Meet Sam Nooney

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

Sam, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

I don’t know if I’ve exactly found my purpose yet, but I feel as though I am heading in the right direction. When something interests me, I tend to dive into it heavily until I’ve thoroughly explored it. As a teenager, I started playing guitar and would practice for hours each day. It felt like my purpose at the time. However, now in my twenties, while I still play frequently, the intense passion I once had has dipped.

Around the same time I started playing guitar, I developed an interest in filmmaking. I began paying closer attention to and caring about the movies I watched. My passion for film grew throughout high school, leading me to make the decision to attend film school. I wrote some screenplays in high school, but it wasn’t until I was 18 that I began taking it seriously. I completed my first short film script at 18 and started to write and direct what I wrote which I still continue to do. Right now, this feels like my purpose.

Another example of this is that I didn’t read much until I was twenty. Now, I read all the time, which has become another purpose of mine. Reading has helped my writing and sparked my interest in other forms of writing. Who knows, maybe in the future, my purpose will involve writing short stories, novels, or plays, or it might not involve reading, writing, or filmmaking at all.

I believe our purpose constantly shifts throughout our lives as we discover more about ourselves and build upon what interests us at any given moment.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Right now, I am a student at the Los Angeles Film School, and I’ll be graduating in October. I just finished shooting my thesis film, which I am very excited to share. It’s in post-production right now. The film is called Peach Soup, and it’s a surreal dark comedy about a bathroom attendant who gets kidnapped by his high school ex-girlfriend’s daughter on the way to his retirement party.

My main focus for the last six to seven months has been this project. I’m going to be submitting it to festivals and pushing the film out into the world as much as possible. Since we wrapped, I have been writing a lot more, and I’m excited about where it’s taking me right now. I’m collaborating with two friends on two different scripts, as well as working on a script of my own. It’s been a lot of fun working on these because we are giving ourselves a lot of freedom to experiment in the writing process.

My goal within the next few years is to make an independent feature film, possibly using one of the scripts I’m working on with my friends or one of my own. Independent filmmaking has always interested me because there are no restrictions. I feel as though the possibilities are endless right now with the technology we have, but we need to be aware of and protect our art from AI. People use AI in their work, but they excuse it as only helping them a little bit. I think this is a bad way to look at it because it can snowball into using a little bit to using it all the time.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

As someone who is also early in their journey, I’d say that keeping an open mind has been the most helpful for me. Talk to people about their interests, passions, and hobbies, and truly listen to what they have to say. I always enjoy hearing people talk about their passions because their joy is contagious, and it makes me want to learn more about what they’re discussing. Many things I enjoy now come from recommendations by others.

Another important aspect that complements having an open mind is cultivating curiosity. When you find something you enjoy, dive deep into it and learn as much as you can. Say you enjoy a certain movie, find out what else that director has done or that writer has done. It can apply to anything you want to learn more about. It has led me to understanding myself better.

Finally, I have recently learned that it is okay to be comfortable with not knowing. I’m still learning to embrace this mindset, but I remember, especially when I was younger feeling stupid when I didn’t know certain things and I felt lots of self-doubt and shame with in myself because I felt I wasn’t smart enough. Accepting that it’s okay not to know allows you to learn.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

When I feel overwhelmed, I walk and write. I take a little notebook with me on my walks and jot down what I’m feeling. Sometimes, this leads to ideas for the projects I’m working on, other times I just write questions to myself that I don’t necessarily have answers to, but it helps to see them on paper and out in the world instead of just in my mind. Nature helps, too. I live in Los Angeles, so when I walk around my neighborhood, it’s often surrounded by office buildings, which can be depressing. However, there are certain pockets covered in trees that are peaceful. The quietness of these areas helps me to recalibrate.

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Ravonne

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