We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Spencer Sulflow a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Spencer, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. 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.

Although I’m very much still in a learning phase as a director of photography, the main way that I’ve learned is by getting my hands on the camera and being in new filming and lighting scenarios. I’m always diving in online through YouTube, online courses. These can help give a base of knowledge that I can then take into the field and apply. I’ve also grown immensely from asking questions to friends and colleagues in the film industry. I’m often on set with guys and gals who have been in the industry 10+ years and have seen so many different types of productions. These people are huge resources to learn from. As a DP the skills that prove most valuable are: learning how to shape light, understanding what different camera moves and compositions portrait different emotions and messages, and communicating well with the director and different department heads to fully understand what’s all going into a given production.

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.

I initially got into video production by filming videos of my friends and I wrestling, making basketball trick shots, and other random things. This eventually led to filming for weddings, businesses, brands, and ministries. By the time I graduated undergrad en route to being a physical therapist, I decided to go full time into video production. That was about 4 years ago. Since then I’ve done a mix of work for clients through my company, Flow Studios, and work as a contractor (mainly Director of Photography and Drone Operator.)

At this point my time is pretty balanced between the two listed above. 50% is spent running Flow Studios, making sure all of those projects are being executed smoothly and serving clients well. The other 50% I’m joining on to other productions as a DP or Drone Operator.

Through Flow Studios, our biggest successes have been in the brand and non-profit spaces. We pride ourselves on having a great client experience producing videos from initial concept and need, to production, and finishing with an intentional post production process. Some of our most prized work comes from telling impactful stories for non profits. These projects get to marry really meaningful stories, with beautifully crafted visuals This is also true in our brand work. We always want our videos to be visually engaging while serving a very direct purpose for our clients.

As a Director of Photography I get to serve other people within my own industry and this brings me a lot of joy. I get to take a lot of the same core values and apply them to help a director capture a beautiful commercial, documentary, etc.

Some of my favorite projects have been with and for brands like: Minnesota Vikings, Toyota, UNRL, T-Mobile, Pulse, Cru CanAm, Caribou and others.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Building your reputation in the film industry and production space is an ongoing priority. For me personally, the biggest things have been communication and reliability. This has been true both for client work and contract work. I may gain someone’s attention by having executed great and beautiful work, but it’s the reliability and communication that makes people want to keep working with me when there are many options out there.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The main season I’ve had to pivot was in 2020 with the covid lockdowns and decrease in production work. This season came just over one year into me doing video production full time. I felt I was just gaining some good traction and starting to get more of the work I was hoping for. That work specifically was coming onto productions as a director of photography. When this season of lockdowns and slowed work hit, I was forced to adapt. Most of my growing network as a DP didn’t need me anymore. The most plausible solution in front of me was to push more into client work and build my company, Flow Studios, more intentionally. I was able to increase the client work coming in as brands and non profits needed ways to communicate their various messages/products/etc. online. This season was tough but developed a lot of resiliency and confidence in myself to find solutions when things don’t go the way I’m hoping for.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://flowstudios.us
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spencersulflow/
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/flow.studios/