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About

A storyteller at the helm

Tenchi Flux Studios is an AI video studio founded by Gerardo "Tony" Mena. Tenchi is Japanese for heaven and earth. That's the job: the worlds we can't film, and the people we can.

Gerardo Mena smiling, in a black suit and tie

Founder & director

Gerardo "Tony" Mena

Poet. Doc. Father.

01 Doc

My friends were going to Iraq, and they sure as heck weren't going without me. So I extended my contract six months. I'd been a Navy corpsman with the Recon Marines since 2002: jump school, combat dive school, a security detail for the President in Mongolia. Iraq added a Navy Achievement Medal with Valor. Not because I was fearless. Because I could make myself move anyway.

02 Poet

Back home I signed up for what I thought would be an easy class. It was poetry. It was not easy. It became how I worked through the war, and then it took off: a first-place war poetry prize, essays in The New York Times, a book, readings next to Jake Gyllenhaal and Adam Driver. (No, I did not get Jake's number.)

Somewhere between the poems and the podiums, I figured out what stories are for. Trust. Tell the truth about a real person, and strangers start to see the best in them.

03 Builder

Then I learned to code. Then AI showed up, and the ceiling came off. For years every story had a price tag: a crew, a location, a budget. Now a dragon over a volcano, a city in 2089 and a founder's story in his own words all come out of the same studio.

We're only limited by our imaginations now. Anything is possible.

AI is going somewhere wild. I sure as heck wasn't sitting this one out.

Before the studio

Gerardo's earlier content and marketing work for clients: magazines, sports teams, podcasts and nonprofits. Client names stay private.

  • 19.4MYouTube views on a client channel, with 115K+ subscribers
  • 1M+views on a second client channel
  • 3M+website visitors driven
  • $1M+raised for charity events and 501(c)(3)s
  • Three Recon Marines and a corpsman in a hangar in Mongolia
    Mongolia, 2005. His Recon unit guarded President Bush's stop on his Asia tour.
  • A Recon team posing on a rocky hill in Iraq
    Iraq, 2007. The combat deployment with his reconnaissance unit.
  • Three sailors in dress blues at the Navy Ball
    Navy Ball, 2007, with his best friends after the Iraq deployment.
  • Paratroopers silhouetted at the open ramp of an aircraft
    Jump school was part of the pipeline.
  • Gerardo reading poetry at a glass podium
    Reading at the Headstrong Project's Words of War in New York. See the clipping Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

The path

How we got here

  1. 2002

    Enlists in the Navy after 9/11. Hospital corpsman, then Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsman with the Recon Marines.

  2. 2005

    Mongolia: his Recon unit guards the President's stop on his Asia tour.

  3. 2006–07

    Iraq. Navy Achievement Medal with Valor.

  4. 2010

    "So I Was a Coffin" wins the Winning Writers War Poetry Contest. His first video poems, set to his own music.

  5. 2011

    Best New Poets 2011. Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Leadership at Mizzou, the first veteran to win it.

  6. 2013–14

    Essays on The New York Times At War blog. Readings with Jake Gyllenhaal and Adam Driver for the Headstrong Project. The Shape of Our Faces No Longer Matters.

  7. 2015

    MFA in creative writing, Goddard College.

  8. 2018

    Senior editor of The NCO Journal at Army University Press.

  9. 2021–24

    His youth wrestling team wins three Missouri state titles.

  10. 2022

    Web developer and AI specialist at Army University Press.

  11. 2025

    AI video for Aesthetic Tile, Fleitz Family Tile and Dark Horse Elite. A rush documentary for a Las Vegas jumbotron. A talk on AI imagery and video at the Harding Project.

  12. Late 2025

    Tenchi Flux Studios starts as the creative AI division of Growvia Marketing.

  13. 2026

    Tenchi Flux becomes its own studio: SIGNAL, Letters From Later, The Last Embrace, Reel 2026, and brand films for Aesthetic Tile and Dark Horse Elite.

The studio

Tenchi Flux Studios

What you get today is one studio for the whole film: the script, the interviews, the scenes a camera can't reach, the sound and the finish. The same people who make our own series make your brand film, whether the story is a tile shop in Florida or a veterans' horse program.

  • People first.

    The best shot in any film is a real person telling the truth. AI builds the world around them.

  • Tenacity trumps talent.

    Our studio reel went through twenty-two versions before it shipped. That's normal here.

  • Dare to fail.

    It's better to try something new and miss than to always wonder "what if." The tools change every month, so we keep trying them.

Let's make something.

Tell us what you sell, who it's for and when you need it.

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