The Florida Project
Sean Baker · 2017
Six-year-old Moonee spends a magical, unstructured summer at a budget motel on the outskirts of Disney World while her young, irresponsible mother struggles to pay the rent by any means available. Sean Baker's film is a portrait of American poverty filmed from a child's eye level.
Techniques Used
4 techniques identified in this film
Innocent Eye Narration
NarrativeThe use of a child's perspective to filter adult events through limited comprehension, the gap between what the child understands and what the audience knows becoming the film's central dramatic tension.
How this film uses it
Moonee experiences her mother's economic desperation as a series of adventures — the motels, the hustle, the moving from room to room — Baker filming the poverty from the child's perspective in which none of it is tragic yet.
Non-Professional Cast Authenticity
NarrativeThe use of actors without professional training to bring an unperformed quality to their roles.
How this film uses it
Brooklynn Prince as Moonee and many supporting players are non-professional — Baker casting from the actual communities that live in extended-stay motels, the performance texture of real experience giving the film's observations the weight of testimony.
Working-Class Geography
CinematographyThe use of specific working-class locations — their architecture, signage, and spatial organization — as an expressive environment encoding economic reality.
How this film uses it
Baker shoots the Magic Castle motel and its purple-painted exterior against the Florida flat light with the specificity of a documentarian — the budget motels, the strip malls, the dollar stores arranged around the Disney World tourism economy that cannot house the people who serve it.
Handheld Cinema Vérité
CinematographyA documentary-influenced shooting style using handheld cameras to create images that feel observed rather than constructed.
How this film uses it
Alexis Zabe shoots at child height with a handheld camera that moves with Moonee rather than organizing her — the visual grammar encoding the film's commitment to the child's perspective over any adult supervisory overview.
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