Tangerine (Sean Baker, 2015):USA

Reviewed By Reynaldo Ayon at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2016

The whole concept of a film being made on a iphone surely makes the possibilities of making a film possible by anyone . As the director Sean Baker once said at a seminar he gave out “as long as you have a good story and a couple bucks,the outcome of the product would amaze the viewers”. As this film has gain publicity the basis of the whole concept was done well.

The movie tangerine was filmed in the heart of santa monica. Its christmas time and many of the people are getting ready for the family gathering and such.  A released stripper named Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) from jail goes out to visit her boyfriend/pimp but in the process her best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) tells her about some unfaithful acts her boyfriend has had with some other strippers while she was in jail. She then goes out on a rampage throughout the city to go looking for the white girl Dinah(Mickey O’Hagan) so she can get her revenge. There is a total of two stories happening at once where they both collide later on in the story. The story of Razmik(Karren Karagulian) is a taxi driver who on his spare time while driving around the city goes around the block looking for stippers.

The cinematography goes beyond and above as many of the shots from the iphone are stabilized and they get many over the city. The color scheme of the film was a mixed reddish orange sunset color throughout half of the film. The color red or white always appears to be shown every time there is a scene of violence or sympathy in the film.

The music in the film is a independent. The production music all comes straight out of the independent music platform Soundcloud. The iphone microphone isn’t the best in the world so the sounds in order to come out right they were moved onto sound editing later on in the film and the outcome was pretty good.

The entire film has made it easy to gain publicity simply based off the fact that it was made with iphones but the film was exposed to expert editing and was has a good story. The film is well worth the watch.