User:Grappleboy/Johno Wells

Jonathan ("Johno") Wells is a multimedia artist, painter, photographer, filmmaker, composer and director currently residing in San Diego, California.

Johno was born on March 29, 1970 in Grand Rapids Michigan. At the age of 18 he moved to Riverside, California where he started the band "Paranoid Pam" in 1990 with Billy Barnett and Emmett Ramirez. Paranoid Pam played around LA and the Inland Empire to moderate success and supported fIREHOSE on their "48 State Cuda-Bake" tour in 1993. Johno worked with Mean Street Magazine in the early 90's, doing interviews and creating stories about local bands and shows in the So. Cal area. He created t-shirts and album cover artwork for Inland Empire-area bands and his reputation for creative graphic design and photography began. Johno married Stephanie Garcia in 1995. Stephanie was the second singer for Paranoid Pam, replacing Desiree Richard. The band dissolved in 1996 when they moved to San Diego.

In 1996 he founded The Redtimes with Paulette Shepard as an online "zine" for music reviews and hipster-culture.

Johno began his career as a multimedia artist using the first versions of Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator Quark Xpress and Final Cut Pro. He worked for ad agencies and production shops in the San Diego area as a production artist, and finally a creative director at Interactivate Inc., an ad agency in San Diego.

In 2000 he began his freelance business under the moniker "Redtimes". Specializing in corporate video and documentary films, he also makes his own short films and music videos, often scoring his own films.

In 2006, Wells traveled to Ethiopia to film the feature-length documentary "Yezelalem Minch" with Theo Bennett.

Teaming up with Justin Adams in 2007, Wells created "Drown", a short film which played at the Palm Springs Film Festival in 2007 and won awards internationally. They also the music video "Human Destination" for Portland band "The Upsidedown" which won first prize at WebTrends music video festival in 2008. They founded Resolver Films in 2009 and created the feature-length film, "Water Wings" which premiered to great success.

In 2012, working with John Vanderpol, Wells contributed to the feature-length documentary "Exported from Michigan" as editor, composer, co-cinematographer, and producer. "Exported from Michigan" won the audience appreciation award at the Beverly Hills Film Festival in 2015 and was accepted into "Art Prize" 2015.