Imagine working 23-and-one-half hours in a day. Those are the kind of hours filmmaker and director of photography Brandon D. Hyde worked while shooting his film, “The Moon Child,” which will debut at the Gasparilla Film Festival March 23.
The short film follows a young girl, Zoey, who is sick in the hospital. Her father, Thomas, tells her a story of Luna, a warrior girl. Luna is commissioned by the king of the land to find a mysterious creature and bring it back to his court. The story has a deeper meaning for Zoey.
“He relays his last messages to her, because she won’t be around much longer without straight-out telling her,” Hyde says.
The story came about from writer and director Matt Glover, a friend of Hyde. Glover was inspired by 1980s fantasy movies, such as “Labyrinth” and “The NeverEnding Story.”
Hyde’s job was to bring that fantasy element alive in “The Moon Child” as the director of photography. With a $1,000 budget, Hyde used other films such as “The Fall” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” for inspiration. Hyde also drew from his childhood tromping through the woods of Tennessee for the project. His inspirations led him to create films utilizing light and shadow.
“I love darker films,” Hyde says. “I love when you can tell a story and use light and shadows to tell a character’s story. In dark moments, you can really know someone. I love to manipulate the lighting to make the audience feel what the character feels.”
For “The Moon Child,” the crew shot at a University of South Florida campus training room for their hospital scenes and at a 4,000-acre ranch for the wooded scenes in August 2012.
Of course, no film is complete without some drama. While shooting in the woods, the crew had set up three generators. On the first day, one generator went down. Another died the second day.
“That was stressful,” Hyde says. “I was trying not to blow the fuse on the last one.”
Hyde and the crew managed to pull it off and turn it into the success it is today. As well as making an appearance in the Gasparilla Film Festival, the film was also shown at Southeastern University in Lakeland.
In addition to filming “The Moon Child,” Hyde has worked on three other short films in the past year.
He started “The Blood and The Burn” in July on a $500 budget. The short is a psychological thriller and is still in post-production.
During a 48-hour film festival, Hyde worked on “Robbin’ Robin,” a coming-of-age comedy short. At the beginning of the two days, they were given a genre, some lines, a character and a prop to use in their film, which cost them just $200 to make.
For “Brush,” Hyde had a bigger budget of $10,000 for a three-day shoot.
“We felt very strongly about this and wanted it to look the most professional,” Hyde says. “This could be the next stepping stone to a feature or a bigger budget.”
The story is raw with the emotional pain of divorce. The crew rented a Red Epic, the camera used to shoot “The Hobbit.”
“I want people to understand that the films, TV shows, commercials they watch — it takes 30 seconds to watch a commercial or two hours (for) a movie — and that’s all you get,” Hyde said. “But the amount of work that goes into it — there’s a reason the credits are so long at the end.”
Hyde didn’t start watching movies until he was about 18. But when he started, he fell in love with them.
“The first time I made a movie, I had no idea what I was doing,” Hyde wrote in his blog. “I don’t even remember the camera I used or how I even edited it. I just know that when I finished it, I never felt so accomplished in anything in my life.”
Floating around from school to school, major to major, Hyde realized he could get a degree in his passion. In 2007, he graduated from Southeastern University.
“I was into music, I was into theater, I was into directing,” Hyde says. “All those things that I always liked were combined into one thing.”
Hyde has worked on 35 different projects. He even went to Los Angeles for four months in 2009 and worked on 11 films, directing two and acting as director of photography on the others.
Making the choice to move back to Florida to be with his wife and family, Hyde hasn’t given up his love of film.
“I’m still learning, but I’m coming along,” Hyde says. “My goal is to win an Oscar. As weird as it sounds from some kid from Eastern Tennessee, but I want to be one of the greats.”
Contact Amber Jurgensen at ajurgensen@plantcityobserver.com.