This project will always hold a special place in our hearts. For this documentary, we traveled around the country with a micro crew, filming in New York, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, and Louisiana. We knew that we wouldn’t necessarily have time for big setups considering the small crew size, so we made a decision to lean into natural lighting and shooting on vintage anamorphic glass to lend a sense of slightly more heightened cinematic vibe to otherwise natural-feeling scenes.
It was an unexpected joy traveling with Don Beudreaux, who besides being a hugely influential economist also turned out to be a wonderful human being. He made it easy to tell his life story. If you ever wonder what sort of impact a single individual can have on the lives of countless others and entire generations, check out this film. Also, special shoutout to @ryanmoorecomposer who crafted a stunning soundtrack for this piece.
For this civil-war era scene, we wanted the lighting to feel like the talent was lit by candlelight. Hint: He wasn’t. We had a small LED panel set to tungsten and then gelled with additional CTO to create the warm light. Our gaffer hid just off frame manually flickering the dial to create a slow candle flicker.
Shooting on location is hard to beat. For this scene, we knew that we’d need to juxtapose technology with exploration of nature. So instead of trying to recreate nature with greenscreen, we decided to take a splinter crew to the sawtooth mountains in southern Idaho to capture people experiencing nature. This is only one of dozens of powerful shots and almost all the lighting is natural.
To get the contrast between subject and background, we found a small grove of trees in front of the lake, so that on camera side, the subject would be in shadow. With a wide open space in front of talent, we knew that the ambient light would key him nicely to create the soft wrap from his front to his back. This specific shot was taken while clouds were briefly in front of the sun
Every time we produce a new online course for @hillsdalecollege , we try to push the creative a hair further than for the previous courses. For the recent release of “The Roman Republic,” we wanted to make old maps come to life with the movement of troops, citizens, and nations across the mediterranean region. We sourced images of maps from the 17th-18th century to keep that “old map” look. But that was too easy, so why stop at easy?
We then shot empty book plates with old books and different types of parchment paper. We then composited the old maps onto the old books, added digital lighting, and then animated the areas of the map with different colors to draw the viewer’s eye.
To accomplish the highlights, we rotoscoped the areas that needed to be highlighted, and we animated it with footage of an ink spilling across a page. To finish it, everything was color corrected and tweaked to sell the composite. Voila! An old book shot of a map.
This is @themarissastreit . She’s the captain of a non-profit in Los Angeles that produces video content that has garnered over a billion views a year (yeah, with B). So we thought what better way to show how fearless a leader she is than to playfully add some hand-drawn wardrobe that hearkens back to some of the great military leaders in history. Also, how fun would it be if CEOs all wore large napoleonic hats today?
Let’s talk about trends. Have you noticed how often creative projects with the exact same storyline/visual style/other aesthetic end up being released simultaneously? A perfect example that comes to mind is when The Prestige (one of Christopher Nolan’s best movies in our humble opinion) came out the same year as The Illusionist (what even happened in that movie again?). Both about magicians willing to push themselves to the point of destruction for their craft. Both were set in the late early 1900s. Both feature swoon-worthy leads (Hugh Jackman vs Christian Bale). Too much? Ok, anyhow, it happens all the time. A Bug's Life and Antz. The Truman Show and EdTV. Armageddon and Deep Impact.
And right now we’re seeing a trend in hand-drawn animation over live-action/animation. It’s happening everywhere. Arcane. The Mitchells Vs. The Machines. Turning Red. Spiderman into the Spiderverse. And….our work. Over the past couple years, we’ve fallen in love with the combo of sketch elements and hand drawn animation over a different medium. It’s fascinating how certain styles/trends end up pervading an industry for a time. The question is how do you stay ahead of the trends? After all, we all want to be the first to make a style cool, not the last to use it when that style is on its way out. That’s why we’re ALWAYS talking about what makes something artistically worthwhile at Distant Moon.
What do you think about the current trend of mixed medium and hand drawn elements over other animation or live action footage? Let us know in the comments!
For this project, we had the challenge of matching a later shoot, on a green screen, with an earlier one on a practical set. While we had a solid foundation to go off of during the compositing process, the magic really was in how well the team matched the lighting between both shoots. (Shoutout to @ianareid and @timwirtala !) Because of their attention to detail, it was possible to create a barely detectable difference between the two. Also thanks to @chasepkinney and @brucejhudgins for their very much needed skills.
“The study of the Roman Republic is one of the most important things we can do as Americans.” After working on this project closely–we would agree! We were deliberate with these sound design and image treatment choices with hopes the combined effect would immerse viewers into ancient Roman everyday life which–shocker–isn’t that different from some scenes we find ourselves in today. It’s like there might be something to this whole “history repeats itself” thing…unless we choose to learn from the past and leave humanity’s biggest mistakes where they belong: in the history books.
Incorporating the right archival and B roll are essential to storytelling in documentary film. Thankfully, we had some great stills from Ron Terwilliger, the subject of this recent project on affordable housing. These assets created the perfect element of nostalgic homelife juxtaposed against images of today’s housing crisis, highlighting the need for a bipartisan solution to this critical issue. This piece was a unique challenge because we only had a total of 3 hours across two separate days to capture everything we could with Ron, including an hour + interview!
We hoped to take the client’s traditional style of paper cut-out animation and create a more cinematic experience with scenes that provide a greater sense of depth than their audience is used to. Volumetric lighting, hand-drawn scene elements, and reducing animation to 12fps provided a handcrafted touch that draws you into this "paper" world.
Shout out to @chase for his creative leadership on this piece!
Check out this clip from the title sequence of one of our latest projects. We approached the visual idea behind this title sequence by building the scenes in 3d and wrapping everything in an “art gallery” setting. As usual, the project evolved a lot throughout the process, but the key inspiration was still represented in the distorted vignettes and red lighting/texture. Shoutout to @taylorshanton and his team for really bringing this to life.
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#film #filmmaker #dcarts #dcfilm #dcfilmmaker #cinema #cinematic #cinematographer #distantmoon #cameragear #filmgear #outdoors #facts #cinemadc #distantmoonmedia #filmproduction #media #mediaproduction
A mini peek into how much work goes into the set up of a project.
Shoutout to our awesome team of guys on set a couple weeks ago!
@therealmikecurry
@timwirtala
@chasepkinney
@grumpyseacaptain
@piercayy
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#onset #film #cinema #timelapse
