Thousands of Australians capture their Life in a Day

Nearly 1,500 Aussies picked up a video camera on Saturday, July 24 and captured part of their day for an ambitious new YouTube project.

Life in a Day is a global experiment aiming to create the first ever user-generated feature film, and when entries closed last weekend we found out we’d received 80,000 submissions from people around the world, representing 197 countries and 45 languages.

Australians filmed themselves walking on the beach in Melbourne, skiing in Thredbo, and answering the questions posed by Life in a Day director Kevin Macdonald: “What do you love? What do you fear? What makes you laugh? What’s in your pocket?”



The next step? Over the coming months, the most compelling and distinctive footage received will be edited into a feature-length film, produced by Ridley Scott (of Gladiator fame) and directed by Kevin Macdonald (director of the Last King of Scotland).

A gallery of submitted footage will go live on YouTube’s Life in a Day channel in early September, and the final film will screen at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011 and be available on YouTube. We can’t wait to see the result, and whether any Australians will be co-credited as directors when the film is released.

Posted by Ernesto Soriano, YouTube team