I walk into a new location (especially for a documentary) I take reference photos for the shots that I envision in that space. This is a great example of a final shot as envisioned compared to the reference photo/what the space looked like without any lighting or talent in place.
Unlike many of the soundstage shoots we do where we build custom sets, this was a real war games room at National Defense University (@ndufoundation) with my friend @thejonathanhay.
With the fabulous crew @dehrenberg @taylorroesch @julian_keene19
One of the desires we had for “The Moment” was that it should feel like a fever dream for much of the party. Emily partly wants to be there, partly doesn’t. Her friends have ulterior motives. But on top of that, between drugs and alcohol consumption, she’s already under the influence by the beginning of the film.
We wanted the party to feel like something like the heightened form of what viewers experienced at a crazy high-school party. It had to feel exciting but dangerous. And viewers had to feel like even while they were making decisions, it was constantly at risk of spinning out of control.
@jcarrington3 @stuhaightvideo and the rest of the lighting team really crushed the intense and sometimes oppressive feeling of the constantly evolving lighting of the party. The entire party component of the film and all scenes at the house had to be filmed in something like 10 days, so it was a mad rush getting through the setups and our crew and cast crushed it.
Once production ended, the even harder challenge of post began. I’ll talk about how @nathanbittnerfilm and I tackled that in upcoming posts.
For “The Moment”, my DP @jcarrington3 and I discussed the use of color for helping audiences feel like they are truly experiencing different alternate paths through the main character’s experience in the movie. There were over 30 different possible story combinations and many of them took place in a single house party at night time, so it was important to make the decision pathways feel extremely unique and like different worlds.
In these three shots, you can see the different color approach for the first point that a viewer has to choose between three options: “explore the party,” “get a drink,” or “take the pills.”
This first decision pushes you into three very different feeling worlds with different color palletes and dozens of follow up choices that ultimately make the character’s life great or horrific, depending on how the night goes.
Our protagonist, Emily, was brought to life by the great @piper.viper and the role of her best friends were crushed by @lisameyerovich and @brent_bentz_13.
I’ve shown a lot of BTS of interview lighting, set ups over the last week, and I thought I’d start showing frames and behind the scenes from my choose your own adventure film “The Moment.”
The moment is a film where the audience gets to walk in the shoes of a high school girl as she’s dragged to a house party by her best friend. A cautionary tale about the consequences of your decisions and a story that’s meant to empower young people with the understanding of their choices, the moment has 30+ different branches that have user can experience based on their decisions.
In these frames, I wanted to show how lighting and set dressing can create a space in otherwise ordinary house. The first few slides are shots from the film. The next couple slides show the houseparty alcohol bottles, trash, and beer cans set dressed, but without any lighting in the final slide shows the house before the art department came through “destroyed“ the environment. The objective was for the space to feel overwhelming and in some ways claustrophobic. Art department led by @d_cool20 and the g&e and camera team led by the incredible @jcarrington3 really brought the world to life. Production by @distantmoonhq
This shot is another example of an extreme wide for an interview set up, where a host of lights had to be in the main A shot in order to light the talent appropriately and separate them from the room.
You’ll see in the first frame, the final composite with all lights removed and the multiple A-cam plates meshed together in post.
In the second shot, you’ll see what it looked like on the day on the monitor for the filming of the interview. In order to get beautiful Rembrandt lighting for all camera angles. It’s often necessary to get the lights closer and lower to the talent so that the light doesn’t spill all over the room and so that it has a nice shape on the subjects faces.
This technique is also loved by our sound mixers who are able to get the boom mics way closer to the talent without having to rely on lav mics which often introduce clothing movement or more muffled audio than well-placed boom mics.
The other shots show the location scout that happened a week earlier with stands @yettanother and Brittany Baldwin sitting in.
Shot by @dehrenberg with lighting by @taylorroesch and @stuhaightvideo produced by @d_cool20 and @maktrob
Music from my new film Revolutionary America by @ryanmoorecomposer and @timfain
From finished shots to empty soundstage at the end.
Can’t we just shoot in real classrooms? Yeah. But then we’d have to cancel school for the week in multiple classrooms of the school. We would increase our shooting time as we wait for clouds/sun/rain that hurt consistency outside, we’d have to redecorate the classrooms to match the subject matter of the series.
Or we can build two classroom sets and shoot out all content for each grade level each day then repaint/re/dress each set each evening so that the next morning when the next set of students and teachers walk in their grade level environment is ready for them.
The consistency and dependability of soundstage shooting has become such a dependable and vital component of my workflow for capturing beautiful longform content that I often recommend it to many of the partners I work with. DP: @mikecurry_dp set builds: @d_cool20 @julian_keene19 and many others production and post by @distantmoonhq
A little bts from the “white cyc” shoot I posted earlier. Checking in on the team (ie distracting them) as they prep: @matthewprojas @dehrenberg @maktrob @julian_keene19
Gotta steal “lunch” from crafty! Definitely not sponsored by @chomps….but also, guys our film sets basically run on your beef sticks. Especially the jalapeño ones.
Why build a cyc wall? Dont all cyc wall shoots just feel boring and white? Or some sort of underlit gray?
Last fall, our team @distantmoonhq built a cyc wall in our studio. Our objective was to have a space that was versatile and could be used for all sorts of quick hit interview set ups that didn’t need custom set builds.
This project, had a major creative objective: tie in the tone and visuals and feeling of medical research and sterility with abstract beauty and color.
Check out the finals shots and bts snaps from the prelighting day to see the after vs the before. directed by @matthewprojas, produced by @maktrob and @kacie.lynn_ and guided through post by @brandondetraglia, Caleb Symmons, segarsj, and many others at Distant Moon Post.
I thiiink I can say with accuracy that last year our team built the largest set ever made for an online course (if you know of one that beats ours, please tell me! I want to know!)
It is no exaggeration to say that the art department (which includes production design, set construction, set dressing, props, etc.) is often the most underrated and most visually important departments for any film.
I often think about the concept of faking it until you make it. The very first set we built. We had no idea how to build set flats. That was about eight years ago, and a client asked us what we thought the best location would be for the project and I suggested we simply build a set that looked like an Indiana Jones set. The client asked, “can you do that?” and with outward confidence and inward, trepidation, I said, “of course!”
Fast forward to today, and we build multiple sets a year for various projects, with art led by the incredible @d_cool20.
Production by @distantmoonhq cinematography by @mikecurry_dp produced by D cool, @kacie.lynn_ and @jeremiahreganhcoc
@hillsdalecollege’s upcoming series on Homer’s The Odyssey coming soon.
Pics/videos in this post: 1. Frames 2. Goobers messing up takes 3. Explanation of lighting a set like this 4. Sound mixer sitting in (is Andrew off IG now?) 5. Jeremiah taking pics of Video village 6. Video village 7.the ai reference imagery… 8. The real human made deal 9. More set build bts
Final frames in behind-the-scenes of seven different set ups for a commercial @distantmoonhq shot last year for @ndufoundation.
The brief was capture over 25 different set ups and scenes over the course of two days to tell the story of the premier national defense leadership training college in the world. With a small documentary team my co-producer and co-director @thejonathanhay and I leaned on mostly natural light setups with a handful of large soft sources to create shape for images in the large spaces and outdoor environments. Shoutout to my buddies @dehrenberg, @taylorroesch, and @julian_keene19 who really helped shape the light and cam angles and move quickly through a ton of setups.
Final shot shows the very simple negative fill and beadboard bounce setup for the exterior talking head segment.
It’s said that if you can light a beautiful interview, you can light essentially any scene. That thought has stuck with me for over a decade as the @distantmoonhq team, and I have worked to hone the magic behind shooting multi camera interviews in a whole range of locations.
Four years we have practiced framing wide shots with lights and grip equipment in the shot, knowing that our editorial and VFX team have the skill to composite the gear out of the final shots, but this requires taking multiple plates and backup plans to ensure the shots fully work once VFX has painted out the equipment.
For these shots, we took at least five plates per wide shot to ensure that lighting matched across the room when equipment was pulled out of the wides.
Frames for a special edition episode, we produced for @wordonfire_catholicministries, @bishopbarron interviewed Justice @justiceamybarrett.
directed by Caleb Symmons shot by @dehrenberg produced and edited by the incredible team at @distantmoonhq
Connect
Social Proof
Real Impact. Real Results.
An interview shot that’s set on a recreation of the second deck of the famous wailing ship the Essex.
A set built by our Production team at @distantmoonhq , we wanted to immerse viewers of an upcoming series about Moby Dick in the world of whaling and give them a sense of not just the sort of environment that the characters of the novel would have found themselves, but to help frame their thinking about all of the events that take place in Herman Melville’s unbelievable epic novel.
The entire set with the exception of practicals and the key light was lit from outside of the ship using large @aputure.lighting LED‘s to imitate the look of the sun cutting through peepholes and grates on the upper deck of the ship.
The first two slides are shots from the series. The next shots are behind the scenes videos and photos showing what the set and lighting set up looked like.
cinematography by the always amazing @mikecurry_dp and featuring a stand-in blocking video with my friend and producer @jeremiahreganhcoc
Final shot vs location scout.
Anytime that I walk into a new location (especially for a documentary) I take reference photos for the shots that I envision in that space. This is a great example of a final shot as envisioned compared to the reference photo/what the space looked like without any lighting or talent in place.
Unlike many of the soundstage shoots we do where we build custom sets, this was a real war games room at National Defense University (@ndufoundation) with my friend @thejonathanhay.
With the fabulous crew @dehrenberg @taylorroesch @julian_keene19
One of the desires we had for “The Moment” was that it should feel like a fever dream for much of the party. Emily partly wants to be there, partly doesn’t. Her friends have ulterior motives. But on top of that, between drugs and alcohol consumption, she’s already under the influence by the beginning of the film.
We wanted the party to feel like something like the heightened form of what viewers experienced at a crazy high-school party. It had to feel exciting but dangerous. And viewers had to feel like even while they were making decisions, it was constantly at risk of spinning out of control.
@jcarrington3 @stuhaightvideo and the rest of the lighting team really crushed the intense and sometimes oppressive feeling of the constantly evolving lighting of the party. The entire party component of the film and all scenes at the house had to be filmed in something like 10 days, so it was a mad rush getting through the setups and our crew and cast crushed it.
Once production ended, the even harder challenge of post began. I’ll talk about how @nathanbittnerfilm and I tackled that in upcoming posts.
@piper.viper @brent_bentz_13 @taylorabigailactress @matt_perl @lisameyerovich @themagicswaggin @faithandtrust86 @snjohnson1014 @d_cool20 @brandondetraglia @nathanbittnerfilm
For “The Moment”, my DP @jcarrington3 and I discussed the use of color for helping audiences feel like they are truly experiencing different alternate paths through the main character’s experience in the movie. There were over 30 different possible story combinations and many of them took place in a single house party at night time, so it was important to make the decision pathways feel extremely unique and like different worlds.
In these three shots, you can see the different color approach for the first point that a viewer has to choose between three options: “explore the party,” “get a drink,” or “take the pills.”
This first decision pushes you into three very different feeling worlds with different color palletes and dozens of follow up choices that ultimately make the character’s life great or horrific, depending on how the night goes.
Our protagonist, Emily, was brought to life by the great @piper.viper and the role of her best friends were crushed by @lisameyerovich and @brent_bentz_13.
I’ve shown a lot of BTS of interview lighting, set ups over the last week, and I thought I’d start showing frames and behind the scenes from my choose your own adventure film “The Moment.”
The moment is a film where the audience gets to walk in the shoes of a high school girl as she’s dragged to a house party by her best friend. A cautionary tale about the consequences of your decisions and a story that’s meant to empower young people with the understanding of their choices, the moment has 30+ different branches that have user can experience based on their decisions.
In these frames, I wanted to show how lighting and set dressing can create a space in otherwise ordinary house. The first few slides are shots from the film. The next couple slides show the houseparty alcohol bottles, trash, and beer cans set dressed, but without any lighting in the final slide shows the house before the art department came through “destroyed“ the environment. The objective was for the space to feel overwhelming and in some ways claustrophobic. Art department led by @d_cool20 and the g&e and camera team led by the incredible @jcarrington3 really brought the world to life. Production by @distantmoonhq
This shot is another example of an extreme wide for an interview set up, where a host of lights had to be in the main A shot in order to light the talent appropriately and separate them from the room.
You’ll see in the first frame, the final composite with all lights removed and the multiple A-cam plates meshed together in post.
In the second shot, you’ll see what it looked like on the day on the monitor for the filming of the interview. In order to get beautiful Rembrandt lighting for all camera angles. It’s often necessary to get the lights closer and lower to the talent so that the light doesn’t spill all over the room and so that it has a nice shape on the subjects faces.
This technique is also loved by our sound mixers who are able to get the boom mics way closer to the talent without having to rely on lav mics which often introduce clothing movement or more muffled audio than well-placed boom mics.
The other shots show the location scout that happened a week earlier with stands @yettanother and Brittany Baldwin sitting in.
Shot by @dehrenberg with lighting by @taylorroesch and @stuhaightvideo produced by @d_cool20 and @maktrob
Music from my new film Revolutionary America by @ryanmoorecomposer and @timfain
From finished shots to empty soundstage at the end.
Can’t we just shoot in real classrooms? Yeah. But then we’d have to cancel school for the week in multiple classrooms of the school. We would increase our shooting time as we wait for clouds/sun/rain that hurt consistency outside, we’d have to redecorate the classrooms to match the subject matter of the series.
Or we can build two classroom sets and shoot out all content for each grade level each day then repaint/re/dress each set each evening so that the next morning when the next set of students and teachers walk in their grade level environment is ready for them.
The consistency and dependability of soundstage shooting has become such a dependable and vital component of my workflow for capturing beautiful longform content that I often recommend it to many of the partners I work with.
DP: @mikecurry_dp set builds: @d_cool20 @julian_keene19 and many others production and post by @distantmoonhq
A little bts from the “white cyc” shoot I posted earlier. Checking in on the team (ie distracting them) as they prep: @matthewprojas @dehrenberg @maktrob @julian_keene19
Gotta steal “lunch” from crafty! Definitely not sponsored by @chomps….but also, guys our film sets basically run on your beef sticks. Especially the jalapeño ones.
Why build a cyc wall? Dont all cyc wall shoots just feel boring and white? Or some sort of underlit gray?
Last fall, our team @distantmoonhq built a cyc wall in our studio. Our objective was to have a space that was versatile and could be used for all sorts of quick hit interview set ups that didn’t need custom set builds.
This project, had a major creative objective: tie in the tone and visuals and feeling of medical research and sterility with abstract beauty and color.
Check out the finals shots and bts snaps from the prelighting day to see the after vs the before.
directed by @matthewprojas, produced by @maktrob and @kacie.lynn_ and guided through post by @brandondetraglia, Caleb Symmons, segarsj, and many others at Distant Moon Post.
I thiiink I can say with accuracy that last year our team built the largest set ever made for an online course (if you know of one that beats ours, please tell me! I want to know!)
It is no exaggeration to say that the art department (which includes production design, set construction, set dressing, props, etc.) is often the most underrated and most visually important departments for any film.
I often think about the concept of faking it until you make it. The very first set we built. We had no idea how to build set flats. That was about eight years ago, and a client asked us what we thought the best location would be for the project and I suggested we simply build a set that looked like an Indiana Jones set. The client asked, “can you do that?” and with outward confidence and inward, trepidation, I said, “of course!”
Fast forward to today, and we build multiple sets a year for various projects, with art led by the incredible @d_cool20.
Production by @distantmoonhq cinematography by @mikecurry_dp produced by D cool, @kacie.lynn_ and @jeremiahreganhcoc
@hillsdalecollege’s upcoming series on Homer’s The Odyssey coming soon.
Pics/videos in this post:
1. Frames
2. Goobers messing up takes
3. Explanation of lighting a set like this
4. Sound mixer sitting in (is Andrew off IG now?)
5. Jeremiah taking pics of Video village
6. Video village
7.the ai reference imagery…
8. The real human made deal
9. More set build bts
Final frames in behind-the-scenes of seven different set ups for a commercial @distantmoonhq shot last year for @ndufoundation.
The brief was capture over 25 different set ups and scenes over the course of two days to tell the story of the premier national defense leadership training college in the world. With a small documentary team my co-producer and co-director @thejonathanhay and I leaned on mostly natural light setups with a handful of large soft sources to create shape for images in the large spaces and outdoor environments. Shoutout to my buddies @dehrenberg, @taylorroesch, and @julian_keene19 who really helped shape the light and cam angles and move quickly through a ton of setups.
Final shot shows the very simple negative fill and beadboard bounce setup for the exterior talking head segment.
It’s said that if you can light a beautiful interview, you can light essentially any scene. That thought has stuck with me for over a decade as the @distantmoonhq team, and I have worked to hone the magic behind shooting multi camera interviews in a whole range of locations.
Four years we have practiced framing wide shots with lights and grip equipment in the shot, knowing that our editorial and VFX team have the skill to composite the gear out of the final shots, but this requires taking multiple plates and backup plans to ensure the shots fully work once VFX has painted out the equipment.
For these shots, we took at least five plates per wide shot to ensure that lighting matched across the room when equipment was pulled out of the wides.
Frames for a special edition episode, we produced for @wordonfire_catholicministries, @bishopbarron interviewed Justice @justiceamybarrett.
directed by Caleb Symmons shot by @dehrenberg produced and edited by the incredible team at @distantmoonhq