How Oscar-winning ‘Anora’ director got his start shooting on an iPhone 5s

Anora picked up six Oscars at last night’s awards ceremony in Los Angeles, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Mikey Madison, and a record-breaking four awards for its director Sean Baker (Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Picture as a producer on the film). But few people might know his breakout film, Tangerine, was shot on an iPhone a decade years ago.

Anora is Baker’s biggest success so far, an indie hit made on a budget of around $6 million. That may seem modest compared to that of mainstream Hollywood products, but it’s a lot more than the $100,000 that financed Tangerine, the film that first brought Baker to the attention of critics and film-goers at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Like many of Baker’s films, including Anora, its main characters are sex workers, portrayed sympathetically and as real people, facing the reality of the world they work in.

We interviewed Baker back in August of 2015 about how he shot the film on an iPhone 5s, one of the first filmmakers to use Apple’s mobile phone to make a feature film. Below is our conversation with the filmmaker, from when relatively few were aware of his talents.

Tangerine is a movie so vivid and real that you feel like you’re walking the streets of Los Angeles with its main characters. But Baker didn’t use an expensive rig—he used his iPhone 5s to direct the movie, one of the first to do so. High-end iPhone video production is much more common now, but in 2015 it was virtually unheard of—the iPhone didn’t even get night mode until the iPhone 11 four years later.

These days Baker is using 35mm film to make Oscar winners, but in 2015, he was using a smartphone and a few common filmmaking tips and tricks to create his vision. Back in 2015, we interviewed Baker about how he pulled it off and what equipment amateur filmmakers can use to turn their iPhone videos into Sundance films (edited for length and clarity):

Macworld: Was the decision to shoot Tangerine on an iPhone a financial decision or a creative one?

Baker: It really started as a financial decision. We were stuck with a very tight budget, and I was exploring many different options. I came across a Vimeo channel that focused on iPhone experiments. I was very impressed. Then I found the Kickstarter campaign for
Moondog Labs that lets you shoot in true scope widescreen ratio, and that’s what convinced me as a filmmaker that it was not only going to save us a ton of money but would make it possible. The iPhone 5s made it to a point where the camera was better, the resolution was up there. This anamorphic adapter told me it could be elevated to a cinematic level.

Your iPhone video looks nothing like my iPhone video. Did the footage require extensive post-production work?

We definitely treated the film in post-production. We really oversaturated the colors. That was a purposeful thing for the aesthetic. The quality is there. The resolution is already there. The iPhone in conjunction with the Filmic Pro app, the resolution is HD quality. This was more about setting a style. Like any other film, we wanted it to be color-corrected properly and professionally.

What were the disadvantages of shooting on an iPhone?

Because it’s such a small lens, there’s basically a very extremely deep depth of field, if you can even call it a depth of field. Everything is in focus. If you have your hand in front of the camera, your hand will be in focus as well as 10 miles down the horizon. That’s a look we’re not really used to in cinema. We’re used to having a shallow depth of field. Once you get past that, you can accept that it’s a different look. There were no disadvantages in terms of the workflow. Once we got the footage off the iPhone at night in iTunes, we’d back up our raw files and transcode it so it was easier to edit in Final Cut Pro. It was as easy as editing any other piece of media.

You worked with a lot of acting newcomers for Tangerine. Do you think using an iPhone to shoot had an effect on their performances?

There’s always this hump, this 1-week hump where the first-time actors have to get used to the fact that there’s a camera in their face. It takes them about a week to get comfortable. In this case, because we’re basically using a communication device that everyone owns, that didn’t factor in this time. The intimidation factor was off the table from the beginning.

Were you in touch with Apple at any point during the process of making or distributing the movie?

We haven’t had a terrific amount of communication with them, but we did do some Apple Store talks and they were nice enough to give phones to the cast.

Would you shoot another movie on your phone?

Right now, no, but who knows down the line? I like to switch it up every time, and of course, I’m still a fan of film in general and I want to shoot on film when it’s still available. Even in the year and a half since we shot, Filmic Pro has advanced to 2K, which is double the resolution we captured, so it’s amazing the technological advances that happen in such a short period of time. In a year from now, I might be presented with options that make it quite attractive.

[Editor’s note. Baker’s follow-up film, 2017’s The Florida Project was shot on 35mm film, as was Anora.]

Can any amateur filmmaker achieve the look of Tangerine with their iPhone?

I think so. I’m not going to say I did anything special. There were very basic steps we took that can be achieved by anybody. We did use professional sound. Young filmmakers interested in doing this, don’t think you can get away with using recorded sound on the iPhone. You have to record it separately.

Tangerine can be watched on Tubi.