Rachael Johnston’s work as a creative video director and video artist is integrally involved with content creation, live video performance, video mapping and editing.
Rachael has garnered an extensive list of artist collaborations; both nationally and internationally, including Cold Chisel, Dillon Francis, Angus & Julia Stone, Bernard Fanning, The Church, Delta Goodrem, Azealia Banks, Powderfinger amongst many others.
She has been commissioned to contribute to a number of music, arts and cultural festivals, including Australian Fashion Week, Vivid Live Festival, BIGSOUND , G20 Conference, Big Day Out, Splendour in the Grass and was video content director of Festival 2018 for the Commonwealth Games.
Additionally, she has been fortunate to produce visual shows for a number of artists performing at Coachella, Glastonbury Festival, and Tomorrowland.
Her live television work has involved the creation and direction of content for performances on The X Factor, Nickelodeon, The Logies, The Voice, The Arias, The Footy Show and Australia’s Got Talent.
The initial stages of her career involved the completion of a Fine Arts degree in Film and Video with honours, the production and direction of a number of music clips for local artists, and the reception of both gold and silver awards in Directing and Editing at the Queensland’s New Filmmakers Awards.
What would you normally be doing this time of year?
When borders started to close in early March, I was days away from travelling to Saudi Arabia to work on a big video project. I was working on several projects that were taking me up to October, including content design/development for some Australian tours, festivals, a tour with a US DJ, an awards show, the list goes on. Every single project was cancelled. I had also planned travel to Japan, and then Sri Lanka for my fathers 70th Birthday in March, both of these trips were obviously cancelled.
What’s a normal day for you at the moment?
It’s probably the first time in my life for a long time that I’m not waking up with deadlines or fly out dates over my head. I’m trying to appreciate that sense of freedom. When you are a freelancer/contractor, not having deadlines means something is wrong – you aren’t booking work. In this case, because it is totally out of my control, there is a sense of peace. This is, however, completely contrasted with a feeling of anxiety about the state of the world at large and how I am going to generate income in the future. I’ve been cooking a lot – shout out @roadies_who_cook on instagram, gardening, spring cleaning, archiving old content and digital files, going through those boxes of old cables and vintage video equipment, trying to keep up with daily exercise, and spending some time on upskilling and re-educating. There’s a bit of Nintendo and Netflix thrown in for “research purposes” of course.
Are you learning anything to improve your skills set?
There’s obviously no work in the event industry at the moment, but I’m fortunate that my skill set, education and experience which mainly focuses on content creation, can translate to other industries. About 18 months ago I invested in a VR setup in order to start learning how to design in a virtual/AR world. I had a good friend and VR artist Michelle Brown who put me onto several interesting worlds like Tiltbrush and Unity, so I’ve been using this time to develop my skills. I’ve been slowly teaching myself Notch and other software that I haven’t had time in the past to explore, I’ve also promised lighting designer Matthew Smith from Colourblind that I would learn Hippo – so it’s probably about time to attack that.
What bad habits have you slipped into?
Playing Animal Crossing. I’m not sure it’s completely negative, however! I haven’t felt very creative in this period at all in terms of generating content just for the sake of it. It’s ok to not feel creative sometimes – we are in the middle of a serious global pandemic, things are not normal at all, particularly in the events industry, and it’s ok to just live through something like this and observe it. Animal Crossing started as a juvenile exercise, a way to play socially with friends in lockdown, but I’ve ended up channelling creative energy into the game and it’s gotten me interested in creating again. It’s a multifaceted, clever, creative social game, but not something I would do during normal working periods.
How are you coping financially?
I was in an extremely fortunate position that I had some savings, despite some Australian events unfortunately not paying their invoices at the beginning of the year! This has provided me with a small-time buffer to collect, reassess and decide on the next plan of attack: how to generate income in the new future.
When do you think live entertainment will return and in what format?
Live entertainment didn’t really go away completely in the last two months, some have reformatted to online streaming. It’s a poor substitute though and unfortunately nearly of that streaming is not monetised for anyone, not even the artist. I’ve been involved in a few unpaid live streaming events recently, a show I co-designed for DJ Dillon Francis last year was just featured in the game Fortnite in a ‘live show’. I’m a huge fan of drive-in cinemas, I actually went to a drive-in last week when the first restrictions were lifted, I’m starting to see countries holding music events in a drive-in cinema style and I’m here for it. A US artist Marc Rebillet just announced a tour of US via drive-in cinemas, some good lateral thinking there.
In terms of return of live entertainment as we used to know it – I’m not sure anyone knows the clear path, and I think it’s going to be a very slow process. I can see a scenario whereby we could open events between Australia and New Zealand locally, but I don’t know how International artists/touring plays into that. It really is a wait-and-see situation, things are changing extremely fast in this environment. I work with many international clients – many of them in the US, I do think it will be a long time before we get back to any kind of normality as we knew it, particularly without a vaccine. Touring also relies heavily on the travel industry, and we need to see how the collapsing aero industry is going to affect touring costs, and also if the venues that survive after the economic downturn are still viable.
Do you have any words of encouragement?
Look, I’m not going to lie, although things seem a little brighter in Australia currently, it seems to me that the situation is dire. It’s made worse by the Australian Governments slow and forced eradication of official support for the Music, Arts and Culture industries. I don’t know what the future looks like. I do know however that a lot of my friends in fast-paced creative industries are secretly grateful for an enforced pause. It’s hard to take time off in creative industries, particularly when you are a freelancer, so if there’s anything positive, it’s that although worrying about the future is completely normal, this is a glitch in the matrix that is allowing you to slow down and reassess. I would say to anyone – first and foremost take care of yourself, build on the skills you have already have and look at ways you can pivot to generate income. I’ve been really impressed and inspired by several friends who have tackled this financial disaster and are already out there working in different industries. Go get it!
What makes you happy at the moment?
Becoming a millionaire in Animal Crossing. (Check out Rachael’s sets!)
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