A Possessed Man Takes a Frenetic Odyssey in Tommy Holohan and Megra Video

Will Wightman directs a frenetic odyssey of a man possessed for Tommy Holohan and Megra’s latest track ‘Show Me The Sky’.

Partly inspired by a very real childhood phobia and Will’s own OCD, the video follows a man who’s beginning to lose it - a fly swoops inside his ear - and he becomes a man possessed.

The use of a practical build and old school VFX, take us literally headfirst inside the character’s transformation. Like a nightmarish Ratatouille, George Osman’s Fly controls Jared like a puppet. The camera shakes as he’s thrown around, mirroring his descent into madness. Paired with sharp cuts and Jack Hamilton’s hand-held photography, the video feels like it rattling.

Slasher inspired prosthetics give a gross, gory glow to the violence. Jared does whatever he can to try and regain control; tooth picks, scissors and toxic chemicals. Each mutilation feels both comical and disturbing and makes Holohan’s techno feel even more unrelenting.

As an artist, Tommy has been labelled one of the spearheads of rave revival over the past few years. From leapfrogging his way to the top of the Irish pecking order, he has uprooted dance floors in Griessmuehle, Corsica Studios, District 8 and delivered one of the most memorable Boiler Room sets the online platform has seen. 

The track itself, written by Dublin native Tommy and electronic artist Megra, feels truly-sky piercing. Led by a devastating blend of reese bass, euphoric vocals and rave stabs, it's the first single off Tommy’s debut EP ‘Temple Theatre’, and the perfect score for Will’s twisted story.

Here’s a quote from Will, where he speaks on the process behind making the music video and bringing Tommy’s track to life:

“I’ve had this loose concept buzzing around my head for a good while now, (semi inspired by a true story and my own OCD) but Tommy’s music really unlocked it for me. I actually wrote the video to another one of his tracks a year ago, the timing didn’t work out that time, but when he came back around with this amazing new EP I jumped at it. I love the energy and cinematic quality of Tommy's music, his tracks often evolve through different motifs and paces, in a way that’s quite rare for dance music.  It’s so perfect for telling a story with different emotional beats, which is what drew me to his work."

Will goes on to say, "For me, bringing the fly to life was the final piece of the puzzle that really unlocked this idea. How could we create this character and his world in a way that felt crafted and memorable, and also didn’t break the bank? Ultimately it came down to leaning into what we didn’t have, rather than trying to make it feel like the fly was actually a real fly in a real space. I wanted to lean into the exaggerated way a character like Jared may envision a fly and how it would crawl into his brain.  Using techniques like miniatures, prosthetics, and matte paintings also helped to make the tone of this feel fun, rather than horrifically dark.

Designing the fly character itself was also a challenge, should he have a fly body? Six legs? An exoskeleton? How do we make him funny and characterful but still clearly a fly, we did a lot of concept art and ultimately arrived on this half fly half sweaty trucker aesthetic, aka Jared’s worse nightmare".

"Certainly the most unique challenge of the shoot was trying to bridge the gap between our characters and their worlds. The whole video rests on the relationship between Jared and this fly, and how dark is too dark?’ was a question we really kept at the forefront of our minds in the edit. We definitely went back and forth a bit, but in the end, I was comfortable with it being gruesome as long as it never felt too sad or depressing. B-movie-gross-fun was the ambition!"