“Life in a Day” is a collaboration of production companies, filmmakers and people with video clips gathered from all over the world, 190 countries, to express life as it was on July 24th, 2010. The project started with You Tube and soon involved Scott Free, LG and director Kevin Macdonald (“Last King of Scotland”) and editor Joseph Walker. Walker is truly the star of this film as it was his task to tackle 4,500 hours of footage and turn it into a 95 minute documentary.

One year to the day that all those videos were filmed, there was a preview screening in numerous cities. I attended the Las Vegas, NV screening at Rave Motion Pictures – Town Square. It was extra special as one of the many filmmakers was a local recent UNLV graduate, Andrea Walter, whom had her footage as a part of the film. She had some of her colleagues there for support. Immediately following the film screening, there was a Q & A played for the audience (Filmed earlier in the year at Sundance). I didn’t know this was part of the screening. Awesome! John Cooper, the Director at the Sundance Film Festival, moderated a panel of some of the filmmakers including Kevin Macdonald and Joseph Walker.  Macdonald said there wasn’t any specific plan or theme for the film when they sent out 400 cameras to underdeveloped countries and had filmmakers just shoot whatever they wanted. The only thing that was shared was a few questions such as ‘What are you afraid of?” Many of the topics covered by the footage were very much about the universal building blocks of life; birth, death, sickness, marriage, family.

With a documentary you never know what you’re going to find in the footage. And with this film, there were hundreds of filmmakers and I use the term ‘filmmakers’ lightly as anyone with a camera and the internet could shoot and upload something to You Tube. And I’m sure the team of researchers saw there share of bad footage. Not to mention how many different formats they most likely received. The surprise is how amazing the clips were from all over the world. The filmmakers said that there were so many great clips that had to be cut from the film. The film is very touching. The team lead by its editor, Joseph Walker, found some great devices in the film to tie everything together and structure the film with strong storyline.

The film may turn some meat-eaters to vegetarians. Actually, the footage is not as bad as people say. The filmmakers also discussed the ending of the film as far as whether to go darker or lighter, but most of the footage they received were happy ones. It’s more than a great documentary. It’s a time capsule, a snapshot of our world. “Life in a Day” is a way to connect the world. See the film coming out late July/August. Get connected! Then grab a camera and make a movie!