Back booth, corner, City Deli, Hillcrest. A table resplendent with kosher dill pickles, brisket sandwiches on rye, Dr. Brown's Cream Soda, other delectables. Music: oldies but goodies.

NANCEE E. LEWIS / Union-Tribune In a booth at Hillcrest's City Deli, Rusty Treviño and Seher Basak created "The High Tower."

It was here, between scoops of creamy cole slaw, that fledgling filmmakers Rusty Treviño and Seher Basak formulated “The High Tower,” a hot San Diego-set short film about, of all things, Chinese gangsters.

Amid midnight turkey burgers, they wrote and rewrote the script, cast actors, plotted locations.

Treviño and Basak were employed in the local video game industry and became acquainted at various professional social functions. Movies, it turned out, was their passion.

Her job had been to track defects in software. His was in “quality assurance.” “After being on the same video game for six months,” he said, “you want to hang yourself.”

THE FILM: “The High Tower,” a 30-minute indie about San Diego Chinese gangsters. THE FILMMAKERS: Director Rusty Treviño, 27; producer Seher Basak, 30 THEIR SYNOPSIS: “Witness the grind of organized crime as seen through the eyes of three low-level Chinese mobsters they deal with street thugs, customers and problems as they prepare for a big score. Their leader, a woman named Ling, contemplates life outside the criminal world for the first time.” THEIR GOAL: Full-length features produced in San Diego CONTACT 'HIGH': greysandent.com

The experience, though, influenced their filmmaking. “We come from an artistic industry,” she said. “In games, it's nonlinear storytelling. You press buttons, you have choices. Movies are linear.”

Added Treviño, “Video games always have you doing something. It's about the action. In a movie, it's about the journey, things unraveling, unfolding.”

“The High Tower” is a cool and polished 30 minutes that crackles with fresh acting talent incorporating young Asian actors from San Diego and Los Angeles. Treviño's directing style is energetic, his storytelling gritty and character-driven.

Their company is called Grey Sand Entertainment. “That came from being a night owl in San Diego,” said Treviño. “What the town is famous for is the beach. Go to the beach at night and the sand is gray.”

As filmmakers, he said, “I'd like to think we're in the Kevin Smith/New Jersey, M. Night Shyamalan/Philadelphia mode. They didn't want to leave their hometowns to do what they wanted to do.”

Added Basak, “It's the Kevin Smith attitude. 'We're just going to do this'and when I took over as producer, I said, 'We're doing this!' ”

Treviño is inspired by big-time directors Oliver Stone and Martin Scorsese. On Stone, he said, “He tells a story and, like with 'Platoon,' the ethereal side. He makes movies like I want to make, the characters, their trials and tribulations. He explores the humanity.”

Basak became producer, she said, because she's talented at organizing and editing. “I'm good at refining things, asking questions,” she said. “I'm a planner.”

For “The High Tower,” the pair did serious research, perusing FBI reports on Chinese organized crime and Asian street gangs. They studied the Irish Mafia in New York, scoured the local library and online sites.

And there were the movies: “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II,” “GoodFellas” and Japanese Yakuza films like “Sonantine” (1998) and John Woo's “Hard Boiled (1992).

“Like those,” said Treviño, “our movie is not just about looking at these characters as gangsters but as people.”

Treviño, a hip-looking guy sporting a backward cap and a soul patch, grew up in East County, attending Spring Valley's Monte Vista High and Grossmont College.

“I came up in the suburbs,” said Treviño, “and that does affect you. It's this bubble. How you get out of that is you see movies.” Among the ones that had an impact was Steven Spielberg's “Jurassic Park” (1993). “It was our generation's 'Star Wars,' ” he said. “It blows your mind.”

Basak was raised in East San Diego, her mother an American Indian, her dad from Israel. She attended Point Loma High and graduated from UC Santa Barbara, majoring in medieval and Asian history. It was there she took a film class that studied blockbusters.

For awhile, Treviño tried acting “but I'm short. I'm not Brad Pitt,” he said. “I thought, if I was going to be in a movie, I'd have to write one.”

“The High Tower,” which is mostly in Mandarin with English subtitles, was shot in six days and financed with personal funds. Locations spanned a bridge in Rancho Peñasquitos to a house in East San Diego. There's a flashy array of night shots from El Cajon Boulevard to North Park, a unique vision of the city.

“We're from San Diego,” said Treviño, a mile-a-minute talker. “We don't want to make movies in Hollywood. There's lots of opportunities and interesting things right here in San Diego.”