Just Shoot It

How do you define your voice as a director? John-Michael Powell https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3119508/ talks about his new film "Violent Ends" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6902560 and the career journey that brought it to theaters.When the entire faculty of his art college told him to give up on becoming an artist, John-Michael moved to Los Angeles. He landed his first job at Bunim-Murray Productions, spending nights watching VHS tapes of "The Real World" and transcribing every line of dialogue onto scraps of paper. By day, he lived in a garage in the Valley off the 405 and close to the edge of moving back home.The better he became at editing TV segments with paper scraps thumb-tacked to a corkboard, the faster he spiraled towards mastering useless skills and boring stories about the way things were. But John-Michael had a knack for finding building blocks in any situation. Even alone, the work fueled him. But he still didn't yet know why that mattered to him.Soon things started taking shape: a Sundan