Phil Hughes
Emmy-Winning Director · Editor · Filmmaker · Definitely Not a Spy
I am a storyteller across film, television, documentary, digital media, and narrative audio.
For more than fifteen years, I’ve worked in directing, producing, editing, illustration, finance and post.
Film is our era's strongest art form, a marriage of elements that I have devoured and mastered since childhood.
EMMY WINNER · USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS MFA · 15+ YEARS IN PRODUCTION
PHIL HUGHES - NARRATIVE DIRECTOR REEL
DIRECTING · EDITING · STORY · SOUND
Performance is my first love, when actors are alive on screen, the whole film becomes electric. Atmosphere and vibe are a playground ready to be discovered for each new film. And the image, a moment never to be caught again is an act of alchemy that would make even a magician jealous.
My background comes from the working class while my imagination has contemplated larger worlds and stranger futures. I am grounded in the material: graphic compositions, expressive use of color and darkness, and the small behavioral moments that make an image human. My stories run the gamut from the hometown hero to the dystopic future's hope colliding with an indifferent universe.
The objective:
Make the audience feel something.
Selected Work
Bonnie Boswell Presents:
SAVING MOMS
Director · Editor
PBS documentary examining why groups of women experience higher pregnancy and childbirth mortality rates.
Los Angeles Emmy Award
DOCUMENTARY
Character, structure, interviews, archival material, visual storytelling, and the thousand editorial decisions that turn information into experience.
NARRATIVE
Performance, atmosphere, visual grammar, and stories in which what is withheld can matter as much as what is shown. Comedy, drama and horror combined to take the audience on a journey they will remember.
EDITORIAL
I’ve spent much of my career being presented with complicated material and finding the film inside it.
Structure. Rhythm. Character. Music. Sound. Silence.
Editing has profoundly shaped how I direct. I’m always thinking about what an image will eventually have to do in relation to another image. Part of my consciousness is already in the editing room while storyboarding and shooting.
NARRATIVE AUDIO
Working without the image sharpened my understanding of everything the image normally gets to take for granted.
Voice. Rhythm. Point of view. Atmosphere. Sound design. The imaginative participation of the audience.
That work continues to influence how I make films.
STORYBOARDS & PREVISUALIZATION
I draw. Even when I didn't have the resources to craft an image on film, I could always draw.
More importantly, I use drawing to think through a film before the camera arrives.
Storyboarding lets me explore staging, lenses, movement, transitions, visual jokes, action, and the relationship between one image and the next while everything is still cheap enough to change.
My boards range from loose working sketches to fully rendered sequences, and I’ve created them for narrative films, commercials, animation, and previsualization.
VIEW STORYBOARD PORTFOLIO
STORY · PRODUCTION · POST
DIRECTING
I work from behavior outward.
Performance comes first. If I don't care about the characters then the audience sure as hell won't. Then I turn my focus to the frame, movement, sound, rhythm: all the visual rules that allow the audience to lose themselves in the narrative.
And I'm addicted to the vibe. Half the fun of a film is discovering a new atmosphere and feeling to jam to.
I'm drawn to films where I can sense the artist behind it. I’m less interested in coverage than in finding the visual grammar that belongs to the story. Directing a film can be an act of utility, but I much prefer for it to be a private conversation between the director and the audience.
PRODUCTION
Fifteen years across television, film, digital, documentary, and audio means I understand more than one single department.
I also have substantial experience in production finance and payroll accounting, which has given me an unusually practical understanding of the relationship between creative ambition, resources, schedules, people, and money.
I know what happens before the camera rolls. I know what happens after it stops. And I understand the financial machinery that allows everything in between to happen.
The work gets better when creative and production realities aren't treated as opposing forces.
I also have a devotional love for the film office and its staff. I have spent years watching and being a part of those who create the safe bubble so that creativity can flourish. I see the film office as a natural extension of the on set crew and not just a supporting element.
EDITORIAL
Editing is where I learned to see and sculpt.
I’m comfortable with large quantities of material, difficult structural problems, archival storytelling, interviews, performance, music, and sound.
The real exciting moment of the edit is the discovery of the organizing idea that makes everything else suddenly belong. Editing is the only unique craft related to film and my directing does not end on set or on location. The shooting period is the collecting process; gathering materials, finding gems that may be used or discarded once the story unfolds in the timeline.
THE UNCANNY WORKSHOP
I also make independent films with my wife and creative partner, Jennifer Daugherty.
The Uncanny Workshop is where we follow our stranger instincts: supernatural stories, cosmic horror, handmade filmmaking, experiments in performance and form, and whatever else refuses to leave us alone.
It is less a company than a laboratory.
We make films because we remain fascinated by what films can do.
About Phil
My career has never fit particularly well inside one job title. That has turned out to be crazy useful.
I understand directing because I edit.
I understand editing because I direct.
I understand creative decisions in part because I understand their production and financial consequences.
I've spent years watching ambitious ideas encounter reality—and learning how to help the ambition survive the encounter.
LET’S MAKE SOMETHING GREAT
I’m interested in ambitious productions, unusual stories, strong collaborators, and situations where broad filmmaking experience is an asset.
For directing, editorial, production, documentary, television, film, or other interesting trouble:
Phil Hughes
phughes055@gmail.com
· [IMDb] ·
Brooklyn / New York + Los Angeles + Wherever the wind takes me