"Life in a Day" Film is Video Diary of All of Us
Think back to last summer to July 24th. It was a Saturday. Do you remember what you were doing? Was it the stuff of which movies are made?
CBS News correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports if there are laws of Hollywood physics, this film, "Life in a Day," surely violates a bunch. It's a movie where everyone's a star but no one is famous. It was shot in a day and costs nothing to see.
July 24, 2010, was the date chosen by the director of the film. The call went out for homemade videos from around the world shot on that day. It's a sort of video diary for the planet Earth.
Two filmmakers in Spain sent a video of a little girl climbing a human ladder. The project was directed by Kevin Macdonald, an Academy Award winner.
"What we asked them to do was film what was most important to them in their lives that went on that day," says Macdonald.
Here's how it worked. In 24 hours, more than 80,000 clips were made in 192 nations. It added up to 4,500 hours of video that had to be cut down to 90 minutes. It's all ready to premiere Thursday at the Sundance film festival and on YouTube.
The filmmakers are being tight-lipped about how many videos made it in. Some of them look at least semi-professional. Some less so.
"It's not any other movie you've seen before but it actually does all the things you expect from a good movie," says Macdonald. "It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. Hopefully you feel at the end of it more connected to your fellow humanity, to other human beings around the world."
If some of the clips look unpolished, that seems to be the point. It is an in depth portrait of one day and a celebration of the everyday.
