Interview with Kevin Macdonald, Life in a Day director

On paper Life in a Day, the new film by Kevin Macdonald, sounds like a recipe for a self-congratulatory banality.

The concept sounded pretty unexciting. YouTube wanted to celebrate its fifth birthday so it decided to use its vast reach to inspire individuals around the world to film themselves on 24 July 2010 and recruited world class filmmaker Macdonald and Scott Free, Ridley Scott’s production company to produce a feature-length documentary from the submissions.

But what emerged from the 4,500 hours of footage sent in from across the globe is anything but banal. I laughed, I cried, I felt amazed and moved. It was the simplicity of the thing which won me over as an examination of the important things in life – birth, death, childhood, love, beauty. It is both familiar and compelling.

I caught up with Macdonald to talk about the film and find out more about how he whittled down the footage to create it (watch the interview above)

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