“The Light Above The Lake” was written, directed and edited by me, with Donncha Gilmore behind the camera and Rob Keogh producing. It was a depiction of a “man in black” encounter as described in UFO lore, most notably “The Mothman Prophecies” by John Keel, something I always found terrifying as a kid and that still unnerves me today.

With a total budget of under €900 it was filmed across 2 days with pickups on the titular lake. We ran into a disaster mere days before filming when our original “Man in Black” suddenly pulled out. I was ready to pause the shoot until Donncha convinced me to put a public call out and a true hero, Mel Flanagan, came to our rescue and scared the bejesus out of everyone once he was in makeup, plodding around the house.

It was (clearly) the first film I’d used After Effects on, creating the very cheesy Star Trek-tier UFO, as well as using a vocoder to give Mel a subtle robotic under tone to his voice. The goal was to capture the surreal, Lynchian aspects of “men in black” stories and I think we achieved it at points, creating some really great, slightly nightmarish shots in the process.