Life in a Day A time capsule is defined as “a container storing a selection of objects chosen as being typical present time, buried for discovery in the future.” But what falls under the category of a “container”? Can a camera? That’s exactly what director Kevin McDonald and producer Ridley Scott attempted to find out with the documentary “Life in a Day”. An experiment offered to anyone around the world that had access to a video camera on July 24th to film their life. According to McDonald one single day can show the basic temporal building block of human life—wherever you are and can show who we are. Was there plan just to show life? Or was there other alternative motives? Was there a plan of comparison of the people all around the world or is society just so different there didn’t have to be intention to prove that? The film was announced to the public on July 6, 2010. 75% of the film was footage shot by people who were contacted about sending their own videos in through traditional advertising and YouTube. The other 25% was shot by cameras sent out by production. All of the footage in the film came from the same day, July 24, 2010. Over 80,000 different clips of footage were sent in for possible entry into the film. Editing took several weeks to sort through all the footage. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2011 and on October 31, 2011 was put on YouTube to stream to the public for free.

I chose this film for my final paper because it was something I personally have never seen before. The idea that you could take people from all around the world no matter what they do, no matter their backgrounds and give them a camera, and then turn that into a full length documentary. I was instantly hooked into this movie from the first time I even saw the trailer, I knew I wanted to see this film. As a new film student not usually used to documentaries you have a tendency to lose sight of reality in films and what’s real. So when something like this comes along I instantly took notice. Real emotions from real people is something you don’t get a lot and to see it attempted to be filmed and people allowing it to just be out there for anyone to see is something that intrigues me. Especially from a insecure persons stand point. Just from watching the trailer and reading the overview I could already tell that this movie would be pouring with themes. Also the fact that writer/ director Ridley Scott, of Gladiator, Alien, etc, was main producer had me very interested as well. Why is the guy who has some of the biggest budgets and highest grossing films involved in such a different, odd project? This film after watching it did bring up a lot of questions. What was it for? I know what I took out of this film but is what I took what was meant to be taken? Within this film there is not one story that is meant to be more important than another’s. Every clip or story has the same importance as the next. It is funny how a film involving everyone around the world would be so hard to read or interpret for me. Was it just comparing life around the world? If so it becomes a very personal way of looking at everybody. Which makes sense to be innovative you need to do something different. Everyone knows how different the world is but do they know how much they have in common? In 1937, in Great Britain, anthropologist Tom Harrisson, poet Charles Madge, and film-make Humphrey Jennings created the “Mass Observation Project”. The Mass Observation aimed to record everyday life in Britain through a panel of around 500 untrained volunteer observers who either maintained diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires. This project was ran on a very tight budget with money from these men and a handful of other collaborators, and the occasional philanthropic contribution or book advance, the project relied most on its network of volunteer correspondents. The idea for this mass observation came about after King Edward VIII abdication in 1936 to marry divorcée Wallis Simpson. Dissatisfied with the pronouncements of the newspapers as to the public mood, the project's founders initiated a nationwide effort to document the feelings of the populace about the historical event by collecting stories, overheard comments, and "man-in-the-street" interviews on and around the Coronation of George VI. The founders also felt that between the two World Wars there was a lack of knowledge about the lives of ordinary people throughout the world.
Harrisson was quoted as saying that “The Mass Observation was formed to test the depiction of reality around the world.” What they did was took a diverse group of people with a wide range of interests to work in a new and creative way. Artists and poets influenced by surrealism and socialist ideology worked alongside sociologists and anthropologists to develop, what they called, “science of ourselves".
The team decided that the best way to understand what real people did and what they thought about the world was to watch and record them as they went about their everyday lives. This was generally without their knowledge, though the team did also conduct surveys.

Tom Harrisson instructed the observers to record hand gestures, hats, clothing and all kinds of details. For instance, observers recorded how many pieces were in a six-penny portion of chips or the proportion of black to brown shoes worn on the high street. There were also many volunteer diarists who would write down their day to day observations. They would also be expected to respond to "directives" where they would be instructed to investigate, or give their opinions on a particular subject on a given day. Harrisson was very interested in public houses, work life, political rallies and so forth. There was some criticism about the motives behind the Mass-Observation. Many of the photographers experienced directly negative reactions from people who objected to being photographed and made these observation years after the project had finished. Harrisson said "We were called spies, pryers, mass-eavesdroppers, nosey parkers, peeping-toms, lopers, snoopers, envelop-steamers, keyhole artists, sex maniacs, sissies, society playboys.”. Many of the photographers were uncomfortable with feeling like they were intruding on peoples' privacy. These feelings eventually persuaded them to give up journalistic photography for good. With the conspiracy theories and criticism towards the Mass Observation it started to sway people’s opinions which lead to many questioning the Mass Observation motives and reasoning behind their experiments. The thing about it was there was none. The intentions behind this were just to observe. Then they would take their results and compare. They had no plan going into and basically took the waiting game to see what they were able to come up. So with all that being said this idea of a ‘Social Observation” isn’t a relatively new idea. The similarities between the two are not coincidental either. Director Kevin MacDonald has openly stated that his “main inspiration” was in fact the 1930s Mass Observation movement. With these similar concepts and similarities between the two I do believe there is a difference here. The difference in being that there is a sense throughout “Life in a Day” that there was a plan with the theme. Now given I’m sure that there was a sense of “wait and see” what they got then put into the film. To me there are times you can see the film pushing the message too and basically hammers its viewers with sentiment, for the most it’s a moving insight into what it means to be a person living on July 24, 2010. So that is more of a structure than the 1930s attempt.
So essentially what you have here with “Life in a Day” is a Mass Observation 2.0. Obviously due to advancements in technology something like this couldn’t be done. Instead of having these contributors that were highly skilled in their field like in the 1930s observation MacDonald had 80,000 contributors who were capable of doing it themselves. Another reason that this 2.0 was only able to take place now is the ability for anyone to be a filmmaker themselves. 10 or 5 years ago this wouldn’t have been possible due to this jump into this YouTube generation. This 2.0 observation captures more personal of an observation. The subjects are filming/ recording themselves which causes it to become more personal rather than someone else reporting on others. Mass user participation is used to create something far more monumental than any individual could accomplish alone. It’s a concept that pays off, and its entire ethos is that of togetherness: we are not alone, we’re all the same underneath; everyone has fears, hopes, dreams, faces and etc. From tribes’ people to tramps, from the rich Ferrari driver to the poor 5 year old who is shining shoes on the street, we’re taken through a thorough scope of lifestyles and cultures. “Life in a Day” ends with a young woman sitting in her car filming at 11:56 pm on July 24, 2010. As the rain pours and the sound of the thunder is heard behind her, she talks about how all she was looking for was something worth filming to send in. As tears form in her eyes she says nothing did but she wants people to know she doesn’t cease to exist. She proclaims her “every woman”, nothing exciting just everyday person but wishes to change. Her last line is “even though nothing happened, I feel as if something great did.” This is the difference between this social observation and the one of the 1930s. In 1930 it was all about science, trying to figure out behavior. “Life in a Day” takes that ideology and goes even further with it. It is not trying to show what we do differently, as the 1930 one did, but to show how we all think similar. Everyone has treasures. Everyone has fears. No matter how different we may all be we’re all the same on that same day of July 24, 2010. “Life in a Day” deals with a subject that is so simple and yet so complex. A subject called “Life”. At first when I watched this I didn’t really know how to take it. So much was thrown at me at one time and feeling almost every emotion known to man within this 90 min film. It wasn’t but probably an hour later I had realized what I just watched. Like I said before it was something that I have never seen before or anything like it in that matter.
My interpretation of this film is not complex nor is it as unique as I wish it was. In this I see faces of people who on the outside have nothing in common. I am not told where these people are from unless they say it themselves, no ages, not even gender but yet everyone’s story seem to come full circle and all tie into one another. I see this film almost as a manifesto of some sort. Not a political or religious statement, just on life itself, a declaration of life. There is a statement being made with this film. One that is deeper than seen right away. To me that is what makes a documentary.