John Owen(VIII)

John Owen was born and raised in Erith in south east London. He spent his youth playing a lot of football, listening to a lot of music, watching a lot of TV and attending the ABC Cinema club up the road, where he first fell in love with the movies. He is a proud member of an Arsenal supporting family which goes back three generations to the time when his great grandfather Robert Owen worked as a union official at The Woolwich Arsenal munitions factory. After leaving university Owen tried his hand as an actor and a stand up comedian but ended up being a motorcycle courier to subsidize his creative passions. Realizing this high-octane high-risk job would eventually end in tears, he headed out to Hong Kong where he landed a TV presenters job on a music show. Given total freedom to write and package the show, it was the perfect fit and a huge success. After the show ended its two season run he was snapped up by MTV but this time as a promos director. John soon honed his visual style, shot on location all over the world and won a bunch of international awards for his work along the way. Next up was a move to Mumbai India where he joined the creative team that set up India's mega successful youth network Channel [v], which was part of News Corp and Star TV's initial push into the subcontinent. The hugely talented team was arguably responsible for inventing Indian youth culture from scratch and won numerous awards at Promax and BDA (Broadcast Design Awards) USA. In fact BDA had to invent a new award called the Breakthrough Award just for one of his campaigns, such was the caliber of his work. While at Channel [v] John did a stint as Creative Director and Executive Producer of shows. But Owen was fast becoming a desk bound executive so he quit the office job and got back to his true passion as a hands on writer-director. He went on to direct a ground breaking and award winning urban travel show series called Outhere. At the same time Channel [v] commissioned him to design and produce a national awareness campaign for U.N.AIDS. and a series of fund raising spots for a street kids rehab unit called Support. But having been immersed in and then fallen in love with all things Bollywood during his time at [v], the obvious next step was to write a screenplay. Eventually UTV Motion Pictures / Disney India spotted the potential of The Goa Run (aka Peter Gaya Kaam Se) and offered John the chance to become the first Brit to direct a Bollywood feature film.