I decided to enter the Tacoma 72 hour Film festival. This was my first try at doing something like this. 30 different filmmakers had 72 hours to create a short film. Each film had the following requirements:

-Had to include someone blowing bubbles

-Had to include a fortune cookie

-One scene had to be at a museum

-Had to include the line “I feel like we’ve been here before”.

I do a lot of movies with Michael Bartley, but he had already agreed to star in a short film by his coworker, Jeff Alldridge. This was Jeff’s 4th year entering the competition and he intended to produce, write, direct and edit a short drama about a heist. That left me with nothing to do… so I convinced Mike to sign up as a second group. I figured since Mike’s priority would be dedicating his “72 hours” to acting in Jeff’s movie, I could stick around on the set and make a mockumentary about the creation of the heist movie. We planned the filming of our movie around Jeff’s….

I was also lucky enough to have local Seattle superstar comedian, Nick McCord, star as one of the main characters.

To understand the context of our short film (remembering fortune cookies, bubbles, museum and the line “I feel like I’ve been here before”, please first watch Jeff Alldridge’s 5 minute short film, “The Forgotten Heist”: (NOTE: I had nothing to do with the production of “The Forgotten Heist”. I made a small cameo, but it was entirely Jeff’s work and he deserves every bit of credit for it). To watch these in HD, click on the links below the videos.

The Forgotten Heist from Jeff Alldridge on Vimeo.

Then enjoy the 5 minute film I created with Michael Bartley called “Portrait of a Youtube Star: Behind the Scenes of “The Forgotten Heist”:

Portrait of a YouTube Star (5 min Bastardized Festival Cut) from David Kennedy on Vimeo.

I also created a 20 minute “Extended Cut” that wasn’t shown at the festival… you can view that here:

Portrait of a YouTube Star (20 min Extended Director’s Cut) from David Kennedy on Vimeo.

These videos are also available on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/nedyken