Interview (Written): Sean Baker (“Tangerine”)
Jeff Sneider from The Wrap interviews Sean Baker, writer-director of the indie film Tangerine, a microbudget movie shot on an iPhone 5s that stars transgender actresses Kitana ‘Kiki’ Rodriguez and Mya Taylor. The movie has been nominated for 4 Independent Spirit Awards.
TheWrap: When I tell people how much I liked “Tangerine,” some of them say, ‘Well, you only liked it because it was shot on an iPhone for no money.’ Have you found that people have been dismissive of the film because of the way it was shot?
Sean Baker: We read Twitter and get Facebook messages, and every once in a while people dismiss it and say, ‘Get over the iPhone thing,’ and we knew that would happen. We knew that the iPhone approach was going to be perceived in many ways, and one of them was as a gimmick. We also knew that people might see why we used it and see the benefit we saw from it. We take all the criticism in stride and understand there will always be people who will be skeptical about things. But there’s a lot of commentary about how it’s not just an iPhone movie, with people urging others to give this film a chance, because the least important thing about this film is the iPhone. When you get the general public tweeting that kind of stuff, it’s nice.
So why did you decide to shoot this movie on an iPhone?
It stemmed from a budgetary constraint, but shortly after, we realized it’s the perfect way of shooting the type of film I like to shoot, where we mix professional actors with real life. The iPhone lowered inhibitions, because to the people who were new to filmmaking, it never felt like we were making a film.
How were the challenges on “Tangerine” different from your earlier films like “Starlet”?
“Tangerine” was less than half the budget of “Starlet,” and “Starlet” was already a microbudget film. A director always wants more time, and we had a limited amount of resources. I have to say, if it pertains to the iPhone, it was the stripping away of ego. It had nothing to do with the technical side of things, it had to do with me and my producer wondering, ‘Are we doing the right thing? Is this amateur hour?’ We just had to have faith this would work.
A clip from the movie Tangerine:
For the rest of the interview, go here.