FERMANAGH names from Northern Ireland’s film industry have been paying tribute to Aaron O’Neill (right), the 29-year-old sound mixer who lost his battle with stomach cancer last Monday, just five weeks after diagnosis.
Having joined Yellowmoon post production house in Holywood in 2012, Mr. O’Neill had worked with some of the world’s top film-makers in his short career and had worked on a number of films with strong links to Fermanagh.
His projects included The Fall, Line of Duty and Game of Thrones to name but a few.
Film producer and director Trevor Birney, who forged his career at The Impartial Reporter, described Mr. O’Neill as a ‘star’.
“His talent could have taken him anywhere. He is a huge loss to our film industry. It is people like Aaron who are going to build this sector that we are in. We need the world to see there are these incredibly talented people in Northern Ireland -- He was certainly one of them.
“We are all just so shocked by his death, it was just so quick,” he said.
“He had gone into hospital thinking it was a burst appendix only to be told it was cancer and it was inoperable.
“Everyone was coming to terms with it when we realised he was going down very fast. He had been moved to a hospice in the last couple of weeks. It was a total shock on Monday to learn of his death.”
Mr. Birney was attending Galway Film Festival at the weekend where one of Yellomoon’s films, ‘Elián’, was showing.

According to Mr. Birney, the young sound mixer made a big impression at Yellowmoon right from the beginning.
“We brought Oscar-winning documentary maker, Alex Gibney in to Yellow Moon earlier this year to work on a project that will be coming out later this year,” he explained, “Aaron was blessed with youthful good looks -- you would have thought he was a teenager rather than his late twenties.
“So the first day Alex came in, he looked at Aaron and then looked at me as if to say: ‘Really? This is the guy who’s working with me?’.
“But by the end of the second day Alex and his editor Andy Greave said they felt Aaron was one of the best, if not the best, that they had ever worked with. They were really taken aback by just how good he was. And I think that was a real testament to Aaron.”
Fellow Fermanagh film producer, Brian Falconer, said he was “devastated” by the news of Mr. O’Neill’s death. “Aaron worked on most of our films,” he explained, “He had worked on Land is God, which we shot at Lough Erne Resort and premiered at F Live. “The last time I saw Aaron he was sitting at the sound desk just working away. He should be remembered as one of the best.”