LHHS grad Kirk Johnson hopes his Doritos ad will be featured during Super Bowl XLV
Former LHHS teacher Rhonda Russell calls him her “favorite wacky former student,” but 2003 grad Kirk Johnson is hoping for accolades from a bigger audience. Kirk, who was a Bell Boy at Lake Highlands High and graduated from UT Austin, has created an ad for the Doritos Pepsi-Max Crash the Super Bowl Contest and is hoping to win the $2 million Grand Prize. You can view his 30 second spot here.
Kirk says he was into shooting films even as a kid, but he began to take it seriously and consider it as a career path when he took Broadcast Journalism from Russell in 2001. “She taught us the principles of shooting and editing and then let us do whatever crazy ideas came to mind,” Kirk told me. “It was a great learning experience and she’s the cat’s meow.”
After graduating from UT Kirk continued filmmaking, running a sketch comedy website online called Beef and Sage. They’ve produced 30 short films and are currently developing a web series for msn.com based on their film Manbabies (you can view it here). Over the summer, Kirk wrote and produced a feature film called Austin High, which is currently in the editing process.
Ironically, it could be the 30-second Doritos commercial that puts his bigger projects on the map. Thousands of people are expected to view the various ads submitted for the contest, and millions will see the top 6 ads, to be shown during Dallas’ Super Bowl XLV. He’s already made it to the top 100, but the next hurdle is to be chosen by the Doritos judges for the Top Ten. If he makes it to that level, we’ll update you that it’s time for LH to vote.
In drumming up local support, Kirk has a distinct advantage. His mom, Debbie, (a bit of a cut-up herself) is President-Elect of Lake Highlands Women’s League. “She’s pretty active in the LH community and forwards along my films to her network of friends and family, who in turn do the same, spreading the word all over the place. LH in general has been a huge support.”
“If we win,” says Kirk, “I’m looking forward to using whatever attention we get from the contest to make more films. That and I’m gonna buy a jet pack.”
