We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sam Morales. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sam below.

Sam, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

My want to pursue a creative path started very young but it was the struggle to allow myself to fight for it that was a journey. I grew up in the 90s so there was always a Blockbuster to go to when we went out for dinner. It was a tradition in my household to go out to dinner or go grab dinner and bring home 2 to 3 movies to watch. Back when there were VHS tapes and there were trailers before that movie. It was when they started bringing out DVDs that I got to go behind the scenes of these movies. Listening to the actors talk about their experiences. Watching the crew set the scenes up. I mostly loved the acting part of it because I’ve always been a huge daydreamer and I had a crazy imagination, or so my parents told me.
I was always scared and shy around people growing up. I kept to myself a lot. I knew I wanted to be an actress, but it was the fear of thinking a career like that could never happen for me. I went to school for medical assisting and learned a lot but quickly realized that wasn’t for me. I wasn’t happy. I went to Chaffey College and took theatre where I began to find my voice. When I graduated with honors, I looked for work to support myself so that I could go on auditions and work with central casting as background to get my foot in there somehow. I started working steadily with central casting but in 2018, I had a car accident and dealt with vertigo for 2 years, not knowing how to make it go away. I went to physical therapy and got better. I knew I wanted to continue no matter what with my career choice but unfortunately COVID had other plans.
As we all had to deal with COVID for the majority of the year. I wanted to go back to school since central casting was shut down for the most part. I just didn’t know for what. I didn’t want to take a repeat of theatre classes. I looked up classes at San Bernardino Valley College and saw they had a huge film department. With convincing from my sister, she told me “why not further your acting career and learn it all, behind and in front of the camera?”. I registered for film classes, the majority of us wearing masks of course, some of them being online. I fell in love with my first semester. I went full time and quickly realized I wasn’t in my 20s anymore. That same full semester, I lost my nana and tio (mother’s side), along with my grandpa (dad’s side) all within 2 weeks of each other. The film department was a big distraction for me and it still continues to be. While I reached my second semester and went part time, I met some friends there that felt the same passion that I had. The one student making movies like crazy all by himself, Oscar Bermudez. He asked me to help him one day, so I joined him. I kept producing movies with him along with Miguel Alvarez, a sound mixer and a quiet, talented soul. During that second semester, I met Daniel Rodriguez. He reminded me a lot of myself. We keep to ourselves and get the work done. He quickly became someone I could rely on throughout my time there and now. Also in that same semester, there was a 48-hour film competition. That is when I met Paul Black. Another longtime friend I’ve kept. He had much more experience than any of us, having done videography for years on his own.
Paul began to notice me at every production that people needed help with. He began to ask me what I did because during my second semester, I had already produced, sound mixed, edited, and acted for a few films so he was unsure of what my expertise was in. My problem is I wanted to do it all. He casted me in his short film “Inked” and that’s where I met his wife Marie and got to work with Monica Hart again, two more members of our team. When it came to making my own first short film “Thank You”, Paul was more than happy to help me bring it to life. My short film “Thank You” was about a friend I lost unexpectedly while I was at Chaffey. The new friends that I made in this department helped me put it together. During these filming days, Paul brought up the idea that if we all have a script then let’s use the summer to make it all happen. We did and Phase 3 Films was born.
Since that summer of 2021, we have made over 50 short films together. I have produced, written, directed, co-directed, sound mixed, edited, and acted in quite a few of them. We have won many awards for our hard work. I love doing what I do with them. We started with maybe 6 people in our crew, now we’ve teamed up with other I.E. filmmakers and have at least 30 people in our chat, probably more. We don’t plan to stop. My passion for acting has never stopped.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started out as an actress and quickly wanted to do more. When I registered for San Bernardino Valley College, I realized they had a really great film department. Hands on experience. Never would I have imagined that I would know what I know today about all this equipment and terminology. Through valley, I learned to produced, edit, and sound mix using their equipment. When I co-founded Phase 3 Films, it gave me more experience to learn from my mistakes. I wasn’t only learning from class productions; I was working with the outside world to keep moving on during filming.

By nature, I love to problem solve and to think outside the box. I love observing others and everything around me. I love to understand people and what make them who they are. Everyone arounds us tells a story without even trying. I have always followed my gut and know when something doesn’t feel right. For me, filmmaking and acting have always felt right. It’s such a creative outlet for me and from what I’ve heard over the years, many people feel the same way. So many people have shared their stories with me so openly. I ask myself sometimes what I did to make them people feel so comfortable and be vulnerable with me as I am not easily vulnerable with others.

Phase 3 Films has been an outlet for countless young filmmakers. We’ve assisted many people with their short films as well as taught them what they’ve wanted to learn with us. They see the hard work that goes into and appreciate the hard work we put into everything we do. We don’t care what type of story you have, what genre you wrote, or where you came from. All we ask is that everyone respects one another and is kind. We support one another and only offer helpful criticism. Nobody learns from their mistakes when you tell someone their story or idea is bad. Nobody’s work is better than anybody else’s. Art is subjective. I myself can be brutally honest but there is a professional way to tell someone they should work on something to improve on it.

We are a crew that will help you bring your story to life. We’ll help you learn the fundamentals of filmmaking. We love to bridge partnerships with people. We want to build a community of people with like-minded passion for the arts. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. We have a movie out every 2 weeks done by all of our team. @phase3films. Reach out to us we are always looking for new faces. Crew or cast, we want to meet you. We all have our day jobs because we don’t get paid, although there have been rare 0ccasions. The goal is to get paid to do this one day.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We’ve had a phase 3 account Instagram account, but it didn’t gain anyone traction until 2024. There wasn’t any one reliable managing the account. Many people offered to assist with it but it didn’t go anywhere. So the core of the group decided to handle it. Oscar has been the primary manager of the account. Daniel and I have assisted in whatever he needs. Oscar designed our YouTube account as well. That has been picking up followers as well. What we did to gain followers mostly is Oscar studied an algorithm on what people are looking for on YouTube and Instagram. Constant media content is very important for filmmakers. We want people to see us, to see what we do. They want to see the people behind this whole art form because it helps us connect with our audiences. So, during our film Blood Street, written by Daniel Rodriguez and Marie Black, directed by me and Vince Garcia, we made featurettes and constant behind the scenes stories of our filming. We wanted to show people the fun we had and how much work that went into it. Blood Street was our biggest project yet. It reminded me of renting movies and going into the special features section on a DVD and getting a peak behind the curtain. We did that for our followers. We started in the 100s of followers, we made our way to 1500. As Oscar studied the algorithm and followed the right people, word got around. We are at almost 5,000 followers. Out short films have gotten over 1000 views now. Our highest viewed movie is at 10k, with “Touch and Go” written and Directed by the talented Zachariah Gutierrez. Which also has “Jewel of the Dead” coming soon. An Indian Jones inspired movie.

So, if you’re trying to build a fan base. Show your audience what you are doing. Let them in. It’s all about putting on content and targeting your demographic. Who do you want as your audience? Pick an age group, make it relatable to them.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I have learned so much about people during this journey. I’ve learned what makes people tick, how they react under pressure, true colors come out when you have to deal with stressful circumstances. It’s who you are at the end of it all that tells me who you are as a person. Accountability and honesty are huge to me. Being honest in your work and displaying it are what makes the creativity beautiful. Visually displaying what’s in your mind and giving it to the outside world is the most rewarding aspect for me as an artist. I’ve connected with a lot of people and inspired a lot of people to be vulnerable with their own stories. That’s a great feeling to have that a simple story (short film) can do that for someone. I get to have fun creating ideas, putting them on paper, and creating them with my closest friends. Then I get to share them with my family and awe them because we can’t believe we are able to do this just because we can.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @phase3films, @sraylene918
• Youtube: Phase3Films

Image Credits

Paul Black
Marie Black
Oscar Bermudez