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Across the Bridge

Nov 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Trevor Boyer

How to make a living in Brooklyn.

Mojo Video Tech

Mark Alan Johnson, owner of Mojo Video Tech (MVT), doesn't live in his studio in DUMBO (which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), a neighborhood across the river from Downtown Manhattan where wealthy young families have bought former artists' lofts over the past decade. But he does keep a futon there for occasional late-night sessions. According to Johnson, his windowless studio — teeming with computers, video display gear, cameras, and piles of relevant components — is situated deep inside the last true artists' warehouse in DUMBO, making it a prime target for a rent-doubling. Indeed, he and his gear might be on their way to another neighborhood if the current eviction threats materialize.

Although the home of MVT is not secure at the moment, Johnson has the deepest New York roots of any of the subjects of this article. His pro video career in New York stretches back to the early '90s. As a guitar player, he started putting together slide-projection programs as a visual component for his performances. “This was when video projectors were CRT projectors the size of refrigerators,” Johnson says. As the technology inevitably shrank, Johnson began VJing at clubs and loft parties.

“You couldn't pay me enough to work in a dance club these days,” he says. “Chasing my money down at 5 a.m. from some promoter is just no fun.”

Johnson has taught himself computer technology to accomplish musical tasks, starting with an Atari ST 1040 MIDI computer in the '80s that he used to sequence and notate music. He has been a Mac fanatic since the days of the Apple II, and he has three dual-G4 editing machines running Adobe After Effects 7 and Final Cut Studio 2. These feed a projector and several small flatscreens. These and a tray for his laptop are mounted on an array of steel tubes, calling to mind a spacecraft set from a future-dystopia flick. A glance at his studio reflects hours of experimentation with gear, with various cables and connectors in plastic tubs and a triage table of components to be soldered.

Johnson says that about half of his jobs through MVT require his presentation expertise. He owns five 2500-lumen Epson PowerLite 820p projectors, an Edirol V-4 for live video mixing, and all the necessary connectivity gear, such as VGA converters. With the gear he owns, he's able to spec out rental packages for corporate events and concert tours, sometimes including gear he needs to rent from other sources, such as bigger projectors or matrix switchers with more I/O than the 4×4 models he owns. He often serves as technical director for these events as well, as he did recently for the run of an off-Broadway dance/rock-and-roll show. Johnson set up the video system, served as onsite technical director, and trained the show's video director on the Edirol mixer. The director could then switch the SD composite video outputs of HVX200 cameras that captured live video of the dancers for IMAG to a 16'×9' screen.

A dream job for Johnson, however, would have him mixing the video at front of house for a live concert. “I love the touring lifestyle; it's a lot of fun,” he says. In recent summers, he has VJed electronic music festivals and hit the road with acts such as Donna Summer and The Dead. “For someone who does psychedelic visuals, that's pretty much the best job you could ever want,” he says of his 2004 tour with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead.

Johnson uses royalty-free abstract visuals as well as those he creates himself in After Effects 7. The new version speeds his workflow for creating visuals driven by music. With After Effects' Expressions, he says, “You can have your audio intensity at a certain frequency be driving a filter. For music stuff, it's great. Instead of having to go in and drop a keyframe, and then render the preview and make sure it's in sync, all you do is take the audio waveform and assign it to drive your filter.”

Not only does Johnson design visuals, but he also develops unique ways to display his creations. For his 2005 tour with Donna Summer, Johnson adapted a projection technique he developed for his tour with the Dead. He has built an array of four Epson PowerLite 8300i (6000-lumen) projectors pointed up and toward the backdrop behind the band. Arranged like a fan, the projectors throw trapezoidal shapes from 6ft. away to cover the backdrop. “It's more part of the lighting show,” Johnson says. “I work closely with lighting designers to make sure we're working in the same color palettes.”

On top of his work in the presentation world, Johnson also works as a Final Cut Pro editor and a gun-for-hire for events that need documentation, whether it's a band working in a studio or a National Geographic event honoring a photographer. He has a Canon XL1 and GL2, and a few analog camcorders (not to mention the security cameras monitoring his studio). One current project has him documenting bands in the studio for the web video site mDialog.com, in a series called NiteSessions. With a mix of HD and SD camers, he and another cameraman record via FireWire direct to a hard drive. “We have all the assets right on hard drive at the end of the session,” Johnson says. “And with Final Cut's new open timeline, it's great, we just drop it into one project.”

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