A journey shaped by grit, faith, & a belief in soulful storytelling
Born in a small steel town outside Chicago, Jim Johnson moved to Knoxville and has since built an eclectic career spanning military service, entrepreneurial ventures, video production, and a growing presence on the screen.
Cityview: Jim, you actually grew up in Illinois? What was it like growing up there?
Jim Johnson: I was just a normal, everyday kid, until my mom decided to buy a video camera. I think I was about 13 years old. It was a Sony Betamax, which back then were like $5,000 in the early 1980s. She always wanted one for the kids so we’d be able to capture family memories. I took it everywhere with me and recorded everything.
CV: Did you ever think that would end up being such an important part of your future?
JJ: No, no. I was from a small town with a big steel mill. So everytime I went to school, I would see this huge facility and guys in suits with molten steel pouring out of these huge vats the size of dump trucks. I just knew growing up that I didn’t want to do that. It just didn’t seem like there was a whole lot of opportunity to do anything extraordinary. Not that those jobs aren’t extraordinary, it just wasn’t my personality.
CV: Is that when you decided to move here?
JJ: When I turned 18 years old, a buddy of mine moved to Knoxville for a few months, and he invited me for just a week vacation. I came down and it was 70 degrees in Knoxville—30 degrees at home—and I was like, “Man, I’m only 10 hours away. I think this is a great place to live.”
CV: Were you still recording things prior to then?
JJ: I kind of turned away from video production in my teenage years. But my brother and I did all kinds of videos. I also got into BMX bikes and started freestyling and racing and got really good. When I was 16 years old, I actually won the National Championships for BMX racing and thought that this is what I’m going to do.
CV: What made you leave BMX behind and move?
JJ: I was dating a girl for two years and then we broke up, and I was just like, I don’t want to be here anymore. So I left Sterling, Illinois and moved to Tennessee. I came here and started working and then joined the military in 1987.
CV: What branch did you serve in?
JJ: Army. I was a truck driver, heavy equipments operator, and demolitions quarry specialist. In 1987, I met my future wife. In 1988, we got married. In 1989 we had a little girl. I went to college and got a degree in electronic technology, and that’s when I got sent to Desert Storm in 1990 and was gone for almost a year. I was an M60-gunner.
CV: What did you do when you got back?
JJ: I came home and didn’t know what the heck I was gonna do. So my best friend and I built an awning cleaning and maintenance company. We weren’t making enough so we got work in Florida. It forced us to knock on doors and talk to people. We were kids: 23 years old. We ended up, within the next year, doing the majority of the Steak & Shakes in the country, from Michigan to Miami, over 250 locations. And we were doing 400 jobs a year for Blockbuster Video. And it was great all the way through the ’90s, until the recession…then I went to work with a buddy of mine who sold classic car parts. We did nothing, but sell them on eBay for four years. Then Hurricane Katrina hit and people just weren’t buying anymore.
CV: Is that when you turned back to video?
JJ: I’d always had a video camera in my hand, filming my kids, though not professionally. When we couldn’t do the car parts business anymore, we had a mutual friend, Doug Price, at our church who owned a video production company. And I remembered filming when I was a kid and how much I love video. And I just said, “You know,
I wouldn’t mind doing that for a few months.” We thought the economy was going to flip around and I would only have to work there for a few months. So I told the owner, “Hey, listen, I don’t care what you have me do. I’ve built a couple businesses, I’ll be a great employee.”
CV: Did you think “This is it!”?
JJ: I had no idea what I was doing when I went to work for Doug. The only thing I knew how to do was push a button on a camcorder. I didn’t have any clue about lighting or what kind of cameras to use, or audio, or what it takes to do video production. I told him about two months after I was working there, “I’m really enjoying this. I’m going to learn everything there is about this business and I want to learn it from the ground up—lighting, cameras, production.” I would stay 60-80 hours a week and had this incredible opporunity to learn from these guys, the trailblazers in the Knoxville scene, as for as video.
CV: And Doug became a mentor to you, correct?
JJ: Absolutely. Doug was not only a mentor, but a dear friend. He was 25 years older than me, but we had such a close connection. He took me in and showed me the ropes. Then there was Danny, Doug’s partner, who was the one that took the reins. I was there for eight or nine years.
CV: What made you go work for another company?
JJ: A guy wanted me to come work with him in his business consulting firm. I went to Doug and asked if he was going to grow his business or if I should take it. I was so loyal to him; I wanted his blessing. I worked for Rob Brown for a couple years, and we still work together on occassion, but I kept getting pulled towards larger scale video production. And it just seemed like God was pushing me in a direction, opening a little door here, a little door there. People would hire me for these big jobs, large scale conventions. And I just loved it. It was infectious when you’re the camera guy in charge of the camera crew, to get people excited about being on video.
CV: When did you start your own company?
JJ: More and more people wanted me to do stuff and it ended up becoming a full time position, probably somewhere around 2014.
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