Timecode is a 2016 short film (15 minutes) from Spain, directed by Juanjo Giménez.
Diego and Luna are, respectively, the day shift and night shift guards at an underground parking garage. Their contact with each other never goes much past "hello" and "goodbye" and "how did it go?" at shift change.
One day, Luna gets a call from the boss reporting that a customer complained about a broken taillight. Luna goes to review the security camera footage, and finds that Diego accidentally kicked out the taillight of the car, while he was dancing. It seems that Diego is a talented dancer who likes to bust moves as he does his patrols around the parking garage. This discovery begins a whole new relationship between Diego and Luna.
No relation to the Mike Figgis 2000 feature film Timecode.
Tropes:
- Dance-Off: Via security camera, as Luna and Diego each dance for the cameras and leave post-it notes at work so the other can go find the footage.
- Jump Cut: Several jump cuts when Luna is changing out of her regular clothes into her work uniform. This is likely both to save time and to emphasize the dull nature of her routine.
- Letting Her Hair Down: The film shows more than once how Luna makes a point of pulling her long hair up into a bun when she puts on her uniform and clocks in to work. This sets up the shots at the end when her hair is back down, when she's dancing passionately with Diego.
- Playing Games at Work: Two security guards while away the tedious hours in a parking garage by dancing.
- Split Screen: At the end the screen splits into two and then into four to show various videos of Diego and Luna dancing together.
- Surveillance Station Slacker: Luna and Diego spend their time on shift dancing.
- Time-Passes Montage: A series of shots of hands slapping Post-It notes on a computer monitor, as Luna and Diego continue to dance away their time at work.
- Title Drop: At the end the supervisor is training a new employee by saying "You type in the timecode" while demonstrating how to use the security cam.
- Visual Title Drop: The label "TIMECODE" on the computer monitor, which Diego and Luna use to watch each others' videos.
