A desperate man races through a barren field seeking refuge before the sun sets.
To lecturer and filmmaker John Marsh, the star of the action-thriller that screens at Tropfest on Sunday night is one of his graphic design students at Sydney TAFE's Design Centre Enmore.
Fit guy. Lot of hair. Kooky sense of humour. Rugby league fans know him as Manly's colourful winger David Williams.
Having made comic videos and modelled while starring for the Sea Eagles, NSW and Australia, the ''Wolfman'' is making his dramatic acting debut in the short Darkness Comes.
Marsh said it took him a while to realise one of his students was a professional footballer.
''I didn't know who he was when I first met him," he said. "I don't follow football.
"Then when I pieced it all together, it made sense why he was built the way he was.''
Needing someone with "a big set of guns who was the strong silent type", Marsh originally wanted to use Williams in a film that did not eventuate.
When he devised Darkness Comes with creative partner Dane Hallett, Marsh thought the footballer was ideal casting as a man more desperate than an under-20s player facing a charging Greg Inglis.
They shot the film in a field with an abandoned farmhouse at Binya, near Griffith. ''I'm a movie buff, love watching movies, love acting, love role-play," Williams said. "I've been acting to be a footballer for the past seven years so I suppose it's in the blood there somewhere.''
With a league player's typical reticence, Williams said he really liked the film but found it "cringeworthy" watching himself try to act.
"But that's probably just the perfectionist in me, thinking I could have done that better or I underplayed that or I should have done this," he said. "But credit to everyone involved."
So does the 27-year-old see acting as an alternative career when he retires?
''I was thinking about alternative careers when I was 20,'' Williams said. ''I haven't had the best run with injuries so I put that in play a long time ago.
"I had fun doing it and if anything else comes up, I'll certainly stick my hand up and hopefully give it a good crack.''
Darkness Comes is one of 16 shorts screening at a Tropfest with a difference.
Organisers have shifted the festival from February to December, partly to avoid the rain that has plagued the event, and from the Domain to Centennial Park.
Trop Jr, the competition for filmmakers aged 15 and under, starts at 11am. The main event features entertainment by Busby Marou, Illy and Tina Arena before the films screen at 8pm.
