By Andrew Purcell
The fight had only just started when the bus driver pulled over. Or, to put it another way, it was only the first take, and the two prostitutes clawing at each other in the back seats were just warming up. One minute Sean Baker and his cinematographer Radium Cheung were engaged in a little guerrilla film-making, the next the cops were on their way.
"I thought we were at a bus stop," Baker recalls. "I looked up and I said 'Are they stopping because of us?' and a passenger said 'Not only that, but they're calling the police.' And we scattered into the night like 12-year-olds, hiding out in the streets of LA." How could the driver know they were making a feature film, when they were shooting on their phones?
Tangerine, one of the standout selections at the Melbourne International Film Festival, which begins on July 30, is destined to be remembered as "the iPhone movie," which is a shame, firstly because it creates a misleading impression of how it was made and secondly because it sells the movie short.
Baker and Cheung filmed the whole thing on an iPhone 5s, or rather two phones at a time. That much is true. But they are experienced film-makers, and they were working with a sound crew, on a budget north of $100,000. Using smartphones was an aesthetic decision as well as a practical one. The scene on the bus was a one-off.
Mya Taylor in Tangerine.Credit: Philippa Hawker
"You don't need an incredible amount of expertise, but we went about it in a very professional way," says Baker. "We always got permits. We had insurance. No-one is working for free. There are too many favours pulled in this town."
In 2013, Baker was living in West Hollywood, near to where Highland Avenue meets Santa Monica Boulevard, which is known as a place to pick up transgender prostitutes. He wanted to write a film set in and around an all-night cafe called Donut Time, and spent a long time just hanging out there.
Eventually, he met Mya Taylor, who introduced him to Kiki Rodriguez, and after listening to their stories realised he had the germ of a movie, and two lead actresses. The plot, about a transgender prostitute who hears that her pimp has slept with a woman – a "real fish" – while she's been in jail and sets out to get revenge, came from Rodriguez. The slang came from the street.
Baker's first feature, Four Letter Words, was shot on 35mm film. For his second, Take Out, he used video, drawing inspiration from Lars Von Trier and the Dogme 95 movement, and was unhappy with the results. He figured he could use a DSLR camera this time, but as he had very little money, why not shoot on a phone?
The all-night cafe Donut Time, where much of Tangerine is set.Credit: Philippa Hawker
An $8 app, Filmic Pro, enabled Baker and Cheung to shoot in 24 frames per second, set the aperture and tweak the white balance. A set of anamorphic lens adapters from Moondog Labs gave the footage a more cinematic, widescreen look. To avoid camera shake, they used a $149 steadicam, the Smoothee.
In post-production, they jacked the colour saturation up and amped the sound, to create an exaggerated, hyper-real aesthetic. The film doesn't look cheap. And as Baker discovered, shooting on a phone has other benefits.
Sean Baker, director of Tangerine.
"Usually it takes about a week for first-time actors to get comfortable with a camera in their face. In this case, the fact that it was a smartphone, there was no intimidation. It was wonderful," he says.
"We couldn't use telephoto lenses, which made it a really intimate experience. We were literally two or three feet from our actors. I didn't have to shout direction to them: I could whisper it, which was a nice, calm, conversational way of making the film."
The prostitutes were invited to the movie's official premiere in Los Angeles last week, but not all of the bit part players could make it. "They are busy working the street, you know," says Baker. Taylor has a manager, and has already starred in another movie, Happy Birthday Marsha, as transgender activist Marsha Johnson. Rodriguez is trying to get an agent.
"My hope is that the industry truly embraces them," says Baker. "These women are not non-professionals: they are first-time actors, both of whom are aspiring actresses, and they have the talent, they have the chops.
His next movie has a working title of The Florida Project. He hopes that it won't be made on a phone. "People want to hear that I'm doing this for punk rock reasons. It's not the case," he says. "I'm looking forward to shooting film again. Given the opportunity I would have made this film on 70mm celluloid."
Tangerine screens on Saturday, August 8 and Friday, August 14 at the Comedy Theatre as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival.