DEKO 37 Video Production San Antonio has turned 10 years old. We started DEKO 37 at Geekdom on January 1st 2014. The first year of business was the hardest, but also thrilling. Thanks to Geekdom, I have learned how to do better social media marketing, budgets and how to charge clients. I am very grateful to be able to have a company for ten years.
I wanted to quit every other day when I first started, but thanks to friends and family I stuck with it. The reason I wanted to quit was because I didn’t have a network and I wasn’t making any money. But, this was one of the best times of my life.
Here are a few photos of the video production I did through out the past 10 years.
After six months at Geekdom, I was introduced to Julian Flores. He owned an app called YupiCall. He liked my first commercial a lot and hired me to do many more. We are still friends.
After Geekdom, I joined Alamo City Studios. This was a great experience for DEKO 37 Videographer San Antonio because I met several filmmakers and video producers that helped me get better at my craft. The studio was started by Kerry Valderrama. Kerry had the vision to unite SA filmakers and make San Antonio a huge hub for films.
Unfortunately, Kerry passed away in October. So many people have been affected by his loss. Not just friend and family, but the film community. Kerry would lobby for film incentives, go to every film festival in Texas and encourage filmmakers on how to distribute films.
He was also a successful filmmaker that shot Garrison, a military mystery, that revolves around an A.W.O.L soldier who is being searched for by his fellow troops. Garrison was inspired by the Fort Bragg killings of 2002.
He also helped produce Sanitarium. “Sanitarium” is an original series that consists of segments based on particular patients of a mental institution and what drove them to madness. The main actors are Malcolm McDowell, Lou Diamond Phillips and John Glover.
Alamo City Studios is still open and we have had a lot of different clients here filming and doing photography here.
Besides Kerry passing away, 2023 was a great year. It slowed down because of the SAG-AFTSRA strike for a few months. But we were lucky to still get business. One of my favorite projects last year was filming scenarios with the S.W.A.T. team and editing for the PFL.
For the SWAT team I was an AC (Assistant Camera), but after the first day I was able to film several scenes with two Sony Fs7s. The crew I worked with was really cool. One of my favorite part was in the fake village at the police academy. They SWAT team did a drill here where the police helicopter, a Hummer and the SWAT did a scenario of finding a group of criminals that stole Uranium. They threw a real flash grenade which caught me off guard.
We also did a lot of interviews with the SWAT team and the Chief of Police. I hope that I will get to work with this group soon.
Most of my other jobs were with seminars, commercials, a few non-profit shoots, bts for a SA film and a Youtube TV show.
This year I will be shooting a film with some people that come to Alamo City Studios. I will be using a Sony FX3 camera, a gimbal, tripod, 4 seinheiser mics with a zoom 6 mixer, and several lights (Nanlite 500, GoDox tube lights, matte lights, panasonic lights and many more).
So far the team has had a casting call for four actors, and a meeting at the location. We went over different angles and where we are going to put the lights here. There’s only two weeks before the shoot.
After this I will go down to Celestun, Mexico to help Eduarto film the Flamingo’s sanctuary being cleaned. They have already started filming but they want to do a pilot for this. I can’t wait to go.
DEKO 37 was hired recently to film for a series of education seminars for Incarnate Word. This was done to prepare for a high school decathlon. The first presentation was about film composition. Kevin talked about film scores for Space Odyssey, Dune, Star Wars and WALL·E . It was very interesting. Following this, a neurobiologist talked about cell structures and numerous other cellular facts.
Then there was math. The math part had a professor from Hungry doing math formulas for students to figure out. Following this there was a lecture about Virtual Reality and the history of when it started to now. The economics lecture was about people being happier in wealthier nations and how wealth starts.
The art lecture on Italy was great too. The final lecture was about science fiction in literature.
When we finished filming, Incarnate Word hired me again to edit TEDx Incarnate Word. I hired a North West Vista student, Michael, to help me edit the videos. There were eight TEDx talks. Michael did very well and I hope that I can hire him for more jobs. Hopefully, Incarnate Word will hire DEKO 37 film San Antonio to do there next TEDx production.
We also did a video for Alyssa Raymon, an artist who creates murials and paintings. She just started her business recently and wanted me to film her story. It’s going really great so far. I interviewed her at her house with a lot of art in her background. After this, I filmed B-roll of her showing me her painting, projects she is doing with her Ipad and a few locations where there were murals. I was very impressed by her work and the video will be done shortly.
I also finished filming with disAbility. I am very grateful for all of this work. DEKO 37 will work with them again in May.
Well here’s to a new year, I hope everyone has a great one!
