Sean Baker

Shooting on the iPhone has become more of a directors' tool to lower inhibition of first-time actors and nonprofessionals. While it's helped me become more mobile, no pun intended - running around, finding tight areas and different ways of moving the camera - to me it's more about using this device to catch candid moments. That's the biggest thing.

A lot of the LGBTQ community accepted 'Tangerine,' which was something we worked really hard to achieve.

Because I'm a dramatist, I'm allowed to take liberties, but I want my films to be based in truth, and it's very important to me that the community we're focusing on is happy with the film. From an ethical point of view, that's everything.

With a lot of these social realist films, the first thing you do is drain the color.

I try to create a very casual working place, where everybody - down to production assistants - can throw out ideas and not feel intimidated. When it becomes a collaborative environment, it becomes a small family, and everybody becomes invested.

The Little Rascals' was set against the background of the Great Depression: the characters were living in poverty. It's just that it wasn't focused on it. It was focused on what makes childhood universal. We're all laughing at kids because we see ourselves in them; we remember our childhood.

I grew up torturing friends and family by making super-8 and VHS epics.

Many trans women of color come from poverty and are forced to live on the streets. Their families have shunned them, and their remaining family are the friends they've come to rely on.

I believe that human beings shouldn't live in climates that they cannot survive naked... and New York, although full of energy and heart, does not fall within that rubric.

A lot of independent films try to pull off a 14-day shooting schedule, which I think is ridiculous. No matter how big or small you are, it really kills whatever sort of time you get to allow the actors to find their characters, and to spend time to think about what they're doing.

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.

When you see bad acting, that's usually what it is - they're not listening to the other characters. It's always hard with first-time actors to get them in that moment where they are really listening to the other characters and reacting to the other characters.