Christian Johnston

Christian Johnston won his first filmmaking award at age 17 in his native Colorado. Since then he has directed feature films, action/sports television programming, commercial campaigns and music videos that have been shot in the U.S. and in more than 17 foreign countries. One of his clean air commercial campaigns for American Lung Association awarded him the top prize in its field, the Prism Award. He has shot commercials for Janus Fund, BMW, Calvin Klein, McDonalds and Puma as well as music videos for Kanye West and Thievery Corporation.

Prior to his commercial campaigns, Johnston made his mark as a top snowboarding documentary director/producer/cinematographer while just out of High School. His three boarding documentaries, covering snowboarding, skateboarding and wakeboarding, "The Players", "Ground Zero" and "Vertigo" were sold worldwide. With his follow-up series, "Extreme", a 5 one hour TV/DVD special, Johnston aligned 72 bands and 12 music labels for the ultimate music meets action sports experience. Johnston wrapped up his snowboarding adventures with "Digital Snow"; a documentary that followed a handful of the best snowboarders across the globe, and married the film to a music compilation 2 CD set.

Johnston then went on to create a 26 half hour series "The 60" for Rainbow Media's Networks, to follow 60 of the top female athletes in the world (including 7 gold medalists and the top action sports athletes of both sexes speaking about women athletes.

In 2002 while the war was being waged in Afghanistan Johnston and a small crew snuck into the war torn country to make a film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. The fictional film used real warlords and Northern Alliance fighters who helped the lead character (George Calil) Lars follow the trail of the worlds most wanted man. As co-writer, producer, director and cinematographer Johnston and his crew found themselves behind enemy lines while live bullets were flying. The film was a hit at the 2004 Sundance film festival and was bought by Think! Films and Firstlook International. It has been distributed in 28 countries around the world and played over 25 film festivals worldwide.

Last year Johnston completed a three year long Documentary project for MTV about a Juvenile Fire camp outside of L.A. called Camp Louis Routh. Together with Anonymous Content and Brett Morgan Johnston and his crew followed a handful of convicted juvenile gang members as they opted to enter the Camp and learn to become wild land firefighters. Rival gang members with chainsaws and a hot fire season created the prefect mix for drama for the doc "True Life: Trial by Fire" aired on March 1st with a 1.14/3.5 Nielsen Rating, reaching over a million Nielsen watchers at 10pm; one of the highest ever for the documentary series.

Johnston recently finished his second feature film; a one-hour special and a book about the Russian Space Agency. The film is to be named the week of it's release. The hybrid film written/directed and produced by Johnston was shot in Moscow, Prague and the Ukraine. Using actual events and footage, the film recounts the last four days of a manned military space station that crashed in November 1998. The film is set for release in the fall.

Johnston was recently written up in Boards Magazine Directors to Watch, Shot Weekly and the Guardian as one of the five to watch new Directors.