Twelve months, twelve short documentaries on a long way to success. Trainings. Races. Travelling. Life. This is TWELVE – a new project of pro fourcross rider and BMXer Michal Prokop.

Not only by its coarse visual interpretation TWELVE picks up the threads of michal.prokop.09 calendar, however it uses a wider potential of video technologies. Rob Trnka’s camera takes the past month of Michal, just as he has actually spent it. Without any adornments and planning. It doesn’t aim to celebrate the leading actor; it wants to capture by its sincereness. TWELVE doesn’t create dramatic situations, but it catches them if they arise.

In first days of the following month you can always find out what were the last four weeks of Michal. Interesting? Boring? Tiring? Cheerful? Successful…? As every real calendar also TWELVE starts in January. Tons of iron, hours in fitness centre and snow and freeze all around. This way Michal’s year 2010 started, a season dedicated to fourcross, in which BMX already starts to come through strongly, with qualification for 2012 Olympic Games.

Episodes of TWELVE can be found at www.redbull.cz.  Here’s the first edition:

“When working on the calendar I understood that Michal doesn’t have to make somebody else of him or to create another – media – face. This helped me a lot in making decision how TWELVE should look like. Anyway, in Michal’s case his spontaneity doesn’t look affectedly … When preparing scenarios I only need to know where he will appear. I try to record things for which there is no place or time anywhere else – time when the camera is switched off. No sensations, but moments, which may look trivially alone, but which will make sense when put together with Honza Mocnak. For me, it will be important when somebody will switch the result of my work on more than once,” comments his work on TWELVE the photographer, and this time also the cameraman and screenwriter, Rob Trnka.

Editor, post-production, music, graphics … Jan Mocnak. Yes, it is not a typing error in subtitles. This man of all seasons who created the graphical look of the calendar michal.prokop09 and his websites www.ProkopRider.net undertook the responsibility for the wide spectrum of work on the TWELVE project!

When selecting the technical equipment, taking into account expected use of and demands for output, the realisation team has chosen Panasonic Lumix GH1 video reflex camera as an optimum solution. Unusual solution for video technology in Full HD quality? First hands-on experience confirms rightness of the choice. At first sight inconspicuous, compact body, accessible cost, manual focusing transformed into advantage when using Zuiko adapter and objective … all of this makes an excellent tool for reportage work out of Lumix GH1!