What are we about?
We are filmmakers encouraging others to make films
Mission
Timecode:NOLA is a film collective with the mission to encourage and promote independent filmmaking in the city of New Orleans. As an organization, the collective has a focus on smaller independent projects inspired by experimental, small gauge, French New Wave, punk rock, hip hop, skateboarding, and the New Orleans fringe spirit with the goal of connecting New Orleans filmmakers with the world.
In 2003, a couple of idealistic kids were fresh out of film school, and didn’t want to leave New Orleans. At the time, New Orleans had yet to become a hotbed of film production. So, Larron “Rome” Julian, Aaron Rushin, and Randall Perez set off on a mission to help build a film community in their hometown. They had entered the workforce at the community television station, Cox 10, and saw an opportunity to start a television program dedicated to showing short films from the scrappy local filmmaking community. The idea was that with a platform, seeing films made by their neighbors on television would inspire others to make films. That it was possible.
There wasn’t any bias. If the film was in sync and technically sound, it didn’t matter if we thought the film was a masterpiece. Making and finishing a film is hard enough, but making a good or great film right out of the gate takes amazing talent. We recognized that those emerging filmmakers needed the most support and encouragement. Timecode was focused on planting seeds.
We often got responses to the policy along the lines of, “y’all play some trash…” Our reply was always, “where is your trash?” We knew that if we could encourage folks to make films, that they would eventually get better. They did. Quickly.
New Orleans today is a buzz with film and television production activity. We can’t claim that success, but many who are working in the film industry in all manner of professional capacities come from the Timecode Family.
The television show with our punk rock DIY spirit, was distributed in the New Orleans area, as well as Austin, San Diego, Dallas/Ft Worth, Baton Rouge, Cincinnati, Louisville, Ky and Pensacola, Fla. As the show grew, Timecode also focused its efforts towards live screenings and ultimately a recurring four-day film festival.
Timecode:NOLA Film Festival’s (Timecode:FF) primary goals were to encourage the making of new films and provide a platform and audience for screening those films. The byproduct was the building up of the filmmaking community, and providing education opportunities for emerging filmmakers. With a lifelong love of gritty 70’s & 80’s cinema, as well as French New Wave, the independent films of the 90’s, super 8 & 16mm, skateboarding videos, experimental, and even pixelvision, Timecode set out to create a space for the cast offs that shy away from the red carpet hype. The festival was created with the intent of filmmakers getting their hands dirty.
The centerpiece of the festival was the Joint Picture Project. JPP is less of a contest and more a concept, where filmmakers are tasked with the challenge of making a 5 minute or less film while following a set of creative parameters & guidelines. The selected films are then stitched together to create a cohesive feature film. Our last Joint Picture Project, Dust/Dark/Dawn, challenged filmmakers to make their film in randomly selected time slots that would weave together a picture of a complete night in New Orleans. From 7pm to 7am a lot can happen. Giving each filmmaker a selected time period, plus the rules that it had to be HD, set in the city of New Orleans during their time frame, and shot in B&W, they set out to make what would become a feature film.
Timecode:NOLA has produced three Joint Picture Project anthology feature films, Where Y’at? (Hello), Humidity, and Dusk/Dark/Dawn.”