Johnny Green discusses his career

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The obsessive research that precedes a Johnny Green shoot is the calm before a creative hurricane, says Stephen Whelan Four spots into his career as a director, and Johnny Green is already flying high.

With an obsessive eye for detail and borderline neurotic commitment to every piece of work that comes his way, Green has developed a unique visual style that mixes avant-garde abstraction with traditional landscape portraiture and elements of still life photography.

The result is a genuinely original aesthetic that balances hauntingly beautiful and atmospheric imagery against a tightly crafted aural backdrop.

Put simply, Green’s work blurs the line between commercials and high culture.

High praise indeed, but more than justified when you consider that the four spots on his reel include work for Audi and adidas. He’s also just shot a worldwide spot for Land Rover, and is in the early stages of creating a book of photography, which is linked to his short film, Nyemka’s Dream. It seems he’s taken the adidas ‘impossible is nothing’ mantra to heart.

Despite his early successes, Green is still what you might call a late bloomer.

photograph: charlie crane

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“As a director I love the idea of planning everything meticulously in my mind’s eye and having a clear idea of what it’s going to look like at the end. That way I’m prepared when everything changes, which it inevitably does.”

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With over 12 years experience as a production designer to some of the industry’s biggest and brightest, among them his close friend Malcolm Venville, he’s come a long way from his early days of academic failure.

“I basically got expelled from every school I went to, so my dad had to become my teacher,” Green says of his childhood growing up in Manchester. “It got to the point where I failed my O-levels and my mum started steering me towards art to get me away from academia.

But I got expelled from art school too.”

Green found his way onto the straight and narrow at Camden Arts Centre where he took an art foundation course. From there he moved over to Middlesex Polytechnic where, in his words, “I sat next to Jonathan Glazer and we both got into making things and designing bits and pieces.” Green’s path led him to specialise in theatre design, and he made his way to Slade School of Fine Art, where he graduated with a Masters degree.

Pieces of paper are all well and good, but what Green really seems to have taken from his theatrical background is a sense of staging and an instinctive understanding of how to create distinctive environments with broad visual gestures. Loosely speaking, his 2005 short film project, Nyemka’s Dream, is about the captain of the Mongolian ice speedway team. On another level, it’s about Green finding his voice as a director and developing a sensory language of his own. “After much prodding I committed to the idea of directing, but I couldn’t think of anything to make a film about,” he recalls. “I spent ages racking my brain trying to figure out a subject and I started thinking about speedway because my brother was the captain of a speedway team in Manchester. I remembered me and my dad and my brother watching ice speedway on TV when I was a kid, so I started researching. Somehow I ended up in Siberia making a film.”

Off the back of Nyemka’s Dream, Green landed a job for Audi. When I first spoke to him in October 2006 the finished spot had just gone to air and Green seemed relieved, exhausted and grateful in equal measure. “With Audi I was really lucky,” he reminisces. “They were an exception, because they were upfront about not understanding what I was doing or what the finished film would look like, but they trusted me all the way, because of the way I described the images. There was no interference during the shoot.”

(Top two) adidas All Blacks. (Middle) Audi Satellite.

(Bottom two) Discovery Channel, Gymnast and Michael Lau. (Opposite) Nyemka’s Dream, Green’s gloriously cinematic short film shot in Siberia

Green acknowledges that a near-open brief can

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be a burden as well as a blessing. “In a way,

are visible in every frame. Watch one of his films at half speed and the

working like that puts more pressure on you. You

number of images literally doubles. His work really is that detailed.

end up thinking, maybe I am crazy. Maybe this is

“As a director I love the idea of planning everything meticulously in my

going to look ridiculous.”

mind’s eye and having a clear idea of what it’s going to look like at the end,”

Green’s hypercritical emphasis on craft is clear in

Green explains. “That way I’m prepared when everything changes, which it

the attention he pays to every detail. From the

inevitably does. But that’s the enjoyable bit; when everyone’s looking in one

smallest particle of dust to the widest landscape

direction and the thing you didn’t expect is happening behind you. It’s the

shot, from the barely audible to the

same with great stills photographers. You perch yourself in a corner and

overwhelmingly loud, Green’s painstaking efforts

wait. But with commercials there’s not the time to do that on every shoot.”

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“There was no interference during the shoot. In a way working like that puts more pressure on you.

You end up thinking maybe I am crazy.

Maybe this is going to look ridiculous.”

of their life from a comfortable distance.”

Green admits that the thought of directing in a more conventional style scares him. “The idea of being on set and having an actor and getting them to move from point a to point b in a certain way freaks me out. The rigidity scares me. It’s not my way of working. But maybe I’m going to have to do that at some point.” He pauses for a second while a look of fear crosses his face, before adding: “I wonder how I would really be in that situation, because you take away the wonder of the mistake and absolutely not knowing what’s going to happen at any given moment.”

Thumbing through a stack of scrapbooks he’s created for various projects, Green explains how he prepares for each job. “I love researching, immersing myself obsessively in these different little worlds. I really enjoy making scrapbooks of A year on from Audi, Green’s definitely calmer. Perhaps the experience of

everything I can possibly think of that might be relevant to a job. It starts

the last 12 months has hardened him a little? “There’s still a certain

with images which form into sequences which give birth to ideas.”

vulnerability that I try to get at with my work,” he muses. “I hope people who

The assorted black leather books are crammed with sketches, storyboards

see the Audi and adidas spots get a sense of emotion from the people that

and scribbled notes, like little shards of insight into his inner workings. And

are in the films. As much as they’re about scenery and landscape and light

there’s something charmingly innocent residing within. His scrapbook for the

they’re also about character and personality.”

adidas project contains a sketch by Green of Carl Hayman from the All Blacks.

Green says he loves the idea of helping people to look at things, be it

He becomes animated when explaining how he got Hayman to sign the

situations or objects or images, in ways they normally wouldn’t. “A lot of my

illustration during the adidas shoot, all the while grinning like a schoolboy

ideas come from listening to kids talking and their sort of naïve outlook on

showing off a prized possession. Suddenly he seems to withdraw again and in

life. I find that filters into other areas of my life. Like sounds. Often during

that moment his work makes complete sense. What Green’s mastered is a way

telephone calls I’m more interested in hearing what’s going on around the

of conveying those rare moments of emotional and sensory clarity that exist

person calling me than in what they’re saying. And I love it when people call

within a mess of fuzzy, grey abstraction and disorienting uncertainty. And

up and don’t know they’ve called and you get a chance to listen to a piece

then the clarity passes and it’s back to the puzzling world of existence.

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