Crystal Pyramid Productions owners Mark Schulze and wife Patty Mooney shoot events for “Access Hollywood” and “Inside Edition.” They film training videos and commercials. But a gig in 2007 made an impression they couldn’t shake.

Veterans Affairs hired them to make a short film for the 20th anniversary of Stand Down, an annual three-day event that provides homeless veterans with medical treatment, meals and a place to sleep.

“They had three days of relative luxury, where they could get a haircut, three square meals, showers, even medical help,” said Mooney. “Then they’ve got to go back to the street. It really affected me. I thought, ‘What can we do?’ ”

They decided to tell the story in a meaningful way, and for the next 12 months, immersed themselves in a documentary project about the 200,000 homeless veterans in the United States.

The result is a 43-minute film entitled “The Invisible Ones: Homeless Combat Veterans.” It features stories from veterans, congressmen and advocates. It also folds in footage from America’s wars and photographs going back to the Civil War.

“There’s no voice-over. The people themselves are talking: people helping and the homeless combat vets,” said Schulze.

Viewer Accolades

The film, which wrapped up March 3, has won three national awards: a Platinum Ava, a Gold Aurora and an Accolade Award of Merit in recognition of its contribution to profound social change. It will be featured in May at the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival in New York. And Schulze and Mooney are planning its premiere for Memorial Day weekend on the USS Midway Museum or in Los Angeles.

“It’s fairly uplifting. It tells you what you can do about the problem,” said Schulze, who is dedicating all revenue from the film to the Veterans Village of San Diego, a charitable organization that provides job training, housing, food and clothing to veterans and sponsors Stand Down.

“In military parlance, when you take a unit off the line, you stand them down from the conflict for a period of days to retrofit. That’s where the term came from,” said Phil Landis, CEO of Veterans Village. “What we’re offering homeless vets in San Diego is three days of respite from the streets, coupled with an array of services.”

It also gives volunteers an opportunity to meet and connect with them, he says.

In July, Stand Down treated 830 veterans inside the San Diego High School stadium.

“Thirty-two hundred volunteers made that happen,” said Landis, who estimates the county’s homeless veteran population between 2,500 and 4,500.