Will Tippett's Screen Wipe

The much anticipated annual Sundance Film Festival kick started on January 20 in Utah. Besides the long list of films that the movie buffs are dying to watch, one movie that stands apart for generating a much higher level of curiosity among not only the film lovers but also the netizens is Youtube's Life in a Day.

Excert from Life in a Day - Cameras at the ready people By Matilda Battersby Friday, 23 July 2010 (The Independant blog)

"All over the world amateur and professional filmmakers alike will document tomorrow from sunrise to sunset. The fruits of their labour will become a feature length film produced by Ridley Scott and directed by ‘Last King of Scotland’ director Kevin Macdonald.

“‘Life in a Day’ is a time capsule that will tell future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010,” Macdonald said.

“I hope it will be something that will open people’s eyes to the possibilities of user generated film. Of course, it’s a risk. It could be that I won’t get anything interesting back. But I don’t think that will be the case. I’m sure there will be some real gems, some real magic, which is what I’m looking for.”

The project is being organised by the bastion of the online film revolution, YouTube.

The video sharing site – which gets more than 2 billion views a day, and receives 24 hours of uploaded footage every minute-, is giving a nod to the old fashioned world of cinema and feature-length filmmaking, while harnessing the vast creative powers in its possession as well as the skills of a couple of Hollywood greats.

Macdonald and Scott have made it clear that they want personal snapshots of the world at large, however domestic, low key, amusing or beautiful. This won’t be a movie blockbuster; it will be a hotchpotch of clips from diverse countries, with disparate themes, ideas, perspectives.

“I want to get people to give me a little insight into their lives. I think that the internet is a great metaphor and a creator of connectedness…I hope this film will be reflective of the individualistic approach of contributors with many different points of view from around the world,” Macdonald said.

“I’m also hoping that this is going to be a kind of net for happy accidents – that all sorts of fantastic coincidences are going to happen around the world that nobody would have realised were coincidences unless we brought them together.”

The idea for the project was based on Ridley Scott’s debut film ‘Boy and Bicycle,’ a 25 minute short. He said: “My first film was a day in my life. I thought, ‘I’ll just write a day in the life of me.’ It was about how I once decided not to go to school, I hated school, and I took the day off. Of course it involved hiding a lot and so the film was quite introverted.”

The ‘Day in a Life’ film will be premiered at the Sundance Film Festival early next year and 20 of its contributors will be invited to attend. To get involved in this scarily ambitious undertaking and to see if a snapshot of your life could become part of this mezzanine approach to a time capsule, you can visit youtube.com/lifeinaday

As Scott remarks: “There’s no excuse. If you have a digital camera go out and shoot your film this weekend. There’s no excuse!”

Cameras at the ready, everyone."

Watching it LIVE. Wow, look at me so interactive!