Rick Danford's been carrying the pain around with him for several years. He's been carrying the script around for even longer.
But now shooting is under way for his short film The Lost, and Danford is finally getting to put some of it to rest, one break-neck, all-night shooting session at a time.
The Lost is a dramatic film with supernatural overtones — think M. Night Shyamalan — for a filmmaker known for straight-ahead horror. In it, a man coping with loss finds himself in the woods, contemplating suicide, but is brought back from the brink by a mysterious young girl.
The devastating loss of an aunt — a "second mother" to Danford — pushed the Tampa resident to new levels of focus and commitment on this passion project. For the already-energetic Danford, that meant recruiting a set of quality actors to the project: David Schifter (The Rack Pack and Checkpoint), young local star Alana Cavanaugh (Dolphin Tale 2 and AMC's Halt and Catch Fire), and Lee Perkins (Foxcatcher and Woodlawn).
Like any true shoestring-budget film, shooting has taken place at odd places and at odd hours: midnight until 8 A.M. at LP's Pub in Clearwater, and on an acquaintance's wooded property in New Port Richey. Danford cobbled together vacation hours from his day job to be able to shoot the film.
'That's the indie life, you know?' he says. 'I got a good cast, good crew, good setting together… and at some point, you've got to bite the bullet.'
But indie doesn't mean unambitious. Danford hopes to have the entire film ready for screening by the end of May. That's when Danford's own Saints and Sinners Film Festival takes place, as part of MegaCon in Orlando.
Past that, the scope widens. Danford and crew have big plans for sending The Lost to a number of film festivals. Sundance and Cannes are possibilities. The only problem, as Danford says, is that "they are expensive… You have to pick and choose."
There's no illusion that short films like The Lost will reach a wide audience. But for Danford, that's not the whole point.
"A short film is like a digital calling card," he says. "Distribution is small, money is small. But if you put it in front of the right people…"
He points to the 2016 horror film Lights Out as an example. It started life as three-minute long short film released online, before becoming a Warner Bros. feature length grossing $148.9 million to date.
But those kinds of dreams are not Danford's only motivation.
"I used what happened to me in my personal life as motivation," he says. If nothing else, he knows where the film will be premiered locally: at a charity event benefiting Moffitt Cancer Center, in honor of his beloved Aunt Maria.
This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 6, 2017.