Life in a Day Opens

It's Friday. It's been a long week of blogging and preparing for the Virtual Futures 2.0 conference happening at Warwick University this weekend. Stay connected for tweets throughout the weekend on that, by the way! Reports will follow...

Anyway, just thought I'd highlight the UK release of Life in A Day - which happened this evening. The film, lovechild of Ridley Scott, presents snapshots of human lives from around the world on July 24th, 2010. All the contributions were solicited via YouTube and it promises to be an unusual and eye-popping glimpse of global contemporary culture. Here's the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT_UmBHMYzg&feature=youtu.be

And here is Ridley Scott himself talking about what he wanted from YouTubers back when the concept was launched last year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGYACultjCY&feature=youtu.be

Finally, I'd recommend tuning in to Aleks Krotoski's thoughts on the film which were broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Front Row this week (the first feature of the programme). She argues that this is "still Kevin MacDonald's [director] film" and that access to the full archive of user submitted videos (all 4,500 hours worth), for open source remixing and re-telling would be a valuable resource to come out of the project. Fascinating thought.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to see Life in A Day sometime this week, in which instance I shall of course post a review.

Happy weekend, machinists. Stay connected.