Bryan Johnston
I’ve had the good fortune to work with some truly talented creative artists in my time. Many amazing people have stood out for their strong concepts, impeccable taste, clever wordplay, design craft, or just the uncanny ability to solve creative problems in a fresh way. But of all those folks, the artist who stands out for sheer prodigiousness is Bryan Johnston.
Bryan and I not only share the same first name, we also charted oddly similar paths early in our careers. We both graduated from Washington State University - Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, both were Promotions Director at @KIMA-TV in Yakima, both moved to Portland to write and produce for TV stations there. But where I soon veered off into marketing and advertising, Bryan kept going and going in broadcasting and creative writing. He became Bryan the Movie Guy at KGW-TV, won an armload of Emmys for stations in Portland and Seattle, wrote six books (his latest “Death Warrant” comes out this year), and now leads the creative team at Pyramide Productions Inc.
In our get together at Scott’s Bar & Grill in Edmonds, Bryan was his usual buoyant self and, you guess it, brimming with ideas. For scripts. For blogs. For books. For videos. So many ideas I had a hard time distilling my takeaways to a short list. But here goes.
1) Love what you do: Not a new one, but Bryan is full living proof of it. When you find what you love to do, the energy and ideas will come pouring out.
2) Keep up with the changes: The world keeps changing, as do creative techniques. We were schooled that jump cuts in video were a strict no no. The explosion of user-generated video has put an end to all that. Jump cut away.
3) Own the content: Looking back, Bryan didn’t understand the value of his Bryan the Movie Guy franchise at KGW. He was just having a blast seeing movies for free and producing fun on-air reviews. He’d advise his younger self to better know the value of content ownership and set up a contract that gives him equity.
Need storytelling ideas? Bryan is your man. Thank you buddy for the reconnect and for giving me renewed energy to keep up. Best to you!
#storytelling #creativedirection #videoproduction #drinks #gratitude