Life In A Day
Posted: Friday 30 July, 2010
Will Davis
My first two months at Punch have seen social media become a bigger part of my daily life (at least, after SEO!), and it's certainly been a big learning curve. However, it's been a thoroughly enjoyable one. Constantly working within these digital parameters, you learn to take note of what constitutes a good use of the internet, and then others that make you wonder why some people even bother! However, I've found one recent project that looks very intriguing.
Life in a Day is an experiment conducted through YouTube, encouraging users to upload footage of what they did on July 24th. To be directed by Kevin Macdonald (Last King of Scotland) and produced by Ridley Scott (need I say more?!), the end result is set to document a single day across the Globe, looking at how different people chose to spend their time, and what's important to them. Macdonald has described it as a time capsule, but this is much more than burying drawings and letters in a box outside your school to be opened again 50 years down the line...
Personally, I can't wait for the end result. I find it easy to spend hours wasting time on YouTube, from watching something informative to watching compilations of people generally making idiots out of themselves. But this is something completely different. This project will give any amateur film maker with a video camera the opportunity to make it onto the big screen, and is likely to be a documentary like no other. With two heavyweight Hollywood directors throwing themselves behind the project, the final cut is likely to make compelling viewing for many.
It will be interesting to see how the footage is used, whether a voiceover is used to connect the many different stories, or whether the footage will be allowed to flow and illustrate how peoples' lives can vary, or perhaps even intertwine! Sadly this won't be my big break, as I didn't think watching the German Grand Prix and sitting in a beer garden would constitute film-worthy material, but I'm sure even without gut-busting aliens or anything Russell Crowe-related, the end result will be fascinating!