Sam Moorman Barnett

PROFILE: The Foundation has discovered several creative geniuses in the years it has been awarding scholarships to artists, filmmakers, and musicians. The latest Undergraduate Scholarship class has its share too with native Coloradoan Sam Barnett carrying on the tradition of thinking (and creating) outside the box. Already an accomplished filmmaker and cameraman, take a look at his website to see what he’s been up to lately:   http://www.growingobjects.com/. Sam is one of the Scholars that you can’t help but have a healthy envy for because he knows what he wants to do with his life and loves doing it. For the past few years while attending community college in the Bay Area, Sam has been employed full-time as a videographer for a production company, has made his own movies, and also handles some free-lance projects. A good “shooter” (cameraman) is hard to find, even in media-heavy San Francisco. The word is out about Sam: he is definitely a good shooter.

INSPIRATION: One of his film teachers, Peter Freund, gave Sam an understanding of the power films can have. “While some teachers will try and teach you a technique in the most efficient way possible, Peter would make you struggle to understand even the most simple concepts. He would do this in a way that forced you to learn how to use these concepts to meaningfully support your work.”

ASPIRATION: To produce and direct major motion pictures that make a difference in the lives of the people viewing them. 

MAKING A DIFFERENCE: Most of Sam’s films are considered “experimental” in that they do not follow a standard narrative or fit into an established genre. But lately he’s grown to appreciate the “incredible power of traditional narrative structures.” He now finds his intellectual ideas being grounded by actual events happening to actual characters. In his latest film, The Flesh, Sam has taken the best parts of both the experimental form and narrative form and “fused them into a coherent whole.”

ACCOLADES: Some of Sam’s films were showcased in a best of student video work screening at the University of California, Berkeley and were also accepted into the Brooklyn International Film Festival.  Sam was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Berkeley City College.

INTERESTING FACT: Like a lot of creative geniuses, Sam is dyslexic and couldn’t read until he was 11.