Masters of Dox

What were you doing on July 24, 2010? Academy award winning director Kevin Macdonald asked the entire world this question via YouTube last year. More than 80,000 people responded with videos depicting their lives, thoughts and dreams, all on the exact same day. Macdonald arranged 300 selected clips culled from more than 4,500 hours of digital footage from people in 192 countries into a roughly chronologic but non-narrative order. As the day wears on, we see a kaleidoscopic variety of human activity: preparing meals, praying, working, raising children, arguing, recovering from trauma, jumping from airplanes, celebrating, conversing, dying—or doing nothing at all. While it resembles tone poems such as ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ or ‘Baraka’, 'Life in a Day' is more personal, focusing on individuals rather than nature and culture. Fittingly, Macdonald shares his director credit with the hundreds of YouTube filmmakers who made the final edit.