Desert Cactus Films

Desert Cactus Films A new production company specializing in Music Videos and Live Events, with a strong focus on Visual FX.

Our Colorado premiere was a hit! We’re proud to announce that “Margaret the Brave” has won Best Short Film at the 2026 L...
05/25/2026

Our Colorado premiere was a hit! We’re proud to announce that “Margaret the Brave” has won Best Short Film at the 2026 Loudframe International Film Festival!

We want to give a huge thanks to the entire Fort Collins film community for making us feel right at home, and to the Lyric Cinema for hosting Margaret in such an awesome venue!

We met some really great people out there, and Jesse- congrats to you and your entire team for putting it together! We hope to come back soon with another project!

05/21/2026

Exciting news! The original score for “Margaret the Brave” will soon be available to listen to on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and more!!!

Our incredible composer Jesi Oklee Nelson, along with The Budapest Scoring Orchestra- have created some beautiful pieces for this film that we can’t wait for people to hear!

She spent over a year working on it with us and we could not be more grateful to have found such a wonderful collaborator and friend :)

We’re so stoked to announce that “Margaret the Brave” will have its Colorado premiere at the Loud Frame International Fi...
05/03/2026

We’re so stoked to announce that “Margaret the Brave” will have its Colorado premiere at the Loud Frame International Film Festival!!!

It will be playing TWICE on the big screen- Friday May 22nd and Saturday May 23rd at The Lyric Cinema!

We’ll be heading down to Colorado for the festivities in just a few short weeks! Stay tuned for more updates once the official schedule is released!

05/01/2026

Here’s an in-depth look at how we created the library flashback in “Margaret the Brave”. There’s even more steps in the process that we couldn’t cover here- but hopefully this gives you a good idea of how much work went into these few seconds of screen time.

Big thanks to everyone who helped make this happen! There’s over 150 VFX shots in this short, so I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to break down all of them… but just know you should all be incredibly proud of what we were able to accomplish on this. 💯

Here’s looking forward to the next project!!!

We’re delighted to announce that “Ideal Distance” is an official selection of the 2026 Dallas International Film Festiva...
04/06/2026

We’re delighted to announce that “Ideal Distance” is an official selection of the 2026 Dallas International Film Festival!

We will be screening April 26th, 12pm in the Cinépolis Victory Park Theater with a lineup of some seriously awesome music videos! So stoked!!!

Stay tuned for more festival news coming soon!

03/27/2026

Ryan Galvan appreciation post! 🎥♥️

RE-UPLOAD: Today, we want to highlight our Director of Photography, - who was involved with “Margaret the Brave” from the very beginning. He filmed all of the scenes that take place in the real world, as well as a good portion of our fairytale segments. For more than three years we were bouncing back and forth between shooting and prepping- so his patience and commitment to this project meant the world to us. 

We were trying to make something that felt timeless- and the beautiful, naturalistic look he created was exactly what the film needed. He also has a great eye for blocking and film grammar, so that was a huge benefit to have on set as well.

Please take a moment to celebrate the guy and everything he’s done for the Vegas film community! Love ya man!! 🫶

And to everyone on the camera team who gave their time and skill to this project- we can’t say thank you enough! This film would not have been possible without your passion, dedication, and artistic spirit. 😌

Director of Photography: Ryan Galvan - 
2nd Unit Director of Photography: Rob Machado - 
Additional Camera: George Mentchokov - 
Assistant Camera:
Ahmad Abu Shamma - 
Hylarie Aguilar - 
Dimitri Agnos - 
Julia Bresnan - 
Noah Kiriu - 
Andrew Kwok - 
Nick Mastroluca - 
Traiana Nescheva - 
Samantha Rodriguez - 
Preston Scott - 
Angelica Williams - 
Camera PA: Emily Stewart - 



03/27/2026

Ryan Galvan appreciation post! 🎥♥️

Today, we want to highlight our Director of Photography, - who was involved with “Margaret the Brave” from the very beginning. He filmed all of the scenes that take place in the real world, as well as a good portion of our fairytale segments. For more than three years we were bouncing back and forth between shooting and prepping- so his patience and commitment to this project meant the world to us.

We were trying to make something that felt timeless- and the beautiful, naturalistic look he created was exactly what the film needed. He also has a great eye for blocking and film grammar, so that was a huge benefit to have on set as well.

Please take a moment to celebrate the guy and everything he’s done for the Vegas film community! Love ya man!! 🫶

And to everyone on the camera team who gave their time and skill to this project- we can’t say thank you enough! This film would not have been possible without your passion, dedication, and artistic spirit. 😌

Director of Photography: Ryan Galvan -
2nd Unit Director of Photography: Rob Machado -
Additional Camera: George Mentchokov -
Assistant Camera:
Ahmad Abu Shamma -
Hylarie Aguilar -
Dimitri Agnos -
Julia Bresnan -
Noah Kiriu -
Andrew Kwok -
Nick Mastroluca -
Traiana Nescheva -
Samantha Rodriguez -
Preston Scott -
Angelica Williams -
Camera PA: Emily Stewart -

Great news! “Ideal Distance” is making its way to beautiful St. George, Utah as an official selection of the 2026 Desert...
03/13/2026

Great news! “Ideal Distance” is making its way to beautiful St. George, Utah as an official selection of the 2026 Desertscape International Film Festival!!!

This will be our second time attending this awesome festival, which runs April 1st - 4th at the Electric Theater, one of the coolest independent cinemas in all of Utah!

Schedule and ticket info will be coming out soon so stay tuned and hope to see you there!!!

We’re finally getting around to making some “behind the scenes” videos for Violent Water! Today, we’re diving into one o...
03/12/2026

We’re finally getting around to making some “behind the scenes” videos for Violent Water! Today, we’re diving into one of the most complex shots- the sea monster attacks!

As you can tell, it took multiple days to shoot the elements we needed to bring this scene to life. This was our first time utilizing stop motion puppetry, and we were able to get some help from Danny’s brother Carlos for filming the tentacles 🦑

We want to give a big thanks to the amazing cast that came to play, as well as our makeup artist Mel .hair for her spot-on silent film style, and Matt Murphy for his beautiful matte paintings which brought the underwater world to life!

Also, a big shout out to Noel at Spckrft Studios for providing the space to shoot! And most of all, thank you Sonia for trusting us with this and bringing the community together! Stay tuned for more BTS posts coming soon! 🧜‍♀️

03/06/2026

Today we’re taking a look back at our silent film-inspired music video “Violent Water.” For the final shot, we wanted to pay homage to the Ferdinand Zecca film, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”(1902).

We started by having the artist dressed as a Mermaid in front of a 9 ft. seamless back drop. Then we proceeded to film the rest of the “ghosts” one at a time until we had all the pieces we needed.

This was our first time shooting studios back when they were located at Union House, and the entire video was made on a $1,000 budget raised from a Kickstarter campaign.

Originally, the ending was going to be more of a classic Disney farewell, but through research we realized that wouldn’t have been true to the silent-film era, when many of these fantasy adventures ended with a victorious curtain call.

We’re so happy with how this video turned out and hope it inspires more low budget filmmakers to explore visual effects techniques!

Let’s get weird! We’re excited to announce that “Margaret the Brave” will have its Wisconsin premiere at the 10th Annual...
03/04/2026

Let’s get weird! We’re excited to announce that “Margaret the Brave” will have its Wisconsin premiere at the 10th Annual Midwest Weirdfest!!! It’s happening in Eau Claire, Wisconsin this Saturday, March 7th at 2:00 pm!

We’re honored to be recognized by another notable genre festival and stoked to be showing at the beautiful Micon Downtown Cinema, alongside some other awesome filmmakers we’ve met on the festival circuit- with “Treasure Imagination” & with “I’ve Seen All I Need to See.”

Unfortunately we can’t make it this time, but if you happen to be in the neighborhood- definitely go and check it out!!!

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