Hey guys, my name is Dan Coronado & I have had a love for art & bicycles since I was 4 years old.

This year I’m going to be doing a project focused around different bicycle cultures all over San Diego. I’ve been wanting to do a bike film for a while & have landed on this final idea of creating a new chapter for the 12 films in 12 months project, started by my friend Ian Robertson . I plan on focusing on one short documentary-style story each month leading into one big documentary that we will put together for 2014.

There have been 2 things that have really made me want to make a film about cyclists in SD:

– San Diego is one of the best places in the US for year round cycling weather, yet it never gets recognized as a top bike friendly city for a list of reasons… I would like to make light of this in efforts to make our city more bike friendly.

– There have been a lot of bike related deaths & injuries in San Diego County lately & I want to show that there is a HUGE variety of individuals that enjoy biking of all types in San Diego & people need to share the road, trails, & beaches.

I want these stories to be focused around SD as much as possible, from the people, to the music & just showing off how BEAUTIFUL our city is. One thing I will be needing help with is MUSIC. If you are a LOCAL artist in San Diego & would like to have your music featured in a film this year please let me know! I can’t promise that I will use everyone’s music, but I definitely would like to hear your tracks & see if any of them will be the right fit for one of the films.

Really looking forward to getting the first film up for you guys to see… keep checking in & at the end of each month I hope to capture a story that you will enjoy.

Happy New Year!
– Dan Coronado

I’m very excited to announce that this year there will be a whole new 12 films in 12 months. In 2008, I launched the project to create a series of twelve short films based in different genres over the course of a full year; one film each month. Now, five years later, someone else is taking up the challenge to create a year-long series of short films.

I’m thrilled to introduce you to Dan Coronado. He’s a photographer and filmmaker based in San Diego. He runs Dan Coronado Photo and San Diego Action Media; and is very involved in the San Diego cycling scene. In fact, cycling has become his muse for this project. Over the next year, he’ll be creating short documentaries focusing on a different San Diego cyclist each month. Dan’s collecting a diverse range of subjects and stories that he’s looking to tell; showcasing a variety of people in diverse careers and lives that are all connected by the common thread of cycling.

If you want to follow the process this year, Dan will be posting thoughts, updates, and final films here on this site and also at the 12 Films In 12 Months Facebook Page. He’ll be posting soon to share a little of his vision behind the project this year. I for one, am excited to watch the process unfold.

The clock starts, well…yesterday. So check back often to follow Dan’s progress throughout the year. 12 Films In 12 Months: 2013 should be a great year of filmmaking!

If you’re on Facebook and a fan of any of the 12 films I’ve made in the last year, why not combine the two?  I set up a page for 12 Films In 12 Months on Facebook here (you can also click on the link in the sidebar).  You can view the films in much higher quality than most of the current YouTube versions and become a fan of the project within the Facebook world.  Thanks for your support!

So now that I have completed 12 films in 12 months, what’s coming up for 2009?  Well first of all, I’m not going to be diving straight into another 12 films this year.  I’m looking forward to spending some time with my wife and having a free weekend or two.  As much as I’m proud of the films I created and as much as I enjoyed the experience of making movies all year and the experience and learning that it brought, I’m looking forward to a couple months where I don’t feel the self-induced pressure to write, cast, plan, shoot, edit, score, and mix a film every 30 days or so.

All that being said, this blog and the films I made are certainly not going away and I’ve got a couple things in the works relating to the 12 Films.  First of all, I’m working on a screening of all 12 films within the next month.  The plan is to rent out a theater here in San Diego and spend an evening screening and sharing stories from the 12 films we produced this last year.  I’m still working on securing the theater so stay tuned for the exact date and location.

I’m also hoping to submit some more of the films to festivals throughout the next year.  Having “Mystery Box” accepted to the San Diego Film Festival was an honor and a dream come true.  But my hope is to now take even more of the short films I completed and submit them to all sorts of festivals and have them screened before many different audiences.  I will of course announce any festival screenings here on the blog so stay tuned for that as well.

I will continue to post short films and creative videos from others, assorted videos that I work on, filmmaking resources and thoughts, and more here on the 12 Films blog.

You can keep up with what’s going on in a few ways.  You can subscribe to this blog, either through RSS reader (if you don’t use any particualar reader, a couple popular ones are Google Reader and Bloglines) or via email.  You can find the RSS feed here or in the sidebar to right and you can subscribe via email by entering your email into the box in the sidebar.  You can also keep up by following me on Twitter.

If you’re new to the site, thanks for checking it out.  If you’ve been following the films for a while, thank you so much for your viewership, participation, and support over the last year of filmmaking.  Here’s to great 2009!

It seems fitting, here as I wrap up my 12 films over the last 12 months, to feature this fantastic Flickr set filled with “The End” from a whole host of tv shows and movies.  Click on the image to see them all.

ht to Chris

I saw this the other day and thought it was brilliant. It’s a montage of 40 different inspirational speeches from movies that have been cut together into fantastic 2 minute monologue.

ht to Marko

A good title sequence sets the tone for the film you’re about to watch and draws you into its world. At the same time, it seems that the title sequence is one of the few conventionally accepted parts of a film where the filmmaker and producer can be audaciously creative and experimental visually within the film. They can work with animation, motion typography, montage, unconventional filming and editing techniques, stylization of footage, and much more; and not have to worry about continuing that same look throughout the entire film.

I recently came across a great post of 30 Unforgettable Movie Title Sequences .  Take some time and watch a few of them.  There is some amazing work represented.  As different as all the sequences are, the one constant is that they all set a tone with sound, picture, and type that draws you emotionally into the movie you’re about to see.

If you want even more title sequences, check out The Art of the Title Sequence and Forget the Film, Watch the Titles; two great sites with growing catalogues of movie title sequences.

I saw this mock-up of what someone’s twitter time-line would look like during a zombie attack a little while back and it cracked me up (click on the image for full size):

Originally from here.