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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels October 7, 2004 'Low Budget' Johnson on cutting edge By Chris Honore Tidings Reviewer As an artist, LB Johnson said she really bloomed when she left L.A. and arrived in Santa Cruz some twenty-years ago. LB Johnson will be part of a Mobius benefit Friday. Submitted photo It was at the start of her career that Johnson set out to make rock videos with her boyfriend's band, The Humans. She viewed herself as a craftswoman doing videography. Johnson founded Happy Production Company, getting involved in the first music video wave of the 1980s. She became a "vee-jay" at clubs and dances where she began taping bands. She went on to use the video/film medium because she discovered that it allowed her to see and hear and even feel the subject. "When I started learning about video production in 1979, we wouldn't think of calling ourselves filmmakers. Now I use the term videographer and filmmaker interchangeably." With documentary film, she discovered that she loved the art of story telling and editing, weaving images and words and sounds together, finding the right connecting threads, asking the right questions. "Documentaries can be transportive for the viewer, take them places they've never been and meet people they'd never meet," Johnson said. As far as her "straight" documentaries go, Johnson says it's about presenting new information in a way that keeps viewers interested and entertained. "Most of my work shines light on a dark subject such as Vietnam, the School of the Americas, the hemp industry. I'm probably more of an educator than an artist, although I want my work to be beautiful, honest and artistically put together." Her work over the years has focused on an array of different subjects. She has worked for non-profits and small groups - from Veterans for Peace, to a therapist taking women swimming with wild dolphins for healing, mountain climbing, breast cancer survivors, and eco-travelogue in Costa Rica, to a glimpse of what can be done with and made from the hemp plant. "LB stands for low budget," Johnson said. "In the past I have done all the writing, editing, and taking a project from conception to end." Initially, Johnson came to Ashland in 2003 to edit a project about Miracle Krystal Salt with Matthew Gamlen, an editor and designer for Mobius Productions. It was during her stay here, and with the encouragement of Gamlen, that she decided to make Ashland her home. "There were more smiling faces here than anywhere I've ever been. It's a lovely, welcoming town." Since arriving here she has worked with several producers including Stephen Simon and the Spiritual Cinema Circle and she is currently working on several benefits. The first will be a benefit for Mobius Productions on Friday at 8 p.m. It will feature a "retro" rock opera called "Happy Hour," made in 1981, and starring the Humans, a new wave Bay Area band. It is a love story with political intrigue. On Wednesday, October 27, at 7 p.m., Johnson will present the Harvest Moon Hemp Show, a benefit for the Hemp Awareness Project, featuring "Hemp Hemp Hooray! The Growing Industrial Hemp Market," which won best documentary at the Earthvision Environmental Video Festival in 2002. There will be hemp food to taste and hemp fashions to check out. On Veterans Day, Thursday, November 11, at 7 p.m., Johnson will stage a benefit for The Viet Nam Friendship Village, located in Hanoi. She will feature two of her documentaries, done in Vietnam with American and Vietnamese veterans. Clips will be shown from "Return to the Ville," about 10 Marines returning to the villages where they served in the pacification program during the war. A diplomatic travelogue, "Forget-Me-Not," will be also be featured. This film focuses on five cities in Vietnam, capturing the harsh realities of a country recovering from centuries of war and occupation as well as the effects of Agent Orange. All three benefits will be held at Mobius Productions, 281 Front St., Ashland. For further information call, 482-6446. DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams