Now that he’s off making the big budget likes of “The Eagle of the Ninth,” it’s easy to forget that director Kevin Macdonald got his start in documentary film, with the excellent “Kindertransport,” “One Day In September” and “Touching the Void.” Now it looks like Macdonald is returning to the form (his last effort, “My Enemy’s Enemy,” hit in 2007), teaming with Ridley Scott and his Scott Free company on the unusual effort “Life In A Day.” If only the subject matter was up to their talents…
The idea is that the film will be made up of footage shot and uploaded by the users of YouTube on July 24th, with the idea of telling “future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th July, 2010.” MacDonald will then edit the footage together, and the film will premiere at Sundance next year, with twenty of those who supplied footage being flown to the premiere there.
The film will then be released in full onto YouTube. It’s being put together with the support of Against All Odds Productions, which specializes in projects like this one, and particular care is being taken to make sure that cameras will be distributed to remote corners of the world, for the full breadth of human experience.
In theory, it’s an interesting idea, but we have a couple of concerns. Firstly, it sounds like it may run the risk of being rather saccharine and broad (although MacDonald’s previous doc efforts give us hope that it’ll be more interesting than that). More importantly, if it follows YouTube in general, the film will be made up of ten minutes of interesting material, followed by eighty minutes of footage from “Twilight” re-edited to a Nickleback song. Still, if you feel you can bring the average up, you can find out more about submitting footage here. [The Hollywood Reporter]
