Phil Hughes
Emmy-Winning Director · Editor · Filmmaker · Definitely Not a Spy
I build stories across film, television, documentary, digital media, and narrative audio.
For more than fifteen years, I’ve worked across directing, producing, editing, and post—developing a particular strength for the place where story, image, sound, performance, and production all have to become one thing.
EMMY WINNER · USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS MFA · 15+ YEARS IN PRODUCTION
PHIL HUGHES - NARRATIVE DIRECTOR REEL
DIRECTING · EDITING · STORY · SOUND
I’m interested in films that create a feeling.
Sometimes that means performance. Sometimes it means finding the architecture hidden inside documentary material. Sometimes it means knowing precisely when an image should disappear and a sound should take over.
The tools change from project to project.
The objective doesn’t:
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.
EDITORIAL
I’ve spent much of my career entering complicated material and finding the film inside it.
Structure. Rhythm. Character. Music. Sound. Silence.
Editing has profoundly shaped how I direct because I’m always thinking about what an image will eventually have to do in relation to another image.
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.
STORY · PRODUCTION · POST
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DIRECTING
I work from behavior outward.
Performance comes first. Then framing, movement, sound, rhythm, and the visual rules that allow the audience to experience a story rather than simply receive information about it.
I’m particularly drawn to work with a strong sense of atmosphere, character, place, and point of view.
PRODUCTION
Fifteen years across television, film, digital, documentary, and audio means I understand more than my own department.
I know what happens before the camera rolls.
I know what happens after it stops.
And I know how much better the work becomes when everyone understands the same movie.
EDITORIAL
Editing is where I learned to see.
I’m comfortable with large quantities of material, difficult structural problems, archival storytelling, interviews, performance, music, and sound.
I like discovering the organizing idea that makes everything else suddenly belong.
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
I’m a director, editor, producer, and filmmaker with more than fifteen years of experience across broadcast television, documentary, longform programming, digital media, independent film, and narrative audio.
I earned my MFA in Film Production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and later received a Los Angeles Emmy for my work directing and editing Saving Moms for PBS SoCal.
My career has never fit particularly well inside one job title.
That has turned out to be useful.
I understand directing because I edit.
I understand editing because I direct.
I understand production because I’ve spent years watching ambitious ideas encounter reality.
I’m happiest around smart people making difficult things.
LET’S MAKE SOMETHING GOOD
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