David C. Kirtland was born and raised in southeast Louisiana. He was the the second of five children. After his mother and father divorced when he was 7, the family began their somewhat nomadic lifestyle due to financial struggles. At this time, David began to show keen interest in being entrepreneurial and in visual arts. He was an avid drawer and after requested starting teaching fellow students to draw for just a few dollars a class. He also began writing, acting, and directing short skits which usually included his brothers and sisters as both crew and cast. At age 13, his mother married her second husband and the family finally gained some financial stability, but with that came domestic instability. After a year of physical and mental abuse from his step father, David was sent to live with his father. During the year he lived with his father, David excelled in school and began running a very successful comic production endeavor. He, along with other students, began writing, drawing, and producing a comic book series which was sold through out the school. But, it was short lived, the following your David returned to live with his mother and step father. David became complete involved with writing and directing at this time. He wrote, directed, and edited eight short videos during his first year back. Some of these early shorts were The Poet, Baptismal Fire, and Hitchhiker. At age 16 David dropped out of school and left home. In 2001, his daughter Cassandra was born and David quickly put all aspirations of film making on hold. Instead, he spent his time working long hours and studying writing and directing whenever he had the chance. In 2002 his father went missing in the middle of the night. David, suffering through depression and looking for a way to deal with his loss, decided to write a feature film script recounting the year and a half following his father's death. The script evolved into a outlet and allowed him to put his feeling and experiences of grief into words. The script, Together Again, was completed in just four months. After debating on what to do with Together Again for several months, David decided to submit it for possible option. Just a few weeks later he was contacted and asked to a meeting to discuss the script. Although, the script was not optioned, David was hired to adapt a feature script of the highly controversial book, My First Two Thousand Years, which is written as an autobiography of the "wandering jew. The screenplay was completed in July of 2005 trial completed.Following the break up in 2005, David moved back to Louisiana just in time to experience Hurricane Katrina.David may have lost his job following the devastating storm, but not his drive. He decided to follow his life-long dream of going to college and enrolled in Delgado Community College's Television Production degree in New Orleans, LA. There he got involved in the theater department and took a job with the school as a theater assistant. He stage managed the school's production, "Floodgate", a political satire about the government response to Hurricane Katrina. He even took on the challenge of musical stage acting when he took on the role of Mr. McQueen in the Big Easy Award winning production of "Urinetown: The Musical" He formed Gray Door Films. He directed the short film, In Purgatory, which was written by Jeremy Diable and Jennifer Westmoreland. He was on board to make his feature film debut with the coming of age comedy, Floating on Firecrakers. He gave up Gray Door Films. David took several years away from directing, but he was unable to keep his creativity away. He wrote two stage plays during this time, the comedy "The Tale of Two Strudels" and the musical satire "Prison Romance." He joined the Louisiana Army National Guard in 2009 and was sent Army Basic Combat Training in Fort Benning, Georgia. After finishing basic training he spent the three months of his Advanced Individual Training at Ft. Meade, MD where he received training for print journalism at the Defense Information School. While at Ft. Meade, which is less than hour outside of Baltimore, David visited the grave site of Edgar Alan Poe. Always being a enthralled by Poe's writing, David began toying with the idea of adapting a short film from Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" short story. After returning home from training, David took a federal job as a broadcast journalist with Louisiana National Guard's State Public Affairs Office. He was deployed to Haiti in response to the January 2010 earthquake with Joint Task Force Kout Men , where he spent three months reporting on the rebuilding effort. When David returned from Haiti he created his new venture New Guy Films which was created to give new filmmakers a chance to pratice their skills and gain experience in the production job of their interest. At the same time he resumed planning of his short film To Kill which was completed toward the end of 2010. With the release of To Kill David was contracted to direct the feature film Jerome High Scream Team, a supernatural teenage comedy written by Jim Jackson and produced by Upperline Entertainment. But before shooting Jerome High Scream Team, David had another short film in mind, Dark Blue. The film is a suspenseful crime thriller following a corrupt New Orleans homicide detective who is trying to solve a string of murders that implicate him. The film starred Los Angelos actor, Tracy Miller, New Orleans actors Blake Palmintier, Shanna Forrestall, Doc Whitney, and the television series Treme's Lance Nichols. David was able to raise almost $6,000 in just two weeks to pay for the five day production. The film brought together some of the most talented people in Louisiana both in front and behind the camera. Dark Blue signaled a change in the grass roots indie film movement in Louisiana. Professional-looking films could be made on a shoestring budget effectively. Since the beginning of 2011, David has become a regular figure in the fledgling local film community. He has since continued to write, produce, and direct films of all kinds. He has continued to show his diversity of craft by writing and directing a wide range genres.
