Pro snowboarder William Hughes is the star of a short film intended to show “a lone character made of light surfing through darkness,” according to filmmaker Jacob Sutton. Viewers probably will agree that Sutton succeeded in a spectacularly surreal manner by fitting Hughes in a L.E.D-enveloped suit for four nights of filming on the slopes of the Tignes in the Rhone-Alpes region in southeastern France.

“I’ve always been excited by unusual ways of lighting things, so it seemed like an exciting idea to make the subject of the film the only light source,” Sutton stated on the Nowness website.

The filmmaker, who had been asked by Nowness to produce a ski film, explained on its Facebook page why he chose a snowboarder for the production: “Snowboarding felt like a much more intuitive movement than skiing. I wanted him to feel like the silver surfer.”

Said Hughes of the bizarre experience: “Filming in the suit was the most surreal thing I’ve done in 20 years of snowboarding. Luckily there was plenty of vin rouge to keep me warm, and Jacob’s enthusiasm kept everyone going through the cold nights.”