Dominic Johnson was born and raised in the small town of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, England. An avid gamer as a kid, he often had to be literally dragged outside in order to do other things. He and his friends were hooked on what was known in America as the Genesis. 

After several misguided attempts to use his vivid imagination and quick mouth to cause trouble, an Expressive Arts teacher encouraged him to put them to better use, which resulted in him creating a play called The Neighbours, a satiric comedy about the then-new debate regarding the legalization of Class A drugs.

However, Dominic didn't do much to capitalize on this. In college, he studied for a GNVQ in Business, as well as getting an honorary doctorate in Getting Drunk & Doing Stupid Things. His work in the latter eventually ended him up in front of a guidance counselor. And it was she who suggested about enrolling on the Film & Media course, a notion he initially rejected. But he eventually gained a whole new appreciation for the medium and its possibilities, and it dawned on him that he could possibly do some interesting work in it.

Whilst he was still a student, Dominic worked as a stagehand on several low-budget theatre productions, including Brigadoon and An Inspector Calls. He also spent a few months during his gap year as a runner at The Mailbox, the BBC's West Midlands base. His first big break came when he was offered the chance to spend two weeks in Los Angeles working for an English producer, cutting together a teaser trailer for a prospective feature film to be called Magenta: The Colour of Blood. 

Returning to the UK to study for a Higher National Diploma, Dominic continued on in this capacity on an extra-curricular project: a teaser trailer for a potential documentary about film censorship, which also became his first directorial outing, called Nice Cans, Great Movie. For his thesis film, he made his first venture into narrative filmmaking with First Person Singular. After graduation, he made two further short films: Ceiling Unlimited and Kissproof.