Life – World Version

The other day I was lucky enough to catch the premier of Life in a Day on YouTube. I had not heard of the project previously, but was intrigued when I learned about it. On July 24, 2010 people all over the world were asked to film themselves and submit their day to YouTube. They thought they might get 15,000 submissions but got over 80,000.

The film premiered at Sundance on Thursday night, and they streamed it live on YouTube. I happened to be online at just the right time to watch, so while I pretended to give my full attention the World of Warcraft raid I was a part of I actually spent most of the time watching this on my second monitor.

I was really impressed by how many people submitted to this project. It is truly amazing. There was such diversity in the people who got involved. I think they said people from 192 countries contributed. I was honestly surprised by the wide range of people. For some reason when I think of YouTube “culture” I think of young adults and teens, but these people were of all ages, and cultures, and belief systems.

I feel like nowadays its so common to see conflict, and disagreement in the world. It’s all over tv and the internet. This is one of the first things I’ve seen in a long time where people strove to be part of global community and share their lives with others honestly. It was amazing to watch.

I think one of the things that struck me the most was during the Q&A after the movie. The creators said that they actually had difficulty finding clips that were dark or sad. It’s amazing that that much hope and happiness exists in the world when we rarely hear about it.

This is a very cool project and I recommend that people see it when it finally comes out in theaters or on dvd. Of course I completely realize that this type of film isn’t for everyone.

P.S. I wrote this on my phone so don’t be too offended if there are spelling and grammar mistakes. 🙂