#A perfect world movie location full

The safe house set was something of a godsend. Can you talk a bit about the set design, and how you utilized the claustrophobia of the “safe” house to emphasize the feeling of being lost that each character experiences? Shooting the blackouts you used classic camera techniques to create a sense of confusion and being lost, but I think the far more impactful work is done from inside the safehouse. I miss when we could have uninterrupted conversations on a landline. Of course, it could also be my way of venting all my frustrations with our infamously slow internet and how I’ve bought at least a dozen phones and never had a single conversation on it that doesn’t lag or drop out. But tech is fundamentally unreliable where I’m from and in a similarly dangerous situation, my smartphone may not necessarily be my lifeline. While some filmmakers set their films in other eras or ignore the technology for the sake of narrative, your characters are on their phones the entire movie, sometimes to their own detriment.īeing a lifelong horror fan, one can only take so much of stupid horror characters doing stupid things for the body count or the jump scare. But in the end it was a lot more potent dramatically to preserve the ambiguity. Carljoe and I did map out a more or less detailed infrastructure, as well as answers to at least some of the mysteries, even before I started writing the screenplay. I’ve always bought into this notion of world-building with blind spots, which came from the science fiction writer China Mieville, his reason being that even the inhabitants of the world being built don’t know every single thing about it.

Sometimes I found it, but when I couldn’t, which was often, I figure it didn’t need explaining. A huge part of the writing process for me is looking for corners in the narrative where I could untuck exposition organically, without disrupting the tonal flow unnecessarily. I hate infodumps and exposition, in principle, but am not really opposed to it if it comes organically or if it feels right. How did you decide what you wanted to share and answer about the threats in this film, and what to hold back and leave unexplained?

#A perfect world movie location full

We get bits and pieces of the story, of the world and its rules, but never a full explanation of what’s happening. The phrase “blind spots” is repeated throughout the film. I was born into it, and it reaches back as far as my father’s generation, who not only came out of World War II but also lived through the Martial Law era, which the film is something of a callback to. Distrust of authority, not to mention a government that gaslights us with a perceived sense of affluence, has been a constant layer of our lives. It’s not so much intentional as it is second nature. I wonder, was the choice to have the authorities be part of the problem rather than the solution intentionally allegorical, or just a narrative choice to help in storytelling? Even still, among the characters there is a clear distrust of authority, and especially the police.

The Manila of “Midnight” is, apart from the blackouts, presented as a utopia. I grew up thinking films were made this fast because where I grew up, films were made this fast. Eight months later, give or take, we were filming. I lashed together a deck the night before a pitch for another project and snuck it in at the last minute without a script and really without a clue where the story would go beyond the basic premise, but it was greenlit. This may be my fastest project to come together. The filmmaker spoke with Variety, ahead of the film’s North American premiere, about the film’s quick turnaround, an innate distrust of authority and avoiding tired horror tropes.Ĭan you talk a bit about making this film? The development and production, what help you got along the way in terms of awards or grants at project level? While Dayao is holding out hope for a post-COVID 19 theatrical run, current conditions make that an unlikely prospect, so alternative means of distribution are being considered. His 2014 debut “Violator” played in competition at several major international festivals including Karlovy Vary, Mumbai and Osaka, taking home a handful of awards.ĭayao teamed with co-writer Carljoe Javier on the screenplay for “Midnight,” which was produced by Globe Studios and Epicmedia. “Midnight” is Dayao’s second directorial feature.