Head over to YouTube and you are most likely greeted with cats playing keyboards, testicles getting smashed, Justin Bieber music videos, adorable kids saying adorable things, and a variety of personal confessions. Executive producer Ridley Scott and co-director Kevin Macdonald have set out do something unique with the platform. On July 24th, 2010 they asked for anyone in the world to film part of their day and then submit the footage. They received 80,000 submissions from 192 countries, resulting in nearly 5,000 hours of content. For the past seven months Macdonald has been working with his team of twenty editors to create the film. It may seem like an impossible task to cull together all this crowd-sourced material from around the world and make something powerful, but this team delivers a deeply personal look at global life.
There are no title cards with names or countries, no silly animation inserts, and no fancy tricks. The only additions, aside from the obvious power of editing (credited to Joe Walker), come from Harry Gregson-Williams and Matthew Herbert‘s energetic score, and subtitles when necessary. We have a chronological structure, with images of the moon as the clock strikes midnight. Soon after we get a montage of people waking up and feet hitting the floor, and then it hits you.
This is a film that couldn’t have been made ten years ago, let alone five. We’ve had Godfrey Reggio‘s Koyaanisqatsi and Dziga Vertov‘s Man with a Movie Camera, which both feature an amalgamation of footage, but each told from a singular point of view. Here we have shots, stories, and scenes ranging from deeply intimate to downright beautiful to absolutely hilarious. While it is continually engaging, the film also highlights the utter power of crowd-sourcing. To think all of this footage was created in a single day, what could we do with a year-long project like this?
As we weave in and out of a handful of recurring story strands, most of the film are singular glimpses at life. We see a teenager’s first shave, a gay man coming out to his grandmother, a cow getting shot in the skull twice and then its throat sliced open. The range of footage hits nearly every note on the emotional spectrum and it is a beauty to behold.
With no narration and only posting three questions (“What’s in your pocket or purse?,” “What do you love?,” and “What do you fear?”) Ridley Scott, Kevin Macdonald and the thousands of participants have created an extraordinary message about the power of life. Life in a Day will prompt you to communicate with the ones you love and travel the world. These filmmakers have reversed the negative connotations related to the artistic quality of YouTube, and created one of the most inspiring documentaries here at the festival and have set a benchmark for 2011.
Life in a Day will stream on YouTube this Thursday, the 27th, at 8PM EST to coincide with the Sundance Film Festival 2011 premiere.
Katey Rich from CinemaBlend (follow on Twitter here) and I recorded a video blog with our thoughts, which can be viewed below: