Development After finishing his promotional duties on the Sci-Fi short film
Ninety Seconds, Lough decided it was now the right time to make his feature film debut. He was inspired by the "Horror / Sci-Fi anthology films of the '80s such as
Creepshow, The Twilight Zone and
Cat's Eye but with the goal of having each story blend together to make one big story and then bring it stylistically up to date for a modern audience." The screenplay went through close to a dozen drafts and the original idea of four interconnecting stories was eventually changed to three. Many of the same cast and crew he previously worked with on his short films returned for this film. Other influences included the
New Wave music scene of the early 80's and France's 'Cinema du Look' movement.
Production Principal photography began in Co Donegal, Ireland on 1 August 2013 with a series of demanding night shoots. Because the film is divided up into three different stories, the unusual production had to be treated as three different films as each tale had a completely different cast, look, locations, etc., which necessitated a prep / shoot / post process that would repeat itself with each tale and take shooting well into 2014. The film started shooting on Canon HD cameras which Lough had worked with before on his short film
Ninety Seconds and had found to be very sensitive to low light conditions and night shoots. The shoot took in many visually striking locations as diverse as
Fanad Lighthouse,
Barnesmore Gap and
Grianan of Aileach but constantly ran into bad weather. As Lough joked in an interview, "All the rain in the movie is not me paying homage to
Blade Runner – it's the real thing". The shoot moved to Dublin for two days to use locations such as
The Marker Hotel. Principal photography ended on 23 August 2014.
Post Production Over a six-month period, composer Cian Furlong created over an hour's worth of densely layered, completely electronic music. His score was made entirely on Mulab while also using orchestral samples such as brass and strings. The score included a new electronic version of
The Flower Duet from the opera Lakme. Its inclusion was intended by Lough as a homage to director
Tony Scott who used the same music in his feature debut
The Hunger, a film that influenced
Night People. Musically the rest of the film included seven different synthesizer tracks from various up and coming bands and artists such as
Electro Kill Machine (who contributed two songs). All of the film's visual effects were produced solely by Paul Barrett. The film received a '16' certificate from the Irish Film Censor Office for "Strong scenes of gory violence/torture" and "Strong sex references". ==Marketing==