From Hamline to Hollywood

If you’re one of the roughly 451 million people who have watched the “Roar” music video, then you’ve seen a Hamline graduate’s work. Besides “Roar,” Derek Johnson (’03) has done visual effects and postproduction work on Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” video and won a VMA for Capital Cities’ “Safe and Sound” video.

Last Thursday, Johnson gave a talk at the Anne Simley Theatre for Fine Arts Career Night. He showed clips of his work and discussed his journey from Hamline grad to music video producer. Although he’s been successful lately, he was quick to say that not everyone who goes to Hollywood makes it big. Johnson said that networking, opportunity, and hard work have a lot to do with his own success. Originally, he wanted to be a screenwriter, but took a visual effects job to make ends meet.

“[I worked on videos] mostly ‘cause I wanted a job… like it was the first industry job that was offered to me and I was like, ‘All right.’ Because if there’s anything about the industry, you’re gonna be meeting with other people in the industry regardless. So it was—I thought it was a good way to get my foot in the door, and then I just ended up being good at it,” Johnson said.

Working with stars like Katy Perry and Capital Cities might seem glamorous, but Johnson said that it’s also like any other job in a lot of ways. He frequently has to put in long hours and work hard for a relatively small amount of money.

“Music videos are a lot of work. Every time you make a music video it’s like, ‘All right, you’re gonna have to give up your life for a couple months.’ Because the hours are long, the pay’s lower than normal jobs, so if you haven’t learned how to work hard already, you’re gonna learn how to work hard,” he said.

When asked what the most difficult part of his job is, Johnson said that those long hours can take a toll on everybody. In his case, he has to set a good example and try not to get too stressed out.

“You work with different teams of people every day, so it’s managing different personalities and on really stressful jobs like music videos or anything else that becomes like late night or long hours, you always need to be the person— you’re the person in charge. Everybody takes their direction from you, so you always have to play cool.”

Sure, video production can be challenging, but it’s also rewarding. Johnson initially stuck with it to pay the bills, but discovered that the broad cultural impact of his videos was one of the best parts of his job.

“I mean, I make culture for a living, you know? Whether it’s good or not, that’s up for debate, but it’s fun to work on a project that sort of creatively influences the way people look at things; the way people sort of see the world—sometimes in a good way, sometimes not,” Johnson remarked. “But it’s fun to actually do something that matters in terms of pop culture; that people actually care about. Like there’s a whole Katy Perry fan base that is excited when a video comes out, or a lot of people that can’t wait to hate on the video once it comes out; regardless it’s just fun to be involved in something that the world actually cares about.”

Even though he’s gaining recognition from his music videos, Johnson said that he mainly works on commercials. After all, he has to have some sort of regular income when he’s between projects.

“Music videos generate the most publicity, but in visual effects and post [production]—I mean even in feature films—what pays the bills for most people are commercials. So the bulk of what I do are commercials—probably many of which you’ve seen that you had no idea that I worked on them,” Johnson noted. “If you’ve ever seen a Tide commercial, chances are I had something to do with it. And there’s so many [others]—Expedia, AT&T. I’m doing these eTrade commercials with Kevin Spacey right now— you’ll start seeing those in a month or two. Those’ll be pretty memorable. I did the displays that went on top of Target Headquarters downtown. The last couple of those I did—me and a team of people.”

There’s no doubt that Johnson has accomplished a lot since graduating from Hamline. However, he credits his success to being realistic. Most people don’t get their dream jobs overnight; it takes some effort to get there.

“[I got here through] hard work. Doing the jobs I didn’t want to do, you know. I don’t know, I’ve seen this a lot—a lot of people start in the industry and just go in with dreams of being the next big screenwriter, the next big director, and it’s like it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re gonna start at the bottom. There are some exceptions to that, but generally speaking you’re gonna fetch coffee, you’re gonna fetch people lunch. And when most people learn you have a work ethic, then they’ll give you the opportunity that you really want,” he stated.

Being that he was once a lowly DMA student, Johnson had some advice for fellow Pipers: start following your dreams now; you don’t have to wait until you go to Hollywood or NYC when there’s plenty of opportunities right here.

“[Students should] go out and do as much as they can on their own. And I think certain people have this mistaken impression that you need to go to Hollywood or you need to move to L.A. to actually be successful. They’re like, ‘That’s where everything is.’ But there’s so many resources here that people don’t take advantage of…people who really want to make something happen have that available to them and make something happen.”