Macdonald, Scott prep YouTube doc

YouTube is teaming up with directors Kevin Macdonald and Sir Ridley Scott to create a user-generated documentary, comprising footage submitted to the social video site over a 24-hour period.

The project, Life In A Day, will invite members of the public to film their own lives on July 24 and upload them to a specially created YouTube channel.

Oscar-winner Macdonald (Touching The Void, One Day In September) will then edit the most compelling footage into a feature documentary, to be exec produced by Scott (Gladiator, Alien).

The film will premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and contributors whose footage makes the final cut will be credited as a co-directors, 20 of which will be selected to attend the doc’s premiere. LG Electronics is sponsoring the project.

Explaining the idea on the YouTube blog, the company said: “On July 24, you have 24 hours to capture a snapshot of your life on camera. You can film the ordinary – a sunrise, the commute to work, a neighbourhood soccer match, or the extraordinary – a baby’s first steps, your reaction to the passing of a loved one, or even a marriage.”

The news comes after Scott’s last web project, Purefold, was earlier this year canned due to a lack of interest from advertisers.

Purefold was an ambitious, cross-platform web series inspired by Scott’s film Blade Runner, which was being developed by next-generation studio Ag8 and UK indie Baby Cow Productions, together with Ridley and brother Tony Scott’s RSA Films.

YouTube is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year and in May unveiled a series of shortform documentaries to mark the occasion, revealing at the same time that it’s now delivering over two billion video views per day.

The Google-owned site, which has just fought off a US$1bn copyright infringement lawsuit from Viacom, tapped New York-based filmmaker Stephen Higgins to curate My YouTube Story, a collection of users’ personal stories about how the service has impacted their lives.