John started out as a casual lighting assistant at Channel 7 before taking up a full-time position at channel 9 in 1963. After a year he resumed engineering studies until 1965 when Channel 9 advertised for videotape technicians and John joined the videotape department. With the advent of electronic editing he started drama assembly on Crawford’s cold-war spy series Hunter followed by the long-running series Division 4.
With the introduction of colour in 1973 he left Channel 9 and began working at AAV cutting commercials, and subsequently spent four years cutting Cop Shop, Crawford's first series video post fully outsourced. After that John worked on his all time favourite job - directing eight, and editing six episodes of the short lived kids magazine tv program Stax made by kids for kids.
In the early 90s, after a time away from editing working in software development, John had a fortuitous meeting with Bob Weis the producer of Stax. Bob was the Australian distributor of Lightworks, and John bought into one and began training and demonstrating Lightworks to editors and post production houses. Since that time he has edited features and a range of TV series. He spent 12 months on the animated feature Little Johnny, for which he edited the animatics, did additional animation, all final compositing, and the final assembly and fine cut.
In 1996 John joined the ASE Victorian committee and enjoyed it so much he remained for 9 years serving as Chairman for three of those years. He was excited to receive his lifetime membership on the 18th December 2005. John is passionate about, and constantly intrigued by, the process of editing and is happiest with a challenge.
He finds it far too stimulating to think of retirement.