This week, we are featuring Dan Long, half of the married couple that comprise Long Winter Media, a production company crafting “stories through image and word in order to cultivate the identity of [their] clients in video, web, and graphic design.” Two weeks ago, we features her wife, Michaela.
Michaela and Dan’s short, Invention, is already making an impact at film festivals around the country. See it if you have the chance.
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Dan Long
Writer, Producer, Director
Long Winter Media
1) How did you get into filmmaking and why?
My love for storytelling started in 2nd grade with Brian Jacques’ Redwall series – it’s like Tolkien’s Middle-Earth but with talking animals as the different races. He didn’t release books in chronological order, so I started filling in the timeline with my own imagination.
Over time, story became a central part of how I understood the world. If I have questions, I’ll often play them out in characters, plots, and magical moments. If I hear a song, I picture the moving images to accompany it. If I hear a philosophical statement, I’ll imagine a story revolving around that issue. Filmmaking is an extension of this interpretive lens. It’s a collision of all the crafts I enjoy telling stories through – images, words, music. Most importantly for me, filmmaking is collaborative storytelling with a community of storytellers contributing their talent to create a film.
2) What project(s) are you particularly excited about (current or past) and why?
You should read my wife Michaela’s list first, because I’m thrilled about all those. I’ll also add our company as a project. We’ve honed our “brand” around passions and skills we both have, which is really exciting. Along with filmmaking, I get to tell stories in websites, graphic design, and other media crafts. I couldn’t feel more blessed to do work that builds my creativity and imagination, while also letting me connect with other people and companies over their story. I don’t always recognize the blessing because every project involves some aspect that is difficult. But on the whole, Long Winter Media has been a great place to develop as a storyteller. To see what I’m talking about, check out LongWinterMedia.com where the site literally tells a story while also sharing about our company and work.
3) How does your faith impact your filmmaking?
As I spend more time in filmmaking, the distinction between my craft and my faith is less evident. Being a filmmaker with Christian faith has become less like preaching and more like a fish swimming. Sometimes I’ll directly ask myself, Where’s Jesus or the Gospel in all this? More often, I tell stories knowing that everything I do is immersed in my faith. Human questions and conflicts and discoveries are faith questions, conflicts, and discoveries.
For example, our short film Invention centers around a young girl creating an invention to hear her dead mother’s voice, and it has resurrection theology all through it. I didn’t set out to write resurrection theology because I didn’t have to. Resurrection (faith in it or not) is inherently part of my human experience with death. So, I can’t help but understand the story without exploring the brokenness of human bodies and the resurrection of life beyond death (whether that’s in the continuity of family and memories, or in physical resurrection).
I try to follow Madeline L’Engle when a student asked her how to be a Christian writer. L’Engle responded that if the writer is Christian, the writing will be Christian whether it says Jesus or not. If the writer isn’t Christian, the work won’t be Christian no matter how many times the name of Jesus is invoked.
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Visit Long Winter Media’s website to learn more about their passion and work. Like its makers, the website tells a story and invites you to enter into it. You may also connect with them on Facebook, where they frequently post photos, clips, and updates about their ongoing work.
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