Experiencing Interruptions?

Visitors at Midnight

On a stormy season in Cebu, a teenage girl named Shayne is wide awake late at night while her parents are away with only her sister and their housemaid in the house. As the power shortage dims the house, two murderous burglars break in. They struggle to survive for 8 minutes as they wait for the cops to come.

  • MJ Polinar
    Director
  • MJ Polinar
    Writer
  • MJ Polinar
    Producer
  • Naia Cantal
    Key Cast
  • Ian John Saballa
    Director of Photography
  • Kyle Aguilar
    Art Director
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Mga Bisita sa Tungang Gabii
  • Project Type:
    Short, Student
  • Genres:
    Horror, Thriller
  • Runtime:
    14 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    March 29, 2016
  • Production Budget:
    325 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Philippines
  • Country of Filming:
    Philippines
  • Language:
    Cebuano
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes

  • March 31, 2016
Director Biography - MJ Polinar

A Cebuano filmmaker studying the art of Cinema at the University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Cebu, Philippines. He has written a full length horror-genre screenplay on the year 2013. On the year 2014, he became a video editor of Spotlight Videography and later became a one of the camera operator. He is also musically inclined and has composed and arranged a few independent songs and also composes musical scores for films.

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Director Statement

The original concept for the film is to alter the perception of time as the audiences watch the film. But since its cinema we are talking about, the alteration of the perception of time is already a given. Then I learned about “real-time cinema” and how it is used in different ways to portray the fictional narrative time simultaneously with the real time. So I began my research and ended up writing a script entitled “Hugot”(“Tight”) about a young middle class couple who gets tortured/harassed in their own house. Because of certain reasons and because of irrelevance to my thesis I wrote a different script, which is Mga Bisita sa Tungang Gabii (Midnight Visitors).

Though it is in real-time, it does not necessarily mean that it is shot in a one continuous long shot like Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark (2002) or Alejandro Iñárritu's Birdman (2014). In this real-time film, multiple camera angles are taken and edited as if shot in real-time. Depicting realism in this film is a key to show real-time which makes the camera never leaving the protagonist side.