Private Project

Midnight Show

The staff of Jakarta are annoyed at having to work late to accomodate a small audience for the midnight showing of a horror movie called CHILD. That is nothing to how they're going to feel when the real-life killer who inspired the story pays them a visit...

  • Ginanti Rona Tembang Asri
    Director
    Assistant Director to The Raid, The Raid 2, Killers, VHS, Rumah Dara
  • Husein M. Atmodjo
    Writer
    Iseng
  • Gandhi Fernando
    Producer
    The Right One, Tuyul: Part 1, Pizza Man
  • Laura Karina
    Producer
    The Right One, Tuyul: Part 1, Pizza Man
  • Acha Septriasa
    Key Cast
    Test Pack: You're My Baby, Heart
  • Gandhi Fernando
    Key Cast
    The Right One, Tuyul: Part 1, Pizza Man
  • Ratu Felisha
    Key Cast
    Kuntilanak (The Chanting), Something in The Way
  • Ganindra Bimo
    Key Cast
    Guardian, Gangster
  • Gesata Stella
    Key Cast
    The Sun, The Moon, and The Hurricane
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Genres:
    Thriller, Horror, Action, Suspense
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 37 minutes 19 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 1, 2016
  • Country of Origin:
    Indonesia
  • Country of Filming:
    Indonesia
  • Language:
    Indonesian
  • Shooting Format:
    RED
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Korean-Indonesian Film Festival
    Jakarta
    Indonesia
    October 31, 2015
    Asian Premiere
  • Stranger With My Face Film Festival
    Hobart, Tasmania
    Australia
    April 16, 2016
    Australian Premiere
  • Scream Queen Tokyo FilmFest
    Tokyo
    Japan
    October 23, 2016
    Japan Premiere
  • Puerto Rico Horror Film Festival
    Puerto Rico
    Puerto Rico
    October 21, 2016
    Puerto Rican Premiere
Director Biography - Ginanti Rona Tembang Asri

Directing movies is one of her dream to make imagination becomes life on the wide screen. Filmmaking is about to entertain people and make them feel or think something after all.

Born in Lhokseumawe, North Aceh, on June 24, 1987. She Passionately love moving picture since she studied in Art Institute of Jakarta in 2005, Majoring in Directing. Then after graduate as Bachelor Degree, in 2009 She started to begin her career as First Assistant Director in Merah Production Company, worked with Mo brothers in Rumah Dara. She also love making short films and some sort of video clip to keep practice herself in directing. In 2013 she continued became 1st AD in Killers worked together with Japan's Production company, Nikkatsu. Then she also joined with Merantau Film Company as Second Unit Director for action movie, The Raid in 2012 and Berandal (The Raid 2) in 2014, Directed by Gareth Evans.

In 2015, finally she Directed her first feature horror-film ‘Midnight Show’ Starring Acha Septriasa, Ganindra Bimo and Gandhi Fernando.

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Director Statement

I find cinema is the best way to create imagination become real in the screen, through story, sound and picture. In movies, I learned about the characters, staging, drama and tragedy. Thus, I fell in love with the moving pictures in every aspect.

Midnight Show is my directorial debut. Many horror classic and thriller films inspired the film concept. The film is about the monster/psychopath in a house/building with the mixing of modern style treatment, twist in the plot, shocking of practical special effect, and some sort of violence.

My vision for “Midnight Show” has undergone development throughout the production process. I met my scriptwriter partner, Husein M. Atmodjo, and we developed the plot together with Gandhi Fernando, my producer. We designed this film with all the boundaries of budget wise, schedule, casting, location scouting and other things without decreasing value of the film. In this creative process I tried to make sure that each department (Director of Photography, Art Director, Special Effects team, Wadrobe & Make up and Sound effects team) works well with each other, ensuring my creative vision is realized.

The idea for the story of Midnight Show is about “Bocah” (Child in English), a film based on a true story, about a boy who killed his entire family. The film becomes huge controversy among the society. But there is someone who disagrees with the film’s release because it reveals a traumatic event that happen in the past life. The concept idea is to unfold narrative in its tragedy situation into a bundle of complex situation that related.

The casts in this film is an assembly cast of characters, involving the people who work in the movie theater on their daily life routine; the booth ticket girl (Naya), the projector guy (Juna), the security guy (Alan), the cleaner (Lusi), the theater owner (Johan) and also the audience (Sarah, Ikhsan, Seno, Tama and Guntur) who trapped along in that attempted murder situation at midnight screening.

The roots of this film are still thriller and slasher types of film. The sets here allow the actors to perform and build the tension to the story. The set is in a movie theater, including all the room inside the building; the booth ticket, theater auditorium, corridor, storeroom, locker room and toilet. All of those rooms were designed to create some sort of claustrophobic surrounding and trapped in situation.

Visually the DoP; Joel Fadly, and I worked to draw a visual preference into a dark, cold, ripe, gritty look but still with the cinematic aesthetic approach. We want to craft the tense, the creepy tone and create the thrilling moment. I prefer to do some practical special effects, like body prosthetics, blood compressor and pipe, with minimum use of visual effect. A practical special effect looks more realistic although it needs a lot of time to set up; however the essence of the best result is more important.

Music and sound take an important role especially in horror film. In “Midnight Show” I worked with Fajar Yuskemal and Aria Prayogi to make the music scoring and sound special effects to create the world and emotions of the film. The concept inspired by horror classic films, with the instrument of the strings and piano. It triggers the audience’s emotion through scene by scene to feel uncomfortable, panic, fear, aggressive, and also terror. And I want the music score get the impression of a haunt feeling that stick with the audience long after the film ends.

As a female director I want to show that horror film is not only for male viewer. Nowadays there is a cultural shift with a lot of mainstream movie featuring strong female protagonist that becoming more commonplace. Through this film we can see the persistence of female characters to struggle from all the dreadful killing, and I want the audience to Identify and immediately connected to the characters to experience the film together. The audience will feel anxious and smell the character’s fear, then get them excited with a tinge of disgust but still cannot do anything on their seat, thus the viewers always feel anticipation and the film to be alive until the closing credit title have rolled.

I want to offer new perspective of horror film through narratives that is unpredictable and this film will pleasantly suprise the audience where the violence may be shocking. However, it encourage audience perspective to claim violence in many ways.