Tim Ryan Reflects on The Drive

It’s been almost five years since Tim Ryan and Matt Wisdom began collecting footage for their documentary tour of New Orleans, The Drive.   Shot immediately post-Katrina, the film profiles people and places marred by the dust and devastation that followed disaster.  As NOVAC gears up for the New Orleans premiere of The Drive this weekend at the New Orleans Museum of Art, we thought it a good idea to hear from former NOVAC Executive Director and filmmaker, Tim Ryan.

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Heather, my wife, and I recorded the voice-over narration for the Lower 9th Ward segment of The Drive from our FEMA trailer.  Formaldehyde really does cause one’s eyes to burn.  We gave up on the trailer after a few weeks and moved into our garden shed.  It was small and cramped with our two dogs but, with a little sprucing up, it was much better than the trailer.  It was home.

Working on The Drive for several months after Katrina not only kept NOVAC alive, but also kept things in perspective.  As bad as things seemed for me personally, 1000′s of others throughout New Orleans were going through much worse.

I remember Matt (Wisdom) calling me in November 2005 to ask if I had seen the extent of the damage.  We talked about the national media coverage of the flooding and the rumbling from around the nation that perhaps New Orleans should not be rebuilt.  Matt suggested we document what things looked like from a local point-of-view and get it out to as many people as possible, including Congress.  We also wanted to archive the people, culture, and spirit that made New Orleans a city worth rebuilding.  We captured our first footage of the Lower 9th Ward the day before Christmas 2005.  Matt was driving and narrating while I tried to hold a steady camera outside the passenger side window. We went back  several times to capture interviews and still photos. Each time I returned I cried.  It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

We uploaded each segment of The Drive to YouTube.  YouTube was still relatively new and we realized the potential to reach a very large audience.  I did a little digging and found Steven Chen’s (co-founder) email at YouTube. I wrote telling him about our story and he agreed to post a short trailer on You Tube’s home page.  For a long time, that first upload was the most viewed “Katrina” related video on YouTube.  The entire project including a series of short NOVAC-funded documentaries by local filmmakers accumulated nearly 2 million views on YouTube.

The score was written by award-winning composer, Gil Talmi, from his studio in New York.  He reached out to us and offered to compose it for free.  The score’s eery beauty helps carry the viewer along a path of seemingly endless devastation.

The Drive is intentionally raw and not overly produced.  It was our best shot at trying to capture a true perspective of our city’s most challenging time.

-Tim Ryan

August 25, 2010

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 4:26 pm. It is filed under NOVAC Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.