“The story of a man who discovers the many perks and the tragic pitfalls of looking like a famous celebrity.”
That was the logline for Being Kevin, a short film we made back in 2015 as team “Hulk Hogan’s Heroes” for the 100 Hour Film Race.
The premise didn’t require much imagination. Bryan actually looks uncannily like Kevin Smith, to the point where he has had genuine, real-life interactions with strangers in public who fully believed they were talking to the guy who directed Clerks. It was a running joke that was begging to be put on camera.
The Film Race provided the perfect excuse, but it also came with a strict set of mandatory assignment constraints. We had exactly 100 hours to write, shoot, and edit a film that included a theme of Mistaken Identity, an action of drinking from a straw, and a mask as a prop.
What followed was an absolute blur of guerrilla filmmaking. We spent two frantic days sprinting around Midland and Penetang, throwing the camera on a tripod, and capturing every shot we needed before the clock ran out. It was chaotic, loud, and incredibly fun.
But the real battle was in the editing bay. I stayed up all night, eyes completely glazed over, frantically cutting the footage together as the deadline loomed, eventually delivering the final export just under the wire.
That sleep-deprived, 100-hour sprint was the exact spark that lit the fire for Good Morning Apocalypse. It proved that if we just leaned into the chaos, we could actually make something that worked.
