Undergraduate Spotlight: Evan Siegal

Brother Evan Siegal (Southern California ’20) is a young filmmaker, working on his biggest project yet.

As a young filmmaker, Brother Evan Siegal (Southern California ’20) has been writing and directing movies since his junior year of high school.

What started as a hobby, making documentaries for his marching band, quickly turned into a potential career after he saw the impact his work had on his peers.

“It gave them this memory to cling on to years after graduation,” he said. “That was a really special feeling and I wanted to see if I could recreate that.”

Siegal arrived at USC in the spring of 2017 to pursue his dream. Knowing no one at the school, he wanted to get involved on campus to meet new people. He did not know where to start, but luckily for him, his randomly assigned roommate talked him into going through fraternity recruitment.

“He kind of pulled me into it. I didn’t have any interest in going through that process.”

But through that process, one group stuck out: Phi Sigma Kappa. Suddenly, the 20,000-student campus felt significantly smaller and like a second home.

Fast forward to today, with 81 brothers by his side and several movies written, directed, and filmed, Siegal is working on his biggest project yet: a fictional movie tackling the issue anti-Semitism in today’s world titled Ivver. The movie, inspired by Get Out, follows a Jewish teacher who decides to be more open about his religion and the prejudice he faces as a result of that decision.

Before the cameras even begin to roll, the brothers of Omega Deuteron brothers have been helping the director make the film the best it can be.

“I’ve been working on this for a little over a year now and a lot of my brothers are involved in the film school, whether it’s production or film analysis,” Siegal said. “I went to them with script notes and talked to them about the best way to approach the movie. Even now, a lot of them want to get involved in the project and see how they can help out. It’s a cool way to not only involve the other guys, but to see this collaboration get facilitated.”

Phi Sigs have stood by Evan’s side throughout the movies preproduction cycle, and that does not look to change when the movie films in April.

“I think that is one of the pillars that our chapter stands on, brotherhood and participation by everyone.”

For more information on Siegal’s movie, visit Ivver’s Facebook page.