Tangerine Reflection

First of all, there was this feeling when I found out that Tangerine was filmed with only iPhone 5S’s and all-amateur-actors-crew with members casted on the road. It was a shock. Two main actors, Kitana Kiki Rodriguez as Sin-Dee and Mya Taylor as Alexandra, were actual transgender actors with no prior acting background and experience at all. Tangerine was a truly experimental and inspirational indie movie project, in fact. For not only Tangerine brought out the maximum out of the minimum—for the crew, equipment, and sets—but it also empowered and inspired independent and amateur filmmakers. As an individual who deeply connects himself to the world of films, I felt glimpse of hope and dream that someday I would produce a film on my own, with the minimum if possible.

Tangerine is extremely experimental and versatile with its overall cinematography. Both well set up and executed, Tangerine’s cinematography could cover up, and even allowed it to overcome qualitative limitations faced by low-end equipment and small budget. Although heavily packed with vulnerable characteristics, such as sensitive topics of sexual, racial, and economical minorities, Tangerine proved itself to be more than just “that b, low-budget commercial” movie. What I admire the most of Tangerine is its balance itself out of all the shortcomings. I feel like these shortcomings are intended for certain amount though. In fact, same as the filming crew, the characters in Tangerine also lacked many things, primarily technology. Even from the beginning, the overall atmosphere could get ugly, just by featuring two black transgender protagonists barely making it in the game, on kind-of-ambiguous Christmas Eve packed with sarcastic events, humorous and cruel dialogues and swearing. Successfully maneuvering among these all, then Tangerine was freely from being marked as another b-rated queer movie and become truly artistic.