Five Dollar Friday — Timothy Jacob Elledge & ‘Neuman’

A filmmaker and their short film deserving of your attention

Welcome to the very first edition of Five Dollar Friday!

Without further ado, I’m excited to introduce you to the work of Timothy Jacob Elledge, an NYC-based director who has been primarily working in the commercial and music video space for the last decade.

He’s currently fundraising to get his upcoming project, Neuman, off the ground.

“Neuman is a dark-comedy short film set over the course of a single morning in the New York City recovery community. We follow a woman called Aoife as she tries her best to keep busy in her home group after the newcomer she's gotten 'involved' with disappears on the eve of his first sober anniversary.”

Before I dive into my conversation with Timothy, here you can watch the campaign video where he explains the basic premise of the film, what makes the story special to him, and illustrates it all with imagery that demonstrates the vibe of what he’s trying to achieve.

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Timothy! It should go without saying that I’m impressed with what you’ve put together for the Neuman campaign — it’s clear to me that you both have a story worth telling and that you’ve put in the effort to show us you’re more than capable of bringing it to life.

How long have you been thinking about telling this story? What propelled you to get the project off the ground?

It’s been with me for a relatively short period of time. I’ve only been working on this since the very end of October 2024. I was writing another short around that time with the intention of breaking my narrative dry spell with a film I could make in my apartment and on the streets of my neighborhood.

Around that time a film grant was announced with some familiar brand names and an Oscar-nominated director involved in some capacity. I knew I ought to try to take advantage of the grant opportunity but didn’t have an idea that fit the prompt, and the short I was writing wasn’t quite right. So, four days before the grant deadline I went through my notes app on my phone which is where I keep all the loose ends and spare parts, half ideas and bits of dialogue I heard in the world.

Neuman was born out of some of the latter. I had a couple sentences of dialogue that I had overheard where this Irish woman was talking about a man who wasn’t where he was meant to be. She was frustrated and annoyed, and maybe even a little hurt, I thought. I had completely forgotten about this note but when I re-read it, the story of Neuman filled itself in almost immediately. I ‘knew’ what had happened before the dialogue and I knew what would happen next.

To make a long story short: we didn’t get the grant, but what I did get was Neuman. The original producer attached, my good friend Zach, asked me when I first pitched him something to the effect of “We making this thing either way?” I answered “Hell yes” and was determined to hold myself to the agreement.

Tell me more about the preparation for launching your crowdfunding site itself — its quality stood out to me, and so it’s clear you put thought and effort into it. How long did that step take?

Thank you for that. It’s a lot of hard work! It took 3-4 weeks to get all of our ducks in a row. It was a 3-headed monster between myself, my producer Alex Gould and our EP Max Gardner.

Max came on specifically to help shepherd us into a fundraising phase. I had some money set aside from working in another department last year but it was only a healthy dent in our budget.

Max knew we were gonna need some more help and had been a part of some successful campaigns in the recent past, so he was able to help me think of simple marketing stuff that I wouldn’t have otherwise thought about. This adventure included many hours of filling out copy in Google docs, compiling massive email lists (we would end up getting our new email account flagged and shut down), and generating a massive amount of AI images to populate the campaign page and communicate ideas for a film that doesn’t exist yet.

It’s great you were able to bring aboard a producer with crowdfunding experience under their belt. I was grateful when I launched my own campaign that my producer Jillian Nordby convinced me to bring another producer, Avery Chung-Melino, to help specifically with the campaign. I would highly recommend it to anyone considering crowdfunding for their next project.

In your campaign’s description you write, “I’m ready to take my collective experiences and re-focus my energy on my first love, movies.” Tell me more about how you think working in commercials and music videos has shaped you as an artist. What kind of effect do you think it will have on how you approach your return to fiction?

Directing is something you can only learn by doing. So, working on music videos, documentaries, and commercials gave me hands-on experience with different budgets, non-budgets, crew sizes, and varying levels of creative control.

For nearly a decade, I made scrappy projects with friends, turning small opportunities into auditions for the work we truly wanted to create. It taught me collaboration, the value of surrounding myself with people who excel in their craft, allowing me to put down ‘hats’ I was trying to wear, and, ultimately, that I was avoiding narrative filmmaking out of fear of making a ‘bad’ movie.

Eventually, I got sick and tired of not making movies and got in enough pain to get out of my way and follow an idea or two that tapped me on the shoulder.

I totally relate to the fear of making a 'bad' movie. Putting yourself out there as an artist is hard. But now that I’m on the other side of it, I regret how much time I wasted hesitating. Inaction got me nowhere.

You mentioned you’re in rehearsals for Neuman. Give us a little window into what rehearsals are like. What’s your process?

Rehearsal time is a luxury I’ve never had, so I’m grateful my producer, Alex Gould, included it in our budget from the start!

That said, our ‘rehearsal’ lasted just a few hours and focused on one-on-one time with my lead actors Danny Wolohan and Carine Montbertrand, group time with the three of us, costume fittings, paperwork, and a call with our intimacy coordinator. We never actually ran any lines!

I thought it was more important to get comfortable with one another in advance of our shoot dates, so we weren’t trying to achieve trust on the fly. We had also done a virtual chemistry read the weekend prior as a part of our audition process.

Who are your biggest influences as a filmmaker?

Some favorites are Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen Brothers, Jonathan Glazer, Sidney Lumet, Eliza Hittman, Annie Baker, Safdie Brothers, Derek Cianfrance, Greta Gerwig, Spike Jonze, Mike Mills, Maurica Pialat, etc, etc. I’m always in one phase or another but those are some names that came to mind. Ask me next month and I’ll name some more.

I’m also super inspired by my filmmaker friends who are constantly making stuff and giving me the juice to do the same: Taryn Ward, Bram VanderMark, Kennard Blackwell, and Andrew Wilson, to name just a few.

I really enjoyed watching your docu-short Train Eater, about a subway performer who was speaking out against police brutality in 2017. I can’t help but wonder what Timothy Little is up to these days, and how his views on the world have either solidified or changed. Do you keep up with him?

Timothy Little is 1 of 1. Love that man. His message is unfortunately as relevant as ever and ended up being extremely prescient. That was three years before the events of 2020. I haven’t seen him in person in years but we message occasionally. I think he’s maybe gotten into crypto? You’d have to ask him.

What do you hope this film will do for you?

I hope this film helps me make more films. Either by building momentum or by acting as an example of my voice (whatever that means) for future collaborators or other interested parties down the line.

Anything else you’d like to say about your film?

Just that movies don’t make themselves, movies don’t fund themselves, and that movie budgets only grow, they never shrink. I’m so grateful for the support I’ve received so far in the form of people's time, money and energy. I’m so excited to make this film and I can’t wait to share it with the world.

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If you’ve gotten this far, I hope you’ll join me this Five Dollar Friday and contribute to the Neuman campaign. Or at the very least give him a follow on Instagram @tjelledge

I know from experience that this kindness and support will mean the world to Timothy as he heads into production on his film.

In warmth and community,

Tom