“Tangerine was the one that opened up doors for us,” Sean Baker

“Tangerine was the one that opened up doors for us,” Sean Baker

In 2016, writer and producer of the indie hit The Florida Project – Chris Bergoch – gave a fascinating masterclass on how he and Sean Baker shot their previous movie (Tangerine) on smartphones. The film subsequently made a big impression at Sundance and became a surprise indie hit.

Here’s what he told us:

“We were trying to get this action movie going… it was about $8 million budget. Along the lines of this film, Nightcrawler. It was kind of like our budget model. Couldn’t get the money. Couldn’t even bring it down to $5 million. And then these producers, the Duplas brothers, had an offer: ‘If you guys have an idea which lends itself to another micro-budget indie, please come and talk to us.’ But the only catch was, it would be half the budget of Starlet.

“So we were thinking this is like a step backward. How are we going to do this? So the trick was to embrace it, rather then look at it as a negative. Sean Baker just started looking into what the iPhone can do.
“He wouldn’t have chosen to shoot the movie just with the iPhone. It was when we found the Moondog Labs anamorphic adapter. And that gave us the 2.35 anamorphic ratio that would make this thing look a little more cinematic. Also an app – it’s called FilmicPro. Those were the 2 things that really made us decide – let’s go for it.

“Instead of looking at it as ‘oh this is just going to be a film shot on an iPhone’, [rather] ‘what can we do with the iPhone that we wouldn’t be able to do with a bigger rig?’

“We kept it a secret, because when we talked to friends about this, they kind of discredited us. They would just roll their eyes, going, ‘Oh, that’s not a real movie. No one is going to take you seriously if you shoot this thing on an iPhone. It’s going to be a glorified YouTube video.’

“But you can’t let people influence you. That’s the number 1 lesson I learned. Don’t be influenced by negative, cynical minds.”

The Florida Project

Even though their next film (The Florida Project) would be shot on 35mm, with a budget of $2m, Baker filmed the final scene at Walt Disney World‘s Magic Kingdom park “very clandestinely”, using an iPhone 6S Plus without the resort’s knowledge. To maintain secrecy, the filming at the resort used only the bare minimum crew, including Baker, Bergoch and cinematographer Alexis Zabe.

Although The Florida Project has had huge critical acclaim, and a long and growing list of nominations and awards, “Tangerine was the one that opened up doors for us,” Baker has said.

You can watch the whole insightful and inspiring masterclass as a Patreon. Chris goes on to talk about the writing process of Tangerine, The Florida Project and other Sean Baker collaborations; how moving to LA in 2009 inspired them to write the script for Tangerine; the casting process and how they overcame many of the challenges of smartphone filmmaking.

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