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PARK CITY, Utah – If you can't beat 'em, YouTube, join 'em.
Long since video-sharing website YouTube became an Internet sensation, media watchers have wondered how it can take users' appetite for 2- or 3-minute videos and transform it into a hunger for full-length film and TV-style content. On Thursday, Sundance Film Festival audiences got a first taste.
To be sure, YouTube's full-length movie "Life In a Day" is nowhere near the scope of a project needed to make YouTube a common destination for watching Hollywood movies and TV shows as people do with Netflix, Hulu or iTunes. But it may be the start of something new, and YouTube insiders say more is to come.
"Life In a Day" was a project conceived by YouTube and carried out by Scott Free Productions, the movie and TV company run by acclaimed directors Ridley and Tony Scott. It was directed by Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald from a concept conceived by YouTube and film producer Liza Marshall.
The idea was simple, yet in its execution very complex, its makers said following Thursday night's Sundance premiere. The idea: ask YouTube users to videotape one full-day in their lives, July 24, 2010, and send in the video. The execution: from the footage, pull together a 90-minute movie.
Macdonald admitted some trepidation ahead of the project. "We called it an experiment because with an experiment you can fail," he told the Sundance crowd, "When we started to realize the film worked, we stopped calling it an experiment."
Long since video-sharing website YouTube became an Internet sensation, media watchers have wondered how it can take users' appetite for 2- or 3-minute videos and transform it into a hunger for full-length film and TV-style content. On Thursday, Sundance Film Festival audiences got a first taste.
To be sure, YouTube's full-length movie "Life In a Day" is nowhere near the scope of a project needed to make YouTube a common destination for watching Hollywood movies and TV shows as people do with Netflix, Hulu or iTunes. But it may be the start of something new, and YouTube insiders say more is to come.
"Life In a Day" was a project conceived by YouTube and carried out by Scott Free Productions, the movie and TV company run by acclaimed directors Ridley and Tony Scott. It was directed by Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald from a concept conceived by YouTube and film producer Liza Marshall.
The idea was simple, yet in its execution very complex, its makers said following Thursday night's Sundance premiere. The idea: ask YouTube users to videotape one full-day in their lives, July 24, 2010, and send in the video. The execution: from the footage, pull together a 90-minute movie.
Macdonald admitted some trepidation ahead of the project. "We called it an experiment because with an experiment you can fail," he told the Sundance crowd, "When we started to realize the film worked, we stopped calling it an experiment."