Last June, Doug Kenny found himself on a tricycle, a green screen behind him and two leaf blowers going full blast a few inches from his face.
As people with video cameras circled around, Kenny, wearing only tights and a helmet, wondered how he got himself into the situation.
Two days earlier, the third-year industrial engineering major had been in the car with his parents on the way to the wedding of his brother’s friend when his phone rang. It was the director of a public service announcement for Georgia Tech.
The director didn’t say much beyond that a student who was supposed to have appeared in the PSA had dropped out at the last minute. They were going to start filming in hours and needed to recast on the fly.
“My first response was, ‘I’m on the way to a wedding. I can’t,’” Kenny said. “But my family said it could be fun. So I called back and said I’d do it.”
He hurried to campus — missing the nuptials — and found a full film production team set up to shoot. Kenny had zero acting experience. He learned that, as a tennis player with a high GPA, he’d been on a list of potential students for any PSA.
“I didn’t know I had the lead role,” Kenny said. “But I was game for anything.”
As far as Kenny knew, he was going to be in a little video that would be available online or possibly on local TV broadcasts. When he looked over the script — a Tech student does various training and research for what appears to be a serious project but turns out to be the Mini 500 tricycle race — he thought it was “totally ridiculous.”
“I kept telling [the director], ‘Please don’t make me look stupid,’” Kenny said. “I thought it could be really cool or really, really bad.”
The most difficult part, without question, was the “wind tunnel” scene, he said, recalling the hours on the trike with leaf blowers blasting as “brutal.”
His favorite scene, the Mini 500, was the first scene filmed. Kenny got to walk out to a cheering crowd of extras. Then he won the race amid a celebration. The entire filming experience was a marathon, lasting four days.
Fast-forward to Bobby Dodd Stadium where, during a timeout, Kenny watched the PSA play on the stadium’s massive new screen to cheers.
“That was really exciting,” he said. “But the coolest thing was seeing it on ESPN.”
Kenny’s acting turn continues to be played during national broadcasts of Tech sporting events, meaning thousands have seen his comedic role. He said he’s proud to be a part of an ad that portrays engineering in a more fun light.
“We use what we do for amazing things, which you see with the shuttle at the end of the commercial,” Kenny said. “It was really awesome how they made engineering look cool.”
Kenny, who grew up in Roswell, Ga., has left the tennis team to focus on graduating next fall, and he hopes to pursue an MBA at Tech. Despite the success of the PSA, his ambitions lie in finance, not Hollywood.
“I don’t think that’s in my future,” he said of more acting. “But if they called me and asked me to be in one again, I’d do it.”
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