A filmmaker, theatre artist, and educator—Bodie began his career at Sundance Institute's theatre and film programs; produced and directed corporate video content for companies from Old Navy to MTVu; and has directed short fiction, documentary series, music videos, plays, and immersive experiences. He is currently an associate professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.

What initially drew you to pursue a career in both filmmaking and education?

I come from a long line of educators. My mother was an art teacher, my brother was an art teacher, my sister teaches high school, and her husband teaches middle school. So education and teaching have always been part of my world. I think that naturally sparked my interest and connection to it from an early age. It felt like a very organic path for me to follow. Even when I was young, I found myself leading workshops and teaching in a variety of settings. After studying theater in undergrad, I taught for a short time at the International School of Brussels followed by a stint at South Lake Tahoe Community College, both of which reaffirmed my inclination toward education. So when I say I fell into it, I mean that I was open to it and prepared for it; it just made sense.

As for filmmaking and storytelling, that has been a constant thread throughout my life. I’ve been performing since I was very young, acting, working in theater, and immersing myself in the arts. I studied at UC Davis for my undergraduate degree, moved to L.A., worked at the Sundance Institute, was inspired by that experience to develop my own filmmaking skills, and went to UCLA for my graduate degree in directing for film and tv. In other words, I’ve always lived and thrived in creative spaces. It’s not just something I do; it’s who I am. I honestly can’t imagine being anywhere, or doing anything, else.

Can you walk us through your journey to SCA? How have your academic and professional experiences shaped your approach to teaching here?

As I mentioned, my career path started in the theater, which brought me to Los Angeles (the only city I knew someone working professionally within the creative industry) and began working at Sundance Institute about four months after moving here. After spending several years with them—supporting and developing other artists—I realized I had been neglecting my own creative journey, which prompted me to go back to graduate school. Both my time at the Sundance Film and Theater Labs and my experience at UCLA shaped my understanding of film education. At UCLA especially, I had a mentor named Gyula Gazdag, an incredible Hungarian filmmaker and professor who also served as the artistic director of the Sundance Directors Lab. His approach to teaching and supporting artists left a lasting impression on me. He was egoless in the classroom and deeply committed to helping each individual discover their unique voice and interests. Rather than imposing a specific vision, he created space for students to explore who they truly are as artists. I’m still friends with Gyula, and his philosophy continues to influence how I think about education and mentorship today.

My path to USC was through a friend of mine from grad school, Gabriel Peters-Lazaro, who had already started working at SCA. At the time, the Media Arts and Practice (MA+P) division was known as the Institute for Multimedia Literacy (IML). They were looking for an adjunct faculty member to teach a few evening classes, and although I was back working at Sundance as their content producer, given my background in education, I was happy to explore the opportunity and see what it was all about. Looking back, I see that moment as fortuitous. As soon as I stepped into what is now MA+P and met the faculty, many of whom are now both colleagues and close friends, I realized I had found a space that deeply resonated with my interests and values. The program approached storytelling, creativity, and scholarship from so many different perspectives, which was exciting and, at first, a little intimidating. I felt out of my comfort zone, but over the years I’ve discovered that when I feel this kind of discomfort, it usually means I’m moving in the right direction and growing in meaningful ways.

Media Arts + Practice has challenged me from the very beginning, and it continues to do so. Soon after my first semester teaching with them, I was hired full-time and now, 15 years later, I’m still inspired by the work we do. I love that we’re not limited in our approach to storytelling. We explore the future of media, experiment with different forms, and encourage our students to think deeply and ethically about what they create. It’s not just about following instinct, it’s about understanding the choices you make and why they matter. Everything I did before arriving at USC helped prepare me for this role. My background in theater and film has always made me want to find ways to blend disciplines, and Media Arts + Practice gave me a home where that integration makes sense. It’s not just theater or just film, I get to engage with a little bit of everything!

Could you share more about your role within the Media Arts + Practice division? What is it like mentoring the next generation of immersive and interdisciplinary creators?

As you can see, my background is rooted in practice, and within our program I get to play to my strengths. I teach a lot of filmmaking courses, due to my many years of directing and producing music videos, corporate films—for Old Navy, the Library Foundation of L.A., USC, and most recently MARK Los Angeles—and more than a decade of Sundance Film Festival’s live coverage. 

I’ve also carved out a niche for myself in immersive and experiential storytelling. In the Games division, this is referred to as themed entertainment, but I call the format immersive docu-narratives in MA+P. This slight shift in name allows us to approach immersive experiences from a documentary perspective—asking creators to embed within a culture or community, understand it deeply, and then design an experience around that knowledge. The goal is to create something that allows participants to build emotional, intellectual, and sometimes even spiritual connections with the subject matter. Much of the work we do in MA+P carries an environmental and social justice sensibility. It’s about thinking ethically and intentionally about what we’re saying and why we’re saying it in order to attempt to make the world a better place.

Is there a particularly memorable class or teaching experience that stands out to you? What made it impactful?

One of the courses I teach is specifically focused on large-scale immersive experiences. Students choose a topic that affects the world or a particular community and explore it in depth. This semester, my class is looking at wildfires in the American West and their health impacts; not just the effects of smoke, but also the broader consequences on people’s livelihoods. Given the severity of modern wildfire seasons, and the tragedy caused by the recent fires in our Los Angeles communities, it has been fascinating to see how students approach the topic intellectually and creatively, and what kinds of experiences they’re designing around it.

This course is always one of the most exciting for me because it’s different every time. Most of the students are undergraduates, and what they’re able to create over the course of a single semester: developing, building, and performing their experiences, is thrilling. Professors often say they learn from their students, and I’ve found that to be absolutely true. As I’ve been delving into the immersive space in my own creative practice, the course has also become a kind of laboratory. It’s a place to explore new ways of sharing stories in live and immersive environments, to experiment with a wide array of technologies, sometimes just to throw ideas out there and see what sticks. I find the process energizing.

For many years, I’ve also taught a graduate course focused on short documentary filmmaking, approached from an ethnographic and experimental perspective. That class is open to, and brings together, students from across the university; I love the diversity of thought and experience they offer. It feels like the best version of academia, people from different disciplines convening to learn a new skill set to enhance their storytelling and support their scholarship. The work in that course can be defined very broadly. For example, last year, one of our MA+P PhD students explored the kelp forests off the coast of California. They used their own underwater footage and, through gaussian splatting, rendered their two dimensional images into a three dimensional world for further artistic manipulation. Eventually they installed a large-scale screening experience of their film at an end-of-semester showcase on one of the SCA soundstages. It wasn’t a traditional documentary, but it was absolutely “documenting” our world. Although some of the tools they used were outside my own technical expertise, I loved being part of their process: watching, discussing, and helping them refine their work to better connect with an audience. That kind of collaborative learning is rewarding and enriching for both me and, I hope, my students.

What does the process of exploring and developing independent media and ideas look like for you?

That’s a great question. I think that anytime you’re trying to create something that aims to improve the world around you, it naturally leans toward an independent market. My own interests, and the kinds of narratives I encourage my students to explore, tend to lean more toward independent and non-profit work. That’s largely shaped by my background—my time at Sundance, my education in the University of California system—I’ve always felt naturally aligned with, and comfortable within those communities. I want my students to challenge the status quo, to examine the world around them, and to use immersive storytelling, filmmaking, and other creative toolsets for insight, empathy, and positive social change.

That said, in both the immersive and film worlds there’s a reason companies like Disney are billion-dollar enterprises. Their films tell compelling stories we all connect with, and their parks are successful because of their incredible control of audience immersion; even before you step onto a ride, you’re already part of a story. It’s a fully designed narrative experience, and they’ve mastered that concept. Other corporations have caught on to the power of this type of immersive entertainment to better connect their brands with their audiences. That’s why we see pop-ups like the Stranger Things experience or other immersive events for specific products. Even in theater, productions like Sleep No More in New York are prime examples of the power of immersive theatrical experiences that speak to audiences differently than typical productions.

I also just heard from a recent SCA production student who took my class a year ago, and who is now working on a retrospective exhibit for a well-known Hollywood director at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. That’s also a fantastic outlet for these skills.

In your view, where does the intersection of visual and performing arts lie? How does this intersection influence your creative process?

I don’t think of it as an intersection so much as an interweaving. These two worlds, film and performing arts, don’t just meet at a single point. They coexist beautifully, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. When you bring them together in a live space—where people can move through or interact with the experience—you combine the best of both, allowing the creator to lean into what makes each medium powerful and expressive. One of the reasons I developed this course, which I’ve been teaching for about eight or nine years now, was because I noticed how much time students were spending staring at their screens: computers, phones, and other devices. They were thinking primarily in two dimensions, and I wanted to find a way to get them out of their seats and engage with the physical world around them. Even with VR, which is considered immersive, we’re still just strapping screens to our faces. It’s not the same kind of connection that comes from blending these two disciplines in a real-world environment. That’s why I’ve enjoyed exploring this space and why I think students respond so well to it. At the same time, our broader society is so screen-obsessed—or screen possessed?—that general audiences are actively seeking new ways to engage with narrative, ways that go beyond watching television or scrolling through apps. We’re in the perfect moment to be experimenting with all types of media in environments that give audiences agency and allow for interaction. It’s compelling to see how these experiences can shift perspectives and deepen understanding through storytelling and engagement in unexpected ways.

Of all the projects you've worked on, which one has been your favorite, and why?

In January 2024, at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, my colleague Paula Cizmar and I collaborated on a project called Sacrifice Zone: Los Angeles (SZ:LA). Paula is an accomplished playwright and professor at USC’s School of Dramatic Arts (SDA). SZ:LA explored the neighborhoods of Los Angeles County that have been sacrificed to industry and abandoned by our governments. These communities have been adversely impacted by industrial toxins, pollution from oil wells and automobile traffic, and other environmental hazards. We began developing the project just before the pandemic, which delayed our ability to move forward but gave us time to raise funds. By the time we were able to produce it, we had built up a substantial budget that allowed us to stage a fully realized immersive experience centered on these powerful, local stories. The production took place in the Otis Booth Pavilion at the museum, where we constructed a house filled with touchpoints—or interactive elements—that helped paint a vivid picture of this world. On weekend evenings, we added live scenes that repeated throughout the night, allowing the audience to walk through the house and watch narratives of a family affected by these environmental injustices come to life. It was a massive undertaking, exhausting but incredibly satisfying. What made it even more special was the collaboration across the university. We engaged a large number of SCA and SDA students, faculty, and staff to help design, create, and run the experience. It was truly a collective effort, and something I’ll be forever proud of!

Media Arts + Practice can be a challenging discipline to define. How do you personally describe it to others?

I often describe MA+P as the program where scholarship and artistic practice are not just intersecting, but fully interwoven. (Apparently, weaving is my metaphor of choice today.) There’s a strong belief embedded within our program that one cannot and should not exist without the other. Traditionally, in art schools, you’ll find creative practice on one side and critical studies on the other, with very little crossover. But we believe that separating those approaches limits their potential to elevate one another. In our courses, students learn how to create and how to think critically about what they’re creating. Even if they go on to make work that’s purely commercial, we want them to understand the origins of their ideas, how those ideas can be refined, and the ethical and moral implications of what they’re putting into the world. Our students are amazing, and go on to work in a wide range of industries: film, live events, marketing, design, programming, academia, and more; no matter where they land, they carry with them a thoughtful, intentional approach to creation. Ultimately, we’re developing what we call ‘critical makers’—creative individuals who are equipped to lead in the media and creative industries by combining deep conceptual thinking with strong technical and artistic skills. 

It’s funny, people often ask, ‘What is Media Arts + Practice?’, and at the end of the day it’s pretty straight forward. Students come in, they make a lot of different types of projects, and are challenged daily across a range of media (sound, video, immersive art, mixed reality, coding, and more). As they progress, students have the freedom to delve deeper into the areas that most excite them creatively, while also building a strong foundation in critical thought. That combination is what makes the program unique, especially within the landscape of U.S. universities. And that’s also what makes it so rigorous and fun. I often wish I’d had the opportunity to study in a program like ours. It would have been perfect for me and my wide range of interests at that age—and now, for that matter.

Your activism seems to play a significant role in your work and teaching. How does it inform your creative practice, and do you find it blends into your professional life or remains distinct?

Looking back, my early work with Sundance, with its focus on supporting independent voices in film and theater, truly shaped my sensibility. I was only 22 or 23 when I started there, still growing up in many ways, and that experience laid a strong foundation for thinking about storytelling and how it can address societal concerns. Over the past decade, I’ve learned even more about what it means to work with communities I’m not already embedded within. Building relationships, earning trust, and doing the hard work of consensus-building is key to activism and has become central to my practice. In my immersive docu-narrative class, I often tell students that the course is as much about learning how to build an immersive experience as it is about learning how to build consensus. It’s a group project, and getting 20 students on the same page is always challenging. Now imagine doing that within a community you’re an outsider to, with countless voices and perspectives. You can’t just show up with your own ideas and expect buy-in. You have to meet people where they are, listen, and sometimes partner with organizations that already have trust within those communities. I’ve had the privilege of working with some incredible community groups over the years, and those partnerships have been essential to my successes. This kind of work has deepened my understanding of local issues in Los Angeles and the broader Southern California region. It has also introduced me to people I might never have otherwise met. And hopefully, through storytelling, we’re not only highlighting important narratives but also supporting these communities in meaningful ways beyond the stories themselves.

What advice would you offer to emerging creatives working in experimental and interdisciplinary spaces?

I don’t think I’m unique in this, but I’m definitely a believer in saying “yes” and embracing failure. Most of my career and creative projects have come from simply being open to and saying yes to opportunities, even when I wasn’t sure where they would lead, or if I would succeed at them. If something sounded interesting, I’d go for it and see what happened. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I only knew one person, a makeup artist working in television. That connection became my entry point into L.A.’s creative community. She helped me get background work on an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch—which, at 22 years-old, was mind blowing. From there, she helped me land a production assistant job on Nicole Holofcener’s independent film, Lovely and Amazing. I was the office PA, responsible for running documents between set locations across the city (100% not glamorous). This was before smartphones, so I was constantly driving, sometimes over 200 miles a day in my own car. But I learned the city quickly, and as a P.A., since you have no power over anyone and are therefore non-threatening, I found it easy to approach and connect with people. I used that opportunity to talk to the cast and crew, learn about filmmaking, and better understand the dynamics of a set. Toward the end of that six-week job, I asked one of the producers, Eric D’Arbeloff, if he had anything else coming up. I needed work, and he said he’d keep me in mind. A month later, Eric called and said there was an assistant job open at Sundance. I had no idea what Sundance was at the time, but I said yes!  Many years later, Gabe called about teaching the course at MA+P, and again, I said yes. Each of those moments: saying yes to being a PA, yes to Sundance, yes to teaching, etc., has shaped my path. Not every opportunity works out perfectly, there’s always a risk of failure, but no matter what, you learn something and you build your network. 

Additionally, I encourage all of my students to define success not through external praise, or a feeling of happiness (which is a fleeting emotion) based on a project’s outcome. But instead I walk them through a process of defining their values in life (creative, career, health, relationships, etc.) and to use their personal values as a way to gauge if what they’re doing and how they’re doing it are aligned with their internal value compass. If they are aligned, then that is a success and one that provides them with a personal barometer of how successful they are at any given moment.

What’s next for you? Are there any upcoming installations or experiences we should keep an eye out for?

There are a couple of exciting projects I’m currently working on. One is with Paula Cizmar. We’re developing a new immersive experience called Conference of Fire, which is where the wildfire theme my students are exploring in my class was generated. We’re still in the early stages, but we’ve started bringing together scientists, historians, artists, and Indigenous community members to have conversations about wildfire in the American West. We held our first gathering last spring to explore potential stories and approaches. That was before the devastating fires in Los Angeles, which have made the project feel even more urgent and relevant. It’s a multi-year endeavor, and we’re excited to see where it leads. 

I’m also co-directing a documentary with Sara L. Schwartz, a colleague from the USC Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. The film focuses on the bleeding disorder community in Northern California during the 1980s, when many individuals were inadvertently infected with HIV through contaminated blood products. What’s remarkable is how informal support networks formed during that time, helping people navigate the intense stigma and isolation of an HIV diagnosis in an era without social media or other easy ways to connect. Sarah has been researching this community for the past six or seven years, and we’re now beginning production. We’ve raised some initial funding and will begin filming in November, starting with interviews of individuals who lived through that period. Many of the stories come from mothers who lost their children or other family members, and while the subject matter is deeply tragic, it’s also a testament to the resilience and compassion of people who come together to support one another. If this resonates with anyone reading about me, please donate to the film via its webpage: www.michaelbodie.com/not-a-support-group

Both projects reflect a commitment to storytelling that is rooted in social impact, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be working on them.

Web Links
My website - www.michaelbodie.com
My current documentary project - www.michaelbodie.com/not-a-support-group
The official Sacrifice Zone: Los Angeles website- https://www.sacrifice-zone.com/

Story by Emily Tutnick