Dan Clifton – Producer/Director/Technologist 

Born in London, England to an actor and a painter, Dan Clifton has always had an interest in both the practical and creative side of arts and entertainment.

Clifton grew up in Philadelphia, PA where he was an active musician, actor and filmmaker during his high school years. He won a Student Emmy Award for acting in and directing his own television series.

Dan later attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for Film and Television.

While at Tisch, Clifton wrote, directed and produced the short film, For All Mankind, which won a National Board of Review Student Scholarship and The Alfred P. Sloan Science and Film Award. The film placed as a Wasserman Finalist in the NYU First Run film festival in 2009.

After graduating in June of 2009, Dan moved to Los Angeles. When his producing partner David Brooks was tapped to direct the contained-thriller ATM, Dan served as Executive Producer on the film and stepped in as the producer on the ground for the film’s shoot in Winnipeg, Canada for Gold Circle Films.

In making ATM, Dan caught the eye of producer Peter Safran. Safran was putting together another contained thriller called Hours, written and directed by Eric Heisserer. In 2012, Dan served as Executive Producer on the film and oversaw the shoot on the ground in prep and principal photography in New Orleans. Heavily involved in both creative and post-production, Dan also directed the opening title sequence for the film.

Dan made a foray into the tech industry in 2011 when he created the film financing tool Credit Scout App, a program that tracked which tax incentives were available in each state and province in the US and Canada and allowed producers to calculate tax credits for their film in real time. The app was a success with line producers and production personnel and was used as a powerful consulting tool.

Credit Scout is an example of Dan’s focus on bringing new technology into the film industry; something he followed up on in 2016 with a new app called Friends and Family. Friends and Family (www.ffscreening.com) is an application/service launching in August, 2016 that aims to revolutionize how filmmakers conduct recruited audience screenings and get feedback on their projects.

In 2012, Dan produced the voyeuristic horror film The Den, along with David Brooks through their Cliffbrook Films label. Dan sold The Den to IFC Midnight. It was released in the US in 2014 and was one of the best-reviewed horror films of the year.

Since 2012, Dan has worked as a producer on numerous projects with The Safran Company including The Atticus Institute (Executive Producer) The Choice (Co- Producer) for Lionsgate in 2014, and Martyrs (Executive Producer) & The Belko Experiment (Co-Producer) in 2015.

On each of those projects, Dan was principally involved in the independent financing process, creative development, pre-production, location scouting, and overseeing principal photography. In all cases, Dan was also the primary producer who supervised day-to-day post-production and delivery. 

In 2015, Dan recently completed principal photography in New York City on The Boy Downstairs, which he produced with David Brooks through Cliffbrook Films. The Boy Downstairs premiered to positive reviews at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, 2017 and was acquired for domestic release by FilmRise. A domestic release is planned for 1Q 2018. 

In 2016, Dan produced a Virtual Experience for 20th Century Fox Television in "The Exorcist VR." The 360 VR piece was released online and accrued over 1.2m views in its first month. Later in the year, Dan and his VR partner Dave Yarovesky created "Belko VR: An Escape Room Experiment." In the 4 months of release, Belko has as 92% rating on the gaming platform Steam and is the highest rated film/VR tie in created to date. 

Looking to the future, Dan seeks to bring new stories to life in various mediums, including a focus on virtual and augmented reality content. 

Dan has produced films and commercials in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Toronto, Atlanta, San Francisco, Austin, Winnipeg, New Orleans, Wilmington, NC, London, UK, across the state of Hawaii and in Bogota, Colombia.