yvonneleach-33166 A very creative and thought provoking way to share our combined human experience across cultures. To think what a challenge it was to go through all that video footage and decide what to keep and then to piece it together in a way that flowed naturally and touched on the common themes of life for all of us. It is commendable and the final product a truly amazing product,

johnnyboyz The prospect of wading through all of that footage received depicting a day in the life of a human-being must have been one of the most daunting things any editor has ever faced in the history of cinema. In the long run, the narrowing down of the material into what we get might very well be the sole glory of Life in a Day, a piece featuring a collection of amateur snapshots of what somebody might do on a typical day in July of 2010 recorded via cell phone and digital camera. It is a project synonymous with where we stand today in moving image production: everyone's a film-maker, very few are any good at it but all of it is accessible 24/7 anyway – why not embrace the idea of such a thing and boil it down into a 90 minute film? In spite of the skills shown in dealing with not only the quantity of material, but also the gulf in how different it all is to the next project creators Kevin MacDonald and Ridley Scott received, there remains an unaddressed sensibility about the whole thing which is unshakable and, frankly, quite annoying.Let's not look past the fact that Life in a Day was an experiment, but how successful is an experiment when several minutes are dedicated to people doing their toiletries; most of the content isn't anything you weren't already aware of, culturally nor socially, and when the best chunks of it depict "real life" people of whom I've already seen depicted in "fictional" neo-realist films more interestingly? I am, of course, referring to the likes of the goat farmers based on what look like the Uzbek steppes. Them there is wife-less Japanese hoarder living with his infant daughter in an apartment as well as the sequences that come with a young English lad whose back in his home town just after graduating from university to see his father again. Veterans of mostly any film by the Iranian Makhmalbaf film-making dynasty will have had their fill of steppe sheppards doing what they do and saying what they say in better films which, oddly, felt more real. Likewise, anybody who has seen anything by Ozu or, much more recently, 2008 Japanese film Tokyo Sonata, will slip into enjoying watching the grace and subtlety of the Japanese family – the two in question of which get up, greet one another and then light some incense for what appears to be their deceased wife/mother.The film begins at 3am on the day in question, July the 24th 2010, and we're everywhere from Virginia to Pakistan. People comb their hair, arrive at work and breastfeed – admittedly, there is an eerie beauty to proceedings so simple and so mundane. The morning arrives with market places bustling and the like; this all gives way to a number of universal depictions of people in random places from the afternoon to the evening and then late at night again. There are attempts at parallels between people. The coverage of the aforementioned Japanese family with their lost feminine participant depicts a youngster quiet, unassuming and acceptant of their mother's death. They are measured and calm, in spite of the fact they live quite roughly. Cut to America, and a spoilt kid throwing a tantrum over something-or-another while in occupancy of his lavish family abode greets us. He has a mother and she appears to be as close to death as the Japanese already was; there seems to be some sort of distinction being made as to how different children in different cultures, or nations, behave. Later on, the piece will change its tract when it depicts an American woman's tearful goodbyes to her lover over a webcam as he serves in The Middle East – this is directly after depicting what an Afghan woman's day might consist of during as she too lives within the confines of said conflict.Regardless, one cannot look past the paradox at the heart of Life in a Day which the production team cannot trump and that is, if the film is meant as a unique snapshot of what people got up to on that chosen day, how much of it is activity genuinely suited to what someone might have done that day and how much of it merely fell into the trap of being the very thing that inspired it? That is to say, goofy clowning around in the vain attempt at fame all captured via the digital eye and placed where everyone can see it. But there are truths, cold truths which you wish the producers had found more of during their unenviable task: the cutting from interior footage of an abattoir to two people enjoying a burger at a roadside van and not really thinking any more of it is a cold instance of life's inherent ways.The film is at its best during these contemplative sequences and at its worst when it essentially becomes the very thing it should have evolved out of: that is to say, extended segments on what's in a person's pocket or what people eat or how they get around – content which is good only for the doldrums of Youtube's infinite online data banks of moving image. On balance, points can only be awarded for the idea behind the film. In spite of coming at you with this mantra of diversity and peace-hoping, universal love, the film's consensus is that of a bleak one. Mankind is ultimately depicted as a savage; aggressive, sometimes confused and often quite weak species – a species who appears to know what the issue is but has absolutely no clue as to how to attain the solution.

annabel_jasmine I had to watch Life in a Day at college for the next part of my A-Levels as it focuses on New Media Technology. This film is one of our main case studies, when I found out that I was going to watch this film I wasn't very happy about the idea but now I have watched it I can see why people rate it so much as it is one of those films that you can watch over and over again and notice new things.When I first started watching the film I thought it was odd as it didn't seem real, the more I watched though I understood that people were happy to be taking part in the film and wanted to help other people understand what everybody else does every day and how people's lives are all different.I thought the film was really good as you were able to understand what some people have to go through. I was also impressed with the way the film was edited as it helped you understand what was going on more as it was edited into a kind of story line throughout the whole day. I really like the film as it is a somewhat time capsule and in years to come people will be able to watch this film and understand how we used to live and I think it would be a great idea if something like this could be made every so often.However I didn't enjoy some of the footage that was added into the film, I understand that the producer and director wanted to get all different types of things in however you were never warned about some of the shocking clips that was in the film. Another reason why I didn't enjoy the film is because it seemed surreal as everybody on the film seemed happy and everybody knows that it isn't true as there are plenty of other things going on in the world. For example, people in poverty, I understand they are happy with what they have got however they were making out they were on top of the world and nothing could be better.My overall impression is that I can understand why the film is a ground breaking film as it was really good, edited well, and made you understand everything differently. Everybody has different views on different things and I suppose it just depends on what you are interested in to whether you will enjoy the film or not. I'm happy that it helped YouTube become a more developed website and more well known to other people as people needed to understand that it wasn't just a film for videos and that the videos on there should actually mean something.

rbferre How many times have you wondered how a human being lives in another city of this planet? Not something we see in the movies, just a regular, ordinary, mundane, and simple human being.How many times have you thought how life is short and how you should do to get the most of it.Well, this movie is about these questions and much more. Using raw footage sent by people from different backgrounds and 192 countries -which makes us think how powerful the media is - it takes to a fascinating journey to witness a long needed reality check. Fascinating in its own way, because the scenes you see are ordinary. And that is what the enchantment is... art from the ordinary.It is not a reality show, nor a fictional movie. Life in a Day is just... Life. With all frustrations , discoveries, sadness, and hopes. Just life.I watched this movie not expecting too much. And boy was I wrong - this kept me mesmerized for 94 minutes. And at the end, you will ask yourself if you are doing the best from your existence in this planet. Not to be missed!