Press Release

 Historic Global Film Experiment Asks YouTube Users to Shoot their Life in a Day on July 24 Final Film to Make World Premiere at 2011 Sundance Film Festival

YouTube joins world famous filmmakers Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald in asking people around the world to assist them in creating the first user-generated feature-length documentary film shot on a single day on July 24, 2010.  “Life in a Day” is a historic global film experiment that enlists the global community to capture a moment of their lives on Saturday, July 24 and to upload that footage to www.youtube.com/lifeinaday.  

Academy Award-winning director of State of Play, Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void films, Kevin Macdonald will direct and bring together the most compelling footage into a feature-length documentary film.  The project will be produced by Ridley Scott and his company Scott Free Productions.  Individuals whose footage makes it into the finished film will be credited as co-directors and 20 of these contributors will be flown to the 2011 Sundance Film Festival for the film’s world premiere.

Life in a Day is one of several efforts by YouTube to push the boundaries of music, art, and now film.  YouTube Symphony Orchestra and the recently announced YouTube Play partnership with the Guggenheim are examples of the convergence of online video with traditional arts and Life in a Day takes this effort into the cinematic realm.  LG Electronics is supporting Life in a Day as a key part of its long-standing Life’s Good campaign and to enhance the creation of quality online content that can be shared and enjoyed by all.

According to the 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.  It is a unique experiment in social filmmaking, and what better way to gather a limitless array of footage than to engage the world’s online community.”

“Over the past five years, You Tube has changed the way media is created and consumed," said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google, YouTube’s parent company. "We're thrilled to give our community the opportunity to work with Kevin Macdonald and Ridley Scott and are grateful to our long-term partner, the Sundance Institute, for their support of this global initiative. I can think of no better place to premiere Life in a Day than at next year’s festival.”

“A vital part of our mission is to support individual storytelling around the globe and to provide a platform for expression and experimentation,” says John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival. “This is a great way to engage the You Tube community and to also provide Festival audiences with something new and unexpected.”

“LG believes in enriching people’s lives through technology and saw complementary objectives in the Life in a Day project,” says Dermot J. M. Boden, Chief Marketing Officer of LG Electronics.  “For LG, this project is a fantastic opportunity to engage with You Tube users on a personal and emotional level that’s both rewarding and enjoyable. This initiative is perfectly consistent with our brand promise of “Life’s Good”!”

Scott Free will work with Rick Smolan, creator of “A Day in the Life” and Chief Operating Officer of Against All Odds Productions, a California-based organization that specializes in the execution of large-scale global projects that combine story-telling with state-of-the-art technology, to distribute cameras to individuals in remote regions of the world in an effort to ensure that the film is as inclusive and representative as possible.  

To learn more and upload footage after July 24, please visit www.youtube.com/lifeinaday.