Kiwis asked to film their Life In A Day for world

If you have access to a handycam or mobile phone, if you make films for a living or simply enjoy getting caught on camera... YouTube wants you!

YouTube has announced Life in a Day, an historic global film experiment that will document one day on earth – 24 July 2010 - as seen through the eyes of people around the world. The project will be produced by Ridley Scott, directed by Academy-Award-winning director Kevin Macdonald, and filmed by... you.

Anyone in the world will have 24 hours to capture their life on camera on Saturday 24 July and upload the footage to www.youtube.com/lifeinaday. Kevin Macdonald will be editing the most compelling footage posted by users to the www.youtube.com/lifeinaday page into a feature-length documentary, which Ridley Scott will executive-produce. Everyone whose footage makes it into the film will be credited as co-directors, and 20 of these contributors will also be flown to the premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

New Zealand is famous for DIY filmmaking – think early Peter Jackson, Back Of The Y and the awesome 48 Hours Film Fest each year! – so we’re hoping Kiwis will take up the Life In A Day challenge in droves and get filming on 24 July.

A press release is attached below - for more information, please see the Press site at https://sites.google.com/site/liadpressinformation/home or head to the www.youtube.com/lifeinaday page... or don’t hesitate to give us a call or email!

FILMMAKERS RIDLEY SCOTT AND KEVIN MACDONALD ASK YOUTUBE COMMUNITY TO CAPTURE LIFE IN A DAY

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

July 7, 2010 YouTube joins world famous filmmakers Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald in asking people around to world to create the first user-generated feature-length documentary film shot on a single day - 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 Kevin Macdonald (State of Play, Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void) will direct, bringing together the most compelling footage into a feature-length documentary film. The project will be executive produced by Ridley Scott (Robin Hood, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down) and produced by 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 support the creation of quality online content that can be shared and enjoyed by all.

The director, Kevin Macdonald says of the project, “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, CEO 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 at 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 CEO 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 on July 24, 2010 atwww.youtube.com/lifeinaday.

About YouTube
YouTube is the world's most popular online video community allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share original videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small. YouTube, LLC is based in San Bruno, Calif., and is a subsidiary of Google Inc.

About Ridley Scott, Producer
Ridley Scott is a renowned filmmaker who has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director over the course of his distinguished career, most recently for his 2002 film BLACK HAWK DOWN. Additional credits include GLADIATOR, which won the Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Picture and THELMA & LOUISE, which brought Scott his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director in 1991. Other films include AMERICAN GANGSTER, BODY OF LIES, A GOOD YEAR, the groundbreaking film BLADE RUNNER and the classic ALIEN. He most recently directed the hit film ROBIN HOOD. Scott, along with his brother Tony Scott, is the founder of Scott Free Productions, a company that produces a wide range of film and television projects. In 2003, Scott was awarded a knighthood from the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his contributions to the arts.

About Kevin Macdonald, Director
Kevin Macdonald is an award-winning filmmaker, whose first feature film, ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER, supported by the Sundance Institute Documentary Program, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2000. His second feature, TOUCHING THE VOID, premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in 2003 before becoming the highest-grossing British documentary in UK box office history. Kevin’s first dramatic feature, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, starring Forest Whitaker, also premiered at Telluride before winning a BAFTA for Best British Film and Best Adapted Screenplay; Whitaker also won an Academy Award and a BAFTA for his role in the film. Kevin is currently working on his next feature, EAGLE OF THE NINTH, starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell and Mark Strong. In addition to being a filmmaker, Kevin is a journalist whose work has appeared in numerous publications including the Guardian, Observer and Telegraph.

ENDS

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