THE biggest video sharing website in the world has just made a movie all of its own and the results might surprise you – a full-length movie depicting a day in the life of planet Earth.
Last year YouTube asked its millions of users to take part in a unique project called Life In A Day – and now you can watch the result as a feature-length movie on YouTube itself.
The idea was to turn all of YouTube’s millions of users into the ultimate global documentary film crew. Ordinary folk were asked to film their day on a particular day (July 24, 2010) and upload the results to YouTube.
Film producer brothers Ridley and Tony Scott – makers of films such as Gladiator, Alien and Top Gun – were invited to turn all the footage uploaded (all 4,500 hours of it) into a movie.
The result, also called Life In A Day, is a 90-minute documentary of life all around the globe. It’s been on tour to cinemas around the world for a while, but now you can watch it at YouTube (goo.gl/CQ9cp).
The film is an extraordinary feat. It depicts daily life for a planet’s worth of people, and the result is an incredible mixture of cultures, lifestyles, attitudes and opinions.
You might expect, this being YouTube, that much of the footage would be grainy, wobbly, blurry and poorly composed.
But you’d be wrong. The Scott brothers extracted all the very best stuff. Some of it is wobbly and blurry, but the overall effect is impressive.
There are odd bits, sad bits, one or two shocking moments (including graphic scenes of a cow being slaughtered) and plenty of laughs. All aspects of life are included – birth, death, fun, violence. It’s not solely for adults, although parents might want to watch it first before allowing their children to do the same.
What’s most impressive is how thousands of people collaborated to create it. The internet made it happen, from bringing together all the participants in the first place to showing off their work to the world.
Giles Turnbull
BROWSING AROUND ... SCIENCE
The Royal Society: www.royalsociety.org
Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science: www.badscience.net
The British Antarctic Survey: www.antarctica.ac.uk
The Royal Astronomical Society: www.ras.org.uk
THING OF THE WEEK
Make your own Twitter snowman Christmas decoration: www.frstee.com