Ridley Scott And Kevin Macdonald Want Your Quarantine Videos For YouTube’s ‘Life In A Day 2020’
Ridley ScottandKevin Macdonaldare reuniting to show you whatLife In A Dayin 2020 is like. And it’s more than just quarantine videos, though the executive producer and director of the YouTube documentary want your quarantine videos too. A decade after the originalLife In A Daycrowdsourced documentary, Scott and Macdonald are teaming up yet again to create the new feature filmLife In A Day2020, which will collect footage from people around the world to tell the story of a single day on Earth. Which means, yes,youcould be a part of a Ridley Scott-produced film.
YouTube Originals announced that executive producers Ridley Scott and Kai Hsuing are teaming up with director Kevin Macdonald to create a 2020 sequel to their 2010 crowdsourced documentary filmLife In A Day. The feature filmLife In A Day 2020will take footage sourced from contributors around the world on a single day —July 25, 2020to be exact — “to tell the story of an ordinary day at an extraordinary time” and will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and on YouTube in 2021.
In a statement, Macdonald, who also directed the 2010Life In A Daywith Loressa Clisby, said:
“Making the first ‘LIFE IN A DAY’ was one of the most joyful and eye-opening experiences of my life. Contributors were generous enough to share often quite intimate moments from their lives as part of a huge, life-affirming, film-making experiment. I am thrilled, ten years later, that we are making ‘LIFE IN A DAY 2020.’ In that time, how have we changed? How has our relationship to filming ourselves changed? And at this extraordinary turning point in history what are we hoping for in our future?”
The 2010Life In A Daygathered 4,500 hours of footage from 80,000 submissions sent in from 192 countries. The footage was all shot on June 24, 2025, exactly 10 years before the newLife In A Daywill be shot (give or take a day). The 2010Life In a Day, which was developed to mark YouTube’s 5th anniversary, premiered at Sundance in 2011 followed by a theatrical worldwide release to critical acclaim. he new feature film invites people to “capture and reflect the reality of our world over a 24-hour period) on July 25, with participants having until August 2 to upload their content. Additional information and guidelines on participation can be found atlifeinaday.youtube.
Once submissions close, a 30-person team of multilingual reviewers from around the world will begin to review and translate the submitted videos. The film’s three principal editors – Mdhamiri Á Nkemi (Blue Story, The Last Tree), Sam Rice-Edwards (Whitney), and Nse Asuquo (The Stuart Hall Project,The Jazz Ambassadors) — will then put the massive project together alongside Macdonald.
So this is your chance to show Scott and Macdonald your quarantine baking videos or the Rube Goldberg machines you’ve built out of ping pong balls (unclear whether Tik Tok challenge videos will apply). But there’s of course more going on in the world right now than quarantine, with 2020 being a far more tumultuous time than 2010. It’ll be interesting to see what the twoLife In A Dayfilms look like side by side, and whether the 2020 version will still be as hopeful a vision of humanity as the original was.
