Academy Award-winning filmmakers Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald are calling on YouTube users to help make their film, which will premiere at Sundance Film Festival 2011
Academy Award-winning filmmakers Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald are calling on YouTube users to help make their film, which will premiere at Sundance Film Festival 2011
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| Kevin Macdonald, director of multiple Oscar-winning film The Last King of Scotland. Pic/AFP photo |
Don't try to live your life in one day," sang pianist-turned-synthpop star Howard Jones on his 1985 album Dream Into Action. Clearly not fans of the peroxide blonde, directors Kevin MacDonald and Ridley Scott are suggesting you do just that, film it, and then send them the footage.
Life in a Day is a YouTube project that The Last King of Scotland filmmaker MacDonald will direct, and Gladiator director Scott will produce. The portal has dubbed it "a historic global film experiment". It will be the world's first user generated feature-length documentary film shot on a single day -- July 24.
Says 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 in the year 2010. And what better way to gather a limitless array of footage than to engage the world's online community?"
Macdonald will bring together the most compelling footage into a feature-length documentary film. His 2005 documentary Touching the Void, which told the story of two climbers' disastrous attempt to scale the Siula Grande in the Andes, won the Alexanda Korda Award for Best British Film.
Music, art, and now filmLife in a Day is one of several efforts by YouTube to push the boundaries of music, art, and now film. Last year, it created the world's first online orchestra, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra (youtube.com/user/symphony), choosing more than 90 professional and amateur musicians from more than 30 countries through auditions on the video-sharing service.
YouTube has teamed up with the Guggenheim foundation to launch the creative video competition YouTube Play -- A Biennial of Creative Video. Creative professionals and amateur video makers can submit their pieces to a channel (youtube.com/user/playbiennial) created for the occasion before July 31. A jury will choose 20 videos to be broadcast on the site and, more importantly, in the different Guggenheim museums around the world.u00a0
What's in it for youIf your footage makes it into the finished film, you'll be credited as co-director. Twenty of the contributors will be flown to the 2011 Sundance Film Festival (Utah, US) for the film's world premiere. "This is a great way to engage the YouTube community and also to provide festival audiences with something new and unexpected," says John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival.
Why participate
Every contributor will be a part of cinematic history, participating in the largest crowd-sourced film ever made. You'll show what it was like to be alive on July 24, 2010.
To learn more and upload footage on July 24, log on to www.youtube.com/lifeinaday
MacDonald's tips for shooting Life in a Day
Shoot your own life
Show the world what it is like to be you. Director Kevin MacDonald says ask yourself these four questions through your videos
1) What are you afraid of?
2) What do you love?
3) What makes you laugh?
4) What's in your pockets?
High-res video is good, not mandatory
Videos will be edited into a feature film, so higher resolutions will look better. That said, mobile phones are capable of rivetting footage, so don't hold back for lack of high-quality equipment.
Good sound is a must
No music in the background, but beware of noise and wind. Don't touch the microphone. Use the video camera's internal mike only if the subject is three feet away. MacDonald wants to see raw footage when he picks the best clips, so don't spend too much time editing your footage.
