2025 Recap
What began as an uncertain roller-coaster of a year ended up becoming our best yet. Staying steady as a team mattered more than the outside forces after all.
We’re not a new company — and our core team has over 70 years of combined experience in this business. But dang if 2025 wasn’t a gauntlet that proved our mettle. Nothing went very wrong, and nothing extraordinary happened either. It was just a creative battle, one month at a time, and we agreed: we’ve never worked harder in a year since our very first 12 months as a company.
There were the typical ups and downs of being a small video shop in a competitive market. Then, at our annual retreat (this time in Santa Cruz), we set bold goals to serve more monthly clients, create more eye-catching work, and improve everyone’s work/life balance… objectives that often felt at odds. We partnered with Dropbox for exciting events, filmed across the country and invested in Heckbot, our new camera robot. A large project was cancelled mid-deadline, affecting our international crews. We had two new babies arrive to our teammates, and ensured them plenty of family leave, while shifting the rest of the team in support. And meanwhile the rapidly-changing landscape of AI, politics and the economy kept us feeling on our toes week by week. If only all our clients paid on time!
And yet — we stayed optimistic. The phone kept ringing. The opportunities excited us. And our process evolved to keep up. The growing pains were real but the growth was motivating, too. In the end it was a banner year that exceeded even our most ambitious expectations. Seeing our team and network of filmmakers grow along the way was a fulfilling ending to a ride that wasn’t always fun to be on. Staying optimistic didn’t just help us through the challenges, it kept us intentional with the daily work, and making the weekly course corrections we needed to succeed.
Many thanks to our incredible team, and the clients and crews we collaborate with around the globe for partnering with us this year. We’re truly fortunate to see our business grow with filming, animating and delivering a little bit more human art into the world.
Read our AI philosophy, and don’t miss our Instagram and newsletter for more creativity to come.
💛 Phillip & everyone at Heck
Poster by Phillip Goodwin
Behind the scenes
This year’s travels and projects led to many adventures at home and abroad.
