Reprinted from the filmmakers' festival synopses:

TAKE OUT mixes documentary-style realism and suspenseful storytelling to paint a stark picture of life behind the counter of a Chinese take-out restaurant. Deeply in debt to the loan sharks who financed his immigration to New York City, bicycle deliveryman Ming Ding has one day to pay up or face the doubling of his debt.

Ming battles rain, traffic, disgruntled customers and fifth-floor walkups, ever conscious of the incremental growth of his tip jar as the hours tick away. Under this pressure, a mistaken order nearly results in a fistfight, and a flat tire feels like a death sentence. Ming is running out of time and his desperation and urgency become palpable.

Employing a combination of professional and amateur actors, TAKE OUT is shot in cinema-verite style in an actual, operating restaurant. With unflinching realism, it presents a humanizing snapshot of the grinding physical labor, emotional stress and economic deprivation faced by illegal immigrants. But between the extremes of aspiration and despair, it also attests to the bonds of community and friendship that sustain a dogged pursuit of the American dream.

Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker(FOUR LETTER WORDS) collaborated on this microbudget story last year; Since its festival debut at Slamdance this past January, TAKE OUT has received rave reviews in Variety and been screened to acclaim in nine other festivals, copping the Grand Jury Prize at the Nashville Film Festival.

Sean and Shih-Ching both collaborated on their answers during their festival tour, which Sean relayed to me.

Adam: How did this film come about? Were you specifically looking to illuminate the experience immigrants can go through just to survive in this country?

Sean Baker: New York City is the most culturally diverse city in the world and yet there have been few films about the Chinese, Latino, and Middle Eastern experience in New York. The plight of the illegal Chinese immigrant is a subject that gains media exposure only when a big story occurs. For example, the Golden Venture shipwreck in 1993 when 10 illegal immigrants drowned just outside New York Harbor and more recently and more relevantly, the tragic death of a Chinese food delivery man in Queens, NY.

Living in close proximity to several take-out restaurants, Shih-Ching and I became particularly interested in the lives of the delivery men once they have made it to the states and their subsequent struggle to work and prosper while living under society's radar. The idea grew from a simple character study to a plot driven day-in-the-life-of story that addresses many of the issues of illegal human smuggling.

Adam: I felt this story made Ming's (and his coworkers') experience much more accessible/understandable to me- I empathized much more as the film went on. In a sense, it is not too different from American experience: a cramped life, no time, crushing debt… were you looking to take a seemingly "foreign" story and make it universal?

Sean Baker: That probably comes from our attempt to make the film more accessible to the general market. The film was very much a learning experience for us as well. We went in to the project knowing very little about the plight of the illegal Chinese immigrant.. We met several immigrants who told us their stories and their struggles and, as the project developed, so did our realization that it was our duty to cover this subject as responsibly and accurately as possible. But no narrative film can truly work without touching people on a human level. We did our best to show everyday life, human behavior and human interaction in order to make these characters as accessible as possible.

Adam: On the surface, this story could be told as Hollywood convention-"Ming has one day to come up with the money he owes for being smuggled into the country"- indeed we do have the suspense of "Will he reach his goal?" but it's never told in a manipulative style. The drama plays out naturally.

The film's not really about that goal, I believe. I see it as concerning the barriers between us and the connections we need to survive. Ming is constricted by time, debt, language, difficulties of even reaching this country in the first place; yet his wife and child he's never seen make him push on; and it's the people in the restaurant who have done this before who keep him afloat. Thoughts?

Sean Baker: The story is formulaic, we know. We did this for a few reasons. We want this film to reach a wide audience; we know it is not a multiplex film. However, it has more of a chance getting a domestic release with some of the conventions of mainstream cinema. Nevertheless, we did our absolute best to disguise the formula. We never show a clock ticking away, we don't have a dramatic music score and we don't even show him meeting his debt collectors in some climactic ending. We want the audience to be engulfed in the realism and, to forget they are watching a narrative film so that when the dramatic plot points arise, they are that much more powerful.

The "goal" is simply a way to bring us into Ming's world, you're right.

Adam: Any particular inspirations for the film's style?

Sean Baker: If you see the film, you'll instantly see the influences. The Italian neo-realist films and the Dogma 95 movement. Throw in some Cassavetes, Ken Loach, and even some Mike Leigh. But we still wanted to have our own style, not just an homage to all of these social-realist filmmakers. I think our film has its own style in terms of the camera work. We like to think of it as a combination of security cam, voyeur cam and hidden camera. Most of the scenes are shot with a telephoto lens to observe Ming from a distance. Scenes in which the characters open up with one another and are slightly more personal, we move in. I feel in the end we captured truth better than most films. That may sound cocky but I feel that some of our scenes come as close to a documentary feel that a fiction film can get.

Adam: All the tight shots on Ming as he works seem to reflect how cramped his life is: his apartment, the deadline..like he can't focus on anything outside his immediate circle and the constricting debt. It's a small visual prison, the box we see him in. Any comments?

Sean Baker: We used the telephoto for that reason as well. To compress the image and make things seem more cramped. But it wasn't just to make the audience claustrophobic. I also like exploring faces with the camera. I wish we did more of that.

Adam: Did it take a lot of research before completing the script/shooting? Has this story been with you both for a while?

Sean Baker: We read a lot on the subject before sitting down and writing. One of the most helpful books on the subject is "Forbidden Workers" by Peter Kwong, the chair of the Asian American Studies program at Hunter College. Then we had to go out and do our own research by speaking to illegals who worked at take-outs and people who were close to them. The bulk of our research came when we locked our location. We shot B-roll (cut aways) for over a month before actual production. It was during that time that we spoke to Ms. Lee (who plays the character of Big Sister) and the actual cooks at the restaurant. They guided us in terms of accuracy. They opened up very much so to Shih-Ching, being that she knows Mandarin and she's a female. They would talk for hours while I went around with the camera and shot everything I could.

Adam: Tell me about your casting. Charles Jang brings an understated intensity to Ming that reflects the tone of the film. Jeng-Hua Yu brings some welcome humor and warmth into the piece; and you have Wang-Thye Lee's "Big Sister" running the show, who hasn't ever acted before, right?

Sean Baker: Charles is a New York raised Korean American. He learned Mandarin at the age of 21 while living in Taiwan. We loved his audition and knew off the bat that he was one of two right for the role of Ming. Shih-Ching thought he would pass as Chinese physically but that he needed a little help on his accent. We've become good friends since the shoot especially while traveling on the festival circuit. He's a very laid- back guy with a great sense of humor - very different from Ming Ding.

Jeng-Hua Yu, or Johnny as we call him is a natural. We are so happy he responded to a posting we put on the NYU Taiwanese Student web list. He has a ton of stage experience but this is his first feature. What's great about Johnny is his ability to relax the other actors, especially a nonprofessional like Ms. Lee. He would have a candid conversation with Ms. Lee as I just rolled the camera. I had no idea what they were talking about but I saw from the look on Shih-Ching's face that it was funny and working. Later after it was translated, I saw just how great he is in the art of conversation. He is currently working in Taipei. I think he should be a lead of a feature. He could definitely carry it.

Wang-Thye Lee is our most cherished find because it was total chance. She was working at one of the take-outs where we wanted to shoot. She had been there for close to ten years as the restaurant manager so everything you see her doing in the film is what he does on a daily basis. Of course, it took her a little time to warm up to the camera being in her face. Halfway through the shoot, she no longer noticed us and would just do her thing. By the end of the shoot, she was acting out scenes with the other actors. I'd love for some huge director like Ang Lee to see this film, take a liking to her and cast her in some blockbuster. It would be a Cinderella story.

Adam: Tell me about your casting decisions for the customers Ming and the restaurant faces.. They all seem like real New Yorkers, not pretty actors. Was it a mix of professionals and non-pros?

Sean Baker: Only about 20% of the cast can be considered nonprofessional. The deliveries were all cast and set up. Some of the customers who order food at the restaurant are real customers who are regulars at the take-out. Many of these regulars already had a certain rapport with Ms. Lee. If the customers were comfortable enough with the camera, we would ask them to reenact a take-out order with her. Several of these reenactments made it in to the film.

And as I mentioned, Wang-Thye Lee is a nonprofessional. She is the only nonprofessional in a leader role.

Adam: What kinds of cameras and equipment did you use to pull it off? Was this shoot more improvised than tightly scheduled, and how many days did you shoot?

Sean Baker: We shot on and off for approx. 30 days. They weren't true shooting days either. Sometimes it was a 13 hour day, other times it was a three hour day, depending on what we need and could get. The film takes place on a rainy day and we were blessed with the rainiest June in recorded history. So we never had to wait long for the next rainfall. The shoot began tightly structured and eventually became improvised. After a while the film became a jigsaw puzzle, because although we had a script with a beginning, middle and end, we were relying heavily on the b-roll shots to fill in gaps. For example, I had some footage of the real cooks (from the neck down) preparing fried rice. We had to go back weeks later and shoot our actors going through the motions so I was able to cut together both pieces of video. In a way, we were filling in the missing pieces.

We shot on the Sony PD-150. We didn't have enough money to shoot PAL which is recommended for a film blow-up. So we went with standard NTSC mini-DV.

Adam: Tell us about the sound design; was a lot of it captured on set, or layered and mixed in afterwards? The sounds are so dense sometimes that it's startling to hear one silent scene near the film' end.

Sean Baker: 80% of it was captured on set, although not particularly during the scene. We layered as many sirens and city sounds as we could in postproduction. I happen to live on 20th and 3rd Ave., the loudest intersection in NYC, right next to a hospital, precinct and police academy...so that's how I experience NYC, one long blaring siren. As far as the silent scene goes, it is the one time when we completely break the realist style but that's artistic license. Had to be done.

Adam: Tell me about the contrasts in this story; they really stand out. You have the raining, freezing cold exterior Ming pushes through to meet his goal, additionally reflected by the emotionally cold or angry take-out customers; and yet the restaurant feels like a safe haven from all that. There we have warmer, more caring human moments between the co-workers; even their arguments seem more good-natured than the 'unsafe' world of New York.

Sean Baker: All I can say about that is that in actuality the take-out became our safe haven while shooting so maybe that just made it to the screen. The take-out was our home base that we would retreat to after hours in the rain or shooting back-to-back delivery scenes.

Adam: Additionally, for Ming, this night seems life or death. To customers, it's no big deal- it made me rethink the other side of things if I'm eating in and I order something.

Sean Baker: That's why we intentionally had a lot of the customers complaining. One belligerent guy says he's having a "bad day" to Ming, having no idea that Ming might be killed later that night. Another customer in some beautiful West End apartment building is complaining about his newly waxed floors, totally unaware of Ming's cracked and stained floors in his crammed seven-man apartment.

Adam: What would you like viewers to take from this film?

Sean Baker: What I took from the experience, a better understanding of the plight of an illegal Chinese immigrant in modern day NYC.

TAKE OUT continues to successfully tour the festival circuit. Visit www.crefilm.com to learn more about the film and its makers.

Adam Barnick