In 2010 our co-founder Tim conceived of Life in a Day, a global crowdsourced feature documentary, telling the story of earth on a single day. It was widely regarded as a milestone in internet culture, and how brands can be built through big audacious ideas, rather than just traditional advertising.

Exactly ten years later, the original team reunited for Life in a Day 2020. Flying Object built a global callout campaign that inspired 325k user generated film clips from almost every country on earth. We worked with Ridley Scott Associates and Oscar winning director Kevin Macdonald to turn the footage into a feature length movie.

The documentary was launched at the Sundance Film Festival and the 2021 Superbowl, and streamed to 20 million people online.

Flying Object were briefed to create a major brand moment for YouTube.

In 2010, the original Life in a Day made a major statement about YouTube, setting out a stall for the possibilities of social video. CNN called it “quite possibly the first large-scale, global use of the internet to create meaningful and beautiful art”.

2020 was not only exactly a decade later, but a year like no other. A vital moment to capture - and to make a statement about the role YouTube can play in culture.

Ten years later, the core of the idea remained the same. But at a time where video has an even larger role in everyday lives, and in a year dominated by pandemic and protest, the documentary needed to go further: capturing not just the everyday, but the unique moment we were living in.

This enormous project broke down into three core challenges:

The global campaign took people on a journey from awareness, to inspiration, to action.

We created a high energy call to action video to feature across YouTube, including the homepage masthead, social media, and TV ad spot.

Further content featured Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald providing a deeper dive, with inspiration for what to film, and details on how to take part.

On the day itself, call-to-action assets put participating top-of-mind, and drove people to pick up their camera and submit the footage.

The campaign was localised to over 40 languages, with over 150 assets created in total.

Produced by RSA Films in association with Flying Object, the final film was an enormous team effort, bringing together 60 footage reviewers, 3 editors and 1 director to turn the footage received into the final documentary. The movie features contributions from exactly 500 people (each credited as a co-director), and takes viewers on a breathtaking journey of human emotion from the highs of finding love to the lows of the global pandemic, to the passion of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The film premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, and was launched to the world with a trailer in the Superbowl pre-game show.

Flying Object worked with movie marketing specialists Empire to create key art and trailers for the film, and built a digital and social campaign to drive viewers to stream the documentary online.

• 70 Million + video views across the campaign
• 325k+ submissions received
• 191 participating countries