Life In A Day - The ultimate in world wide experiential communication hits YouTube...soon...

Friday, 25 March 2011

Life in a Day

On the 6th July 2010, Ridley Scott and YouTube announced the start of one of the most ambitious documentary projects ever undertaken.

The aim; to take a snapshot of life all over the world in a single day. The method; invite people everywhere to pick up a camera on 24th July 2010 and film things in their day that are special to them, upload them to YouTube, and let Oscar winning documentary maker Kevin MacDonald, with the help of Oscar Winning producer Ridley Scott, turn the compelling footage into a single feature.

Over 4,500 hours of footage from 80,000 submissions from 140 nations was condensed into a 94 minute and 57 second film.

The film represents a monumental feat of editing, but also highlights just how powerful a tool YouTube really is. No other program really sums up the impact of social networking, prolific connectivity and super-fast internet access as well as YouTube. More than Facebook and co, YouTube has a reach across modern culture like nothing else. It's where people go to be educated, entertained, enlightened. It's where people find their voice, share their ideas, and even become famous. Brands use it, artists and musicians use it. It's a tool for commerce, for promotion, for furthering agendas and making a point.

But it's also democratic. People only watch what they want to watch, and if they don't like it they flick instantly to something else. If something catches people's imagination it flourishes and if not it sinks, but the important thing is that now we're all connected. People of every religion, walk of life, background, ethnicity - everyone with internet can watch, learn and participate.

And that's the point this film is making. We're all linked now, we're all connected, and it's up to us how we choose to use that connectivity. This film is telling us that we can and should be using the technology that surrounds us to learn, to experience, and to share the things we love and the things that give us joy. And through that prism it celebrates the life that teems all over earth every day.

Watching Life in a Day is, by all accounts, a life affirming experience, and we for one are looking forward to doing it.