"You will have to sometimes shut down, you’ll have to sometimes walk away. "You have to know that you don’t have control," Baker explained. For one, you have to have the smallest crew possible, but perhaps more importantly, you have to be ready to adapt to any scenario. Using locations like this requires a few things. And they basically got every location in Tangerine for free." But our producers took the time to go and meet business owners, find a connection, tell them about what we were doing, why we were doing it, and how what we were doing was different. "Especially, with Tangerine. In Los Angeles, the entire town is very savvy to this. "Our approach was usually bonding with them, befriending them," he continued. You can’t just go in there because it’s not your place." Respect for their business, it’s their livelihood. When asked by an audience member how they were able to get these locations to agree so readily, Baker replied, "When you’re looking for locations in general, it’s really about respect. In The Florida Project, the hotel was still running, it’s something that we’ve learned how to do." We’ve continued to do that throughout my career. So we just basically promised them that we would not interfere with their customers, that they could keep the business open, and that we were small enough where we'd be in the shadows. Obviously, we didn’t have the money to buy them out and own this location. "We had to shoot at this Chinese takeout place on the Upper West Side. Perhaps the most long-running piece of education Baker took away from the shoot was how to secure locations. "When you’re looking for locations in general, it’s really about respect." I’m not condoning this, but there were no permits, no insurance, we were running around crazy, stealing everything." "It was such guerrilla filmmaking, I mean it was really guerrilla filmmaking. "We learned so much from that shoot," Baker remembered. Baker as director and DP, his producer Shih-Ching Tsou and their star Charles Jang. Baker revealed that for this film, the crew was for the most part just three people. Ding works as a Chinese delivery man and has only until the end of the day to come up with the money. How to film with as minimal a footprint as possibleīaker's second feature, Take Out, follows an illegal Chinese immigrant, Ming Ding, who falls behind on payments on an enormous smuggling debt. premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 1.Įven with the prospects of finally having a big name actor in Willem Dafoe and a far more substantial budget than his previous films, Baker's trademark run 'n' gun filmmaking and use of first-time talent are truly the backbone of The Florida Project. The director sat down with Vulture's Emily Yoshida to discuss a few lessons he has learned by relying on guerrilla-style filmmaking throughout a narrative-driven career. The success of Tangerine, which was famously shot on an iPhone 5s, also resulted in Baker securing financing for his latest film, The Florida Project. Audiences and critics from Cannes and Toronto have raved about the film, which was picked up by A24 and will have its U.S. Tangerine was the one that opened up doors for us, so I think that for the most part that’s the one that people became aware of, but yeah it's frustrating." "As a filmmaker, you have to prove yourself each and every time as if it’s your first time. "It keeps you in check," he lamented in a master class for IFP Week held on Sunday at Brooklyn's BRIC Media Center. He's also a man who is very aware of the fact that you've only seen Tangerine. With five feature films under his belt, Sean Baker is a man that many would agree is a "prolific" filmmaker. The man who made iPhone feature films a reality shares some expert advice on how to keep your film shoot incognito.
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