Tangerine: what a feature shot on iPhones needed

Tangerine premiered in the NEXT program at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2015. Magnolia Pictures bought world rights on January 27, and the film opened in the United States on July 10, 2015.^[1] Baker directed and edited, wrote the script with Chris Bergoch, and shared the cinematography credit with Radium Cheung.^[2] The picture was recorded on iPhone 5S phones fitted with an anamorphic adapter. The budget is reported at $100,000.^[1]

The camera

According to Baker, the film was shot on three iPhone 5S phones.^[2] Engadget’s January 2015 report describes one iPhone 5S, and a No Film School article on the production gives no count, so the number of phones differs between accounts.^[3][4] This article uses the American Cinematographer figure because that account quotes Baker directly.

The phones recorded 16:9 video. The adapter came from Moondog Labs, a company in Rochester, New York that funded the product through Kickstarter. It was a 1.33x anamorphic adapter for the iPhone 5 and 5S, priced at $160.^[2] Footage was desqueezed in post, in Final Cut Pro or Handbrake, to a 2.40:1 frame.^[2] Moondog sent three prototypes, which gave the phone a field of view close to a 24mm lens, and the whole film was shot at that focal length.^[2] The adapter also produced horizontal flares, and the film uses them openly.^[2] Baker said, “I wouldn’t have made the film without that adapter.”^[2]

The recording app was Filmic Pro. It gave manual control of focus, color temperature and exposure and recorded 1080p at 50 Mbps, which kept file sizes small on set.^[2] Engadget listed the app’s price as $8.^[4] The tradeoff, as Cheung described it, was that once a shot started the operator could not pull focus or change exposure.^[2]

Moving the camera

Baker used a Steadicam Smoothee, a handheld stabilizer with a mount for the iPhone 5 and 5S, and called it imperative.^[2] He operated it with one hand while riding a 10-speed bicycle, so the bicycle served as a mobile dolly.^[2] Baker said, “You cannot hold an iPhone totally still.”^[2] Cheung said that without a stabilizer the footage would have looked like home video.^[2]

Lighting

Cheung had been the gaffer on Baker’s earlier feature Starlet (2012).^[2] For Tangerine he brought three battery-powered Rosco LitePads, in sizes of 1 by 1 foot, 6 by 12 inches and 3 by 12 inches, mainly for fill and eyelights. Bounce material came from a 99 Cents Only Store.^[2][3] Cheung said, “We had no C-stands, no conventional movie lights.”^[3]

Actors were placed under the light already in each location, and Cheung switched individual fixtures on and off. In the club scene he refocused and gelled par cans that were already hanging overhead.^[2][3]

Schedule, locations and permits

The shoot ran 22 days after two months of prep.^[2] Cheung had only a Christmas break to practice with the rig, because he was working on the television series The Americans.^[2]

Most of the film was shot in Hollywood around Santa Monica Boulevard and Highland Avenue. The central set was the Donut Time bakery, later Trejo’s Coffee & Donuts, and a separate club venue hosted Alexandra’s performance.^[2] The production had permits but did not lock down streets. Some scenes were shot on busy public sidewalks that the production could not afford to close.^[2][3]

Sound

The sound department used professional gear. The No Film School article lists Irin Strauss as sound mixer, working with a Sound Devices 664 mixer-recorder, Lectrosonics SMV wireless transmitters, Sanken COS-11D lavalier microphones and a Schoeps CMIT 5U shotgun microphone, plus a T-powered Schoeps CMC 4U for low-ceiling locations.^[3]

Post-production

Footage moved each night from the phones to a MacBook Pro through iTunes.^[2] The H.264 files were converted to ProRes 4:2:2, which made every file much larger.^[2] The final grade was done in DaVinci Resolve at Different by Design in Los Angeles by colorist Luke Cahill. He used Power Windows to bring up faces, and grain was added across the whole picture.^[2]

Baker said he normally drains color from his pictures. For this film he tested heavy saturation in Final Cut Pro and kept it.^[2][3]

Release and results

The reported figures, all taken from Wikipedia’s citations of other outlets, are a $100,000 budget (Wired) and a box office total of $935,984 (The Numbers).^[1] At the Independent Spirit Awards the film was nominated for Best Feature, and Baker was nominated for Best Director. Kitana Kiki Rodriguez was nominated for Best Female Lead, and Mya Taylor won Best Supporting Female.^[1] Baker and Bergoch had met Taylor and Rodriguez at the Los Angeles LGBT Center in 2013. Neither had significant acting experience at that point.^[1]

How the rig shaped production choices

This section is the drafter’s analysis of the accounts above. The sources do not draw these connections themselves.

Three facts from the accounts constrain the production choices: a single focal length, locked exposure and focus during each shot, and a camera small enough that stabilization was necessary. The lighting approach in the accounts, selective use of existing light plus small battery panels, fits a camera that could not adjust exposure mid-shot. The decision to desqueeze and grade in post moved the final look from the camera to the colorist. The sound kit followed normal feature practice, so the phone setup changed the camera department and left the sound department as it was.

What the accounts do not settle

• Number of phones. American Cinematographer reports three iPhone 5S phones. Engadget reports one.
• Budget detail. The $100,000 figure is reported by Wired through Wikipedia. The sources reviewed give no breakdown of where the money went.
• Dates. The sources give a 22-day shoot. No reliable start and end dates were found in the material reviewed.

Sources and notes

1. Wikipedia, “Tangerine (film),” read October 18, 2026. The article cites Yahoo Movies (premiere), Deadline (Magnolia sale), Magnolia Pictures (release date), Wired (budget) and The Numbers (box office). The awards table and cast background are partly uncited there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangerine_(film) ↩︎

2. Patricia Thomson, “Tangerine: iPhone Enables Streetwise Story,” American Cinematographer, February 2015, published by the ASC. https://theasc.com/articles/tangerine-iphone-enables-streetwise-story ↩︎

3. No Film School, article on the Sundance production of Tangerine with comments from Sean Baker and Radium Cheung, July 2015. https://nofilmschool.com/2015/07/tangerine-sundance-iphone-5s-sean-baker-radium-cheung-interview ↩︎

4. Engadget, “Sundance hit Tangerine was shot on iPhone 5s with a $8 app and some accessories,” January 28, 2015. https://www.engadget.com/2015-01-28-sundance-hit-tangerine-was-shot-on-iphone-5s-with-a-8-app-and-s.html ↩︎