We were lucky to catch up with Sam Perches recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sam , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I happened to learn my craft quite accidentally. My father was a photographer and I spent much of my childhood and teenage years standing around watching him work, and of course helping where I could, and this experience, combined with my love of movies, gave me not only a fundamental early understanding of how a camera worked, but also a glimpse into what life as a visual storyteller might be like. I loved art and drawing from a very young age, but the idea of being a filmmaker seemed so impossibly ambitious and far away for a country boy from England, and growing up without internet meant no YouTube tutorials, or online classes, and in those days cameras weren’t cheap. My education came in the form of library books when it came to theory and technique, and finally buying an old 8mm Bolex wind-up camera (for which I could barely afford to buy film stock), and later upgrading to a 16mm model, and literally going into the countryside with my camera and my imagination and seeing what would happen. Towards the end of high school, I got a part time job in a cafe in the small town where I lived, mostly for the sole purpose of earning cash to buy more film stock and sending it away to be developed. One day, to my amazement, the famous British director, Ken Loach, walked in and took a seat by himself, quietly sipping an espresso. The owner of the cafe knew him and told him I had a passion for movies and introduced us. He kindly invited me to take a seat and seemed to enjoy hearing my random stories of filming cows and trees. It was when I told him that I didn’t have any sound gear that he suddenly perked up and said “perfect! storytelling is universal, learn how to tell a story with only visual language and you’ll get it”. To this day I think it was the most profound advice I have received, and now, 25 years later, living and working in Tokyo and filming around the U.S., it is something I still adhere to strictly. I even incorporate that approach when I storyboard the production. But that advice on focusing on story and more specifically visual language and storytelling, was always key in my mind. It was then and it is now.
By 1998, I was out of high school and couldn’t afford film school so I decided art school was the next best thing. Painting taught me so much about the use of light and shadow, colors, and composition, and I found it to be a wonderful experience that I still draw from as a filmmaker and DP.
Knowing what I know now, and looking back, I believe quite strongly that it was a blessing having limited resources. It cultivated discipline and required a lot motivation to go out and film and then develop and literally cut the film into something that hopefully worked, as well as to read as much as I could and to learn my craft in every which way that was available to me, and as such, the finished pieces (which were usually awful), were actually a joy to experience after so much hard work and patience. Patience being key. Today many of us walk around with phones in our pockets that can film in 4k and we even have AI software that can edit something together. We can sloppily film a hundred shots of something and know, perhaps quite lazily, that we can fix it in post. In my mind this inhibits us and I still encourage young filmmakers or photographers to pick up an old film camera to learn their craft. When you are limited to a few minutes of film or 30 exposures on a camera, your approach and your thought process behind each and every frame completely changes. That’s not to say there are not huge creative advantages in the technology we have at our fingertips today, they too can open doors creatively and having the freedom of digital filmmaking certainly allows for more extemporizing and experimentation and I believe that too can yield creativity and imagination in the right hands.
While in hindsight I look back with gratitude that I was so limited, I also recognize that it is in our limitations that we can be most creative and reliant on content and story. I also look back at those days wondering what kind of visual artist I would have become had the technology been so available. I often find myself wishing I was bolder with my ideas and not fearing failure as much as I did within the constraints of what I had. I feel that in any creative endeavor, failing is always going to be one of your biggest and best teachers, and sadly it is often later in life that we realize this. It will not only challenge your resolve, but allow you to learn how to do things better the next time around. I think in any art form it’s so important to not only push yourself but also challenge yourself and your boundaries. Sometimes you’ll hate it and sometimes you’ll love it, but regardless of which, you’ll always learn something.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Sam Perches, filmmaker and founder Sam Perches Films, a Tokyo and Dallas-based creative agency and production company, providing creative video marketing solutions and production services to clients internationally. I was born in England to an English mother and Mexican father. I think growing up around two very different cultures was a huge blessing and it opened my eyes to a world much bigger than the English countryside and I had a curiosity about the world around me from an early age.
Due to my own creativity as a child and an early desire to pursue visual arts, in particular, filmmaking, I was very fortunate to have had two very encouraging parents who supported my dreams and ambitions.

I began making films for myself as a teenager and by 18 I was working in the business, I moved to LA at 20 and became a lot wiser about the nature of the industry and felt very small! I decided in my early twenties to start my own boutique production company. In those days, corporate filmmaking and documentary wasn’t what it is today and it was a hard sell, but I had recognized the power and potential of video marketing on a budget very quickly, and I ran with it. As a result of the service being relatively new, clients were unsurprisingly reluctant to offer big budgets which meant I had to learn other areas of production such as editing, and scriptwriting. I had to become a one man crew. Years later, after a brief stay in Los Cabos, Mexico, I saw a very untouched market and made a permanent move to begin offering these services elsewhere as well as retaining my clients in the U.S. I began working in and around Mexico and in the U.S. over the years and branched out into different markets, both commercial for small businesses, and non-profit.

During my time in Mexico, and working quite frequently in the golf industry, I was (by complete chance) introduced to Tiger Woods, whose managers wished to hire me to spearhead a video marketing campaign for his newly designed (and first) golf course. Suddenly I was making creative decisions and adding new services to my company, from creating concepts and content ideas, to writing copy, as well as managing and executing all areas of production. This was an empowering moment for me both personally and professionally as I was still only a small company. Emboldened by the success of the campaign, I set out to understand more about what my clients needed and how my industry was changing. Conceptualizing, writing, consulting and working with crews and providing strategic plans for how to use a video became the new direction for me as a filmmaker. I believe that it is important to be a perpetual student of your craft and, of course, keeping your finger on the pulse, and to observe subtle changes in order to grow and stand out.

After marrying my wonderful Japanese wife, I made a very bold (some said crazy) and risky decision to move to Tokyo, while continuing to work with U.S.-based clients on freelance contracts and essentially divide my time between both countries. The move was exciting and terrifying at once, and I loved it. Navigating the Japanese culture, and to an even harder degree, the Japanese work culture, as someone who didn’t speak a word of Japanese, was overwhelming at times and incredibly challenging, but my personal philosophy is to do things that mean getting out of my comfort zone. Tokyo in that sense was about as extreme as I could go, but with some perseverance (and patience), it became and continues to be an incredibly rewarding experience, and opened doors to clientele and projects I never imagined possible.

In terms of how this change affected my business model, I had made the decision to scale the business down: Less clients, more attention, and this is something that has always been very important to myself and my team; maintaining good professional relationships and not overloading ourselves and becoming a video factory. And in addition, this allowed me to dive deeper into the types of clientele I would work with, maintaining my original desire to scope the business accordingly by managing clients oversees and within Tokyo and to work with companies of all sizes and budgets and to never discriminate based on who the client is and how much they can afford. I started in this business working with small clients and businesses who took a chance on me and they got me to where I am today, and in return I continue to serve all kinds of businesses and individuals, and organizations, regardless of size, especially if they have a great story to tell.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I think it would be fair and honest to say that I struggled with time management in my earlier years. I was an artist and I had limited experience in the corporate world, and it showed! One thing I was lacking was formal business experience. Running a production company by myself was throwing myself in the deep end of the pool in many ways, as I felt confident in my ability, but lacked the understanding of how to manage time. I also struggled with the idea of leadership, and being an introvert, the idea of leading a team and taking so much responsibility on myself was terrifying. But I soon learned that you don’t have to be a dictator on a set, you don’t have to be loud or an extrovert, in fact, most successful directors I know are quite shy people. The key, as I came to understand, was communication.
I had to face facts and step back, realizing my limitation. Trying to do everything myself wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I had the right intentions and wanted to maintain a high standard, but that ended up being completely counter-productive. It was a lesson reminding me that filmmaking and production is a collaborative medium, and hiring talented people for certain roles, and trusting in their ability, as well as what they could bring to a project was of the utmost importance.
Ultimately it was a case of learning from some failures that I used as a catalyst for change and to overcome it I had to trust in others, build a solid team, understanding their strengths and communicating to them what both myself and the clients wanted, as well as allowing them their own creative breathing space.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Yes, my purpose and mission when I first decided I wanted to be a professional filmmaker in my youth was to get my hands on a camera and magically become a movie director. I didn’t know how, but I knew that’s what I wanted. Over the years that idea began to transition and evolve. I reached a point in my career where I could justify taking some time off to work with non-profit organizations, orphanages, fundraising for sick children through hospitals and even small animal shelters. I realized that I had a skill set and a powerful tool that I could use to help others and that was incredibly fulfilling on a level that went beyond making money, or any personal acclaim. In recent years I worked for United Nations directing a documentary exposing animal trafficking around the globe. With these projects I was able to sit up and realize that I had a voice through my craft. So, serving others through the skill set and the dream that God gave me has been more than enough and it is something I hope to continue doing for as long as I can hold a camera.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.samperchesfilms.com
• Instagram: @samperches / @origin.film
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-perches-5b246514/
• Other: [email protected]