The famous case of an alleged Suffolk UFO sighting is the focus of a new film – with a Norfolk drone operator playing the ‘alien’.
Graeme Taplin - who runs Drone Photography, and whose day job usually consists of flying his craft over houses and fields for commercial use - never imagined he would be playing a starring role in something right out of the X-Files.
But when invited to recreate an alien spaceship hovering over a Suffolk forest, Mr Taplin, from Bunwell, was delighted.
His drone creates spooky aerial footage for a new feature-length documentary Capel Green, based on real-life events that were reported by military personnel back in December 1980.
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The incident, so famous it is often called ‘Britain’s Roswell’ referring to an event in the US in 1947 when people believed a spaceship had crashed landed, recalls a night of unexplained events in a field called Capel Green at Rendlesham Forest, near Woodbridge.
A group of American personnel from nearby military base RAF Bentwaters claim they saw unusual lights, a mist and delta shaped craft with a ‘non-human’ entity. At the time the MOD stated the event posed no threat to national security and it was therefore never investigated. Sceptics have said it was everything from a fireball to a nearby lighthouse or bright stars. More recently, it was said to be a prank by the British on the Americans.
Today the forest, a popular destinations for families, even has its own ‘UFO trail’.
But filmmakers Indigo Transmit, based in Ely, Cambridgeshire, claim they have got accounts which have never been revealed on camera before. They tracked down the US personnel including sergeant Michael Stacy Smith who said he saw a red “glowing ball” two feet off the ground. He said he even cocked his M60 machine gun.
“I was scared to death, I didn’t know if it was going to hurt me,” he told the filmmakers.
The film is in post production and the company has released an eerie trailer – helping rank it at number 35 in the film and TV industry website IMDb’s list of most anticipated movies of 2020.
Mr Taplin, a former estate agent, said: “I never dreamed I would end up flying drones on a feature film set about UFOs. There’s been many challenges but it’s been thoroughly enjoyable.”
Director and producer Dion M Johnson said: “You will see Graeme’s beautiful aerial filming in the trailer. From very early mornings, freezing cold conditions and often performing technically difficult manoeuvres, Graeme is faultless in his approach which has given this film a unique cinematic feel.”
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