DESERTSKI FILMS, LLC

What is Desertski Films?

Desertski Films is a production company focused on creating inspiring content with relevant social messages in fictional worlds. Founded in 2016 by writer, director, and producer Arturo Vargas, Desertski Films focuses on current social, political, and environmental issues across the narrative genres, but not limited to, science fiction, fantasy, and drama, in both short and feature forms.

Given the ever changing social and cultural landscape, Desertski aims to develop and create content that captivates audiences by telling stories that inspire hope for a brighter future. Our goal is to focus on the impact of the human spirit in each of our projects, and to motivate audiences to view the world in a positive and imaginative light.

Gender equality and cultural diversity is a priority in every production by Desertski Films. Equal rights and representation for women and minorities is essential to best exemplify the world we want to live in.

Since it's founding, Desertski has been distinguished in film festivals throughout the world. Our films have screened at Cannes, Worldfest, Hollyshorts, and Irvine International, among others. Having won numerous awards for Best Science-Fiction Film, with distinctions in Direction, Cinematography, Original Score, and Sound Mixing. We look forward to growing in every area of the entertainment business.

What are you working on right now?

Right now we’ve wrapped post-production on our short film "Rescatado," a film about an immigrant child living in the U.S. who wishes to escape his abusive reality by bringing his favorite super hero to life. We’re now submitting to film festivals around the world hoping to screen at a theater near you. We also released our first comic book titled "Psychic Warriors: Rising," currently on Amazon and local comic book stores. We’ll be working on the sequel to “Rising” soon. Please check us out and stay updated on our Facebook page!

A little bit of "Aero" backstory

August 29, 2014  /  Arturo Vargas

It's Friday and we're close to finishing up "Aero" for an official screening!

As of now, "Aero" is nearly complete with visual effects and will have its last color correcting session today. Over the weekend, Christine Hals will wrap up Aero's music. On Tuesday, we'll go into final mixing both sound and music together for a surround sound experience in the theater. So I guess as a post-production experience we're all pretty excited to finally see it all come together.

For those who haven't read up on what "Aero" is actually about, here is the logline:

A troubled rookie drug dealer, Chase, encounters a supernatural being, Aero, who can solve his life-threatening problems if only he can restore its health.

As "Aero" is nearing completion, I like to reflect on when I started writing it originally in 2003. Therefore I'd like to give you a little bit of history on how I began writing this as a series.

Aero was inspired by three video games: Earthbound and Golden Sun, mainly, with some influence from the Halo series. I know, it's silly right? How can video games create a movie or a series of movies? Well in a lot of ways, actually. Most video game movies have turned out to be flops (Doom for example). However, their concepts can create a lot of ideas for different stories. If you guys know don't about Earthbound and Golden Sun, they're actually pretty similar. They're both about a group of kids/teenagers with supernatural abilities that go on an adventure to save the world. Earthbound takes place in the 90s (with made-up town names and creatures) whereas Golden Sun takes place in the medieval ages in a fantasy realm. However, they all have their different elements in making the game unique. Earthbound has very bizarre antagonists and obstacles that the heroes come across, for example, in one level, there is a giant pencil statue that block the heroes path which leads them to having to fight a giant monster made out of a pile of puke. Weird right? Golden Sun on the other hand has a lot of backstory in their realm called Weyard with mythical creatures and stuff. So like Final Fantasy, basically.

The characters of these games are how the concept of "Aero" sort of began. I actually started writing this series not writing about the character, Aero, but myself as the lead character (Because that's what 13 year old kids do of course). Anyways, the story takes place in the future where humanity is spread across the galaxy and is at its peak of destroying itself. Aero comes into play as a character who watches over humanity and plays as its "guardian angel". He selectively grants his powers to teenagers who he believes to have the ability to prevent the world from ending. This is where he comes in selects "me" as the "chosen one" to save humanity from extinction. "I" go on a journey with a fellowship of other teenagers to stop terrorist and alien attacks across the universe (That's where the Halo influence comes from). The short film "Aero" takes place hundreds of years before the original story. In fact, it takes place in the present, where the original story takes place around the year 2400. Since 2003 I've written about 23 books of 200 pages of comic books to this series as well as  a 140 page feature script that has copyright and stored by the Writers Guild of America. So of course, I still have future plans for the series as a whole and will continue to pursue it once the short film is completed.

There you have it, "Aero" is a dear film and character to me, and when the film is officially released, I can only hope you can continue to follow up on the series when the time comes.

Thanks for reading. Final teaser trailer for "Aero" coming next week.

-Art Vargas

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