IML-499: Wanna Make Your Own
DIY Music Video?

About Professor Evan Hughes

Evan Hughes (he/they) is the Assistant Dean of Community and Culture and an Associate Professor of the Practice at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He directs the School of Cinematic Arts Community and Culture Initiatives, which include programs that strengthen community, expand access, and foster belonging across SCA. He also leads the SCA Community Impact Council, organizes the Graduate Impact Labs, and oversees the FirstGen program supporting first-generation college students.

Hughes’s research focuses on queer posthumanism, challenging rigid binaries and imagining queer futures. A longtime LGBTQ+ activist, he works to dismantle HIV/AIDS stigma and explores how race, sexuality, embodiment, and digital media intersect in contemporary culture. He is also an inventive educator, developing teaching tools such as Idea Deck, a card-based ideation game for multimedia production, and teaching The Music Festival Experience, a course examining music festivals as cultural phenomena, community spaces, and sites of creative design, culminating in student-designed festival concepts.

In 2021, Hughes launched the Inclusive Classroom Workshop series to reimagine power dynamics in the classroom and empower faculty to cultivate more equitable, student-centered learning environments. He also served as a lead organizer for the USC Visions and Voices event “Arts, Activism, and Reproductive Rights: Creative Workshops, Panel, and Procession,” which brought together artists, scholars, and students to explore the role of creative expression in social justice movements.

About Professor Michael Bodie

A filmmaker, theatre artist, and educator; Bodie began his career working for Sundance Institute’s Feature Film and Theatre Programs where he participated in the development of independent artists and their work including Me and You and Everyone We Know, Grey Gardens, and Passing Strange, among many others. After attending UCLA’s School of Film & Television graduate directing program he returned to Sundance as their content producer where he directed an eight-part documentary web series about their prestigious labs. Bodie was integral to the inception and direction of the Sundance Film Festival’s live-stream coverage, and continues to executive produce and direct their festival video content to this day.

He has written and directed award winning short films and other video projects that have aired on MTVu, Logo, and the Sundance Channel, and has partnered with music artist Shyboy on videos for his tracks, "Bird in Flight", "Wouldn't It Be Good", and "Backroom”. Bodie's work has screened at domestic and international film festivals and exhibited as part of the Los Angeles Public Library’s To Live and Dine in L.A. in which food culture and issues of food justice were examined.

Bodie also directs for theatre, most recently at Cal Poly Pomona’s Department of Theatre and New Dance, and collaborates with other media artists on the development of installation-based, immersive media projects designed to provide a space for reflection and dialogue. For the past two years he has been a key collaborator on two USC Arts in Action funded programs: Warrior Bards, a program that provides US veterans the opportunity to study ancient Greek plays, discuss them through the lens of their own military experience, and respond to their discoveries through artistic practice; and Sacrifice Zone: Los Angeles, a multimedia exploration of the environmental justice issues embedded with the neighborhoods of South Los Angeles.

In addition to teaching courses for MA+P in documentary filmmaking, immersive docu-narrative installation, and media for social change, Bodie consults on and directs all of the video content for USC Bovard College's online Master's degree programs. He has also taught acting, directing, improv and media-based classes at schools and universities in both the U.S and abroad.