Sheffield Doc/Fest is one of the top documentary film festivals in the world; aside from screening 130 films and hosting five days of industry wheeling, dealing and pitching, it features talks on the big issues currently facing documentary.

One of the most exciting and high-profile documentary events of 2010 has been Kevin MacDonald and Ridley Scott’s YouTube-based project, Life in a Day (see trailer, above). Last Friday, I went to see MacDonald (director of Touching the Void and The Last King of Scotland) and his editor Joe Walker speak about the project.

Life in a Day is a feature film commissioned to celebrate YouTube’s fifth birthday. Scott and MacDonald asked people around the world to send in footage of their everyday lives, shot on one chosen day. The idea is that the finished film would tell “future generations what it was like to be alive on 24 July, 2010”. They received 5,000 hours of material, which was watched, translated and rated by 27 researchers. Cameras were sent to developing countries so that people who wouldn’t otherwise have had the means to take part would be represented too. Life in a Day will premiere at Sundance next year; the plan after that is for a theatrical release, after which the film will be available on YouTube.

Life in a Day employs a new(ish) technique for accumulating material, but the impulse behind it is “documenting” in the original sense of the word: recording what’s around us, rather than filming with a clear purpose. In the editing process, MacDonald and Walker are looking for the dramatic, revealing moments in the everyday.

The project brings up interesting questions of authorship – who really made the film? Each filmmaker whose clip is used will get a co-director credit, and MacDonald is clear that this is a collaboration. However, he is also quietly insistent on who’s in charge, using the metaphor of an orchestra that would be a mess without a conductor; an attitude that was challenged elsewhere in the festival by “Community Prophet” David Vadiveloo.

Thanks in part to YouTube, we are getting more used to viewing the world in short clips, rather than as a structured narrative. The team’s big challenge – and that of the documentary maker in general – is to weave the raw footage into something meaningful and coherent. The difference here is the sheer volume of footage, and the responsibility to be representative: if you call your film Life in a Day, you are expected to encompass pretty much everything and everyone. As a documentary maker, I envy how exhilarating it must have been to have no idea what sort of film they’ll end up making, but I’m also scared for the team behind Life in a Day – going through rushes when you’re not sure what you’re looking for is an exhausting business, and it’s hard not to lose your way in such an awesome amount of disparate material.

MacDonald and Walker screened 10 minutes of a rough cut to their Sheffield audience. It’s hard to say from a short excerpt whether the film’s format can be sustained for an hour and a half, but based on its opening, I think Life in a Day will be a treat: it combines the magic of intimate, grainy amateur footage with masterful editing and great use of music to tie it all together. I’m excited to see what will become of those 5,000 hours when MacDonald and Walker are finished with them.

Read IdeasTap member Nastasha Collie's review of Sheffield Doc/Fest.