Brooks Barnes
From a basement in California, a cramped one with exposed pipes wrapped in blue Christmas lights, two friends?one a pony-tailed California dude and the other a buttoned-down business type? are trying to change the world. Or at least document every corner of it with video cameras. Kyle Ruddick, 32, surfer, and Brandon Litman, 30, serial entrepreneur, are the forces behind One Day on Earth, an effort to use the Internet to amass footage from across the globe and turn it into a free online archive and feature-length film. Another component involves building and maintaining what they call ?a global online community?.
So far they have the footage, captured by volunteers during the 24 hours of October 10, 2010, and the archive is up and running. A trailer for the film is finished. That related social network has more than 17,000 members. The future film itself? Plans for distribution will be announced this fall, they hope.
Attempting to pull off a project this ambitious would be daunting for the most veteran of documentarians; these are two guys who have never made a movie before. But they have faced an even greater hurdle: a rival team of filmmakers?led by Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Alien and Gladiator, to name a few) and backed by the gorilla of Web video, YouTube?popped up after Ruddick and Litman had gotten started but beat them with a finished film.
Scott?s Life in a Day, a film made in a virtually identical crowd-sourced manner, was released on July 29 by National Geographic Entertainment. Over two dozen researchers worked on Life in a Day, which got a splashy premiere at last year?s Sundance Film Festival and benefitted from publicity generated by 42West, one of Hollywood?s top public relations firms. But the competing venture only renewed Ruddick and Litman?s vigor, and in the end it may be One Day on Earth instead of the deep-pocketed Life in a Day that has more of an long-term impact.
Ruddick and Litman, partly to differentiate their project from the one supported by YouTube, forged partnerships with over 60 charities and humanitarian organisations. These allies include the United Nations Development Program, Human Rights Watch, World Wildlife Fund and Oxfam International.
The UN agency, pleased with how the archive of video submissions turned out, recently committed to make updating the One Day on Earth archive an annual event through 2015; this year participants will be asked to submit video captured on November 11 (for 11-11-11). The United Nations does not lend financial support but rather rallies its field offices around the globe to contribute material. Ruddick and Litman provided 120 cameras.
?Often the images we see of humanitarians come via the media,? said Anna K Nelson of the International Committee of the Red Cross, a new partner.
Ruddick, a graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, said he came up with the idea for the film in 2008 at a world music festival. ?All of these styles of music came together and, although it was kind of awkward at first, it turned into something incredible,? he said. ?I wanted to do the same thing with film.?
Sorting through all of the submissions has been an enormous task: more than 7,000 people sent about 3,000 hours worth of video ? something from every country, according to Ruddick.
Participants ranged from teenagers with cellphones to professional cinematographers with high-definition cameras. Some of the standout scenes include a high-profile military parade in North Korea (captured by a Chinese tourist), views of Mecca and the Galapagos Islands, a scuba dive in the Red Sea and a 10th birthday party for a Dutch boy with a rare genetic disease and a life expectancy of ten years.
A big part of One Day on Earth involves examining the not-so-inspiring corners of the world, however: the environmental disasters, like a tire dump outside of Madrid, and the extreme poverty of India and elsewhere. Litman, the project?s executive producer, won?t reveal how much it has cost. He said 95% of the budget has so far been covered by himself and Ruddick, who briefly worked as an animator at Lucasfilm after graduation. ?We?re definitely living on the cheap right now, let?s put it that way,? said Litman, who is based in New York, where he is a co-owner of a marketing company. The two men hope that a distribution deal will cover their outlay. Any profit will be invested in a related foundation they recently established, said Litman, who added that $60,000 has been raised through DVD pre-sales.
Although Litman said there is ?serious interest? from multiple distributors, so far no deal has materialised. Life in a Day may hurt in this case: That film has been a hit on YouTube but has taken in just $207,324 in theaters. ?It?s a hard movie to engage with or even sit through,? Mike Hale wrote in The New York Times of Life in a Day.
?Whenever you?re on the front end of a curve you learn a lot,? said Daniel Battsek, president of National Geographic Films. Regarding ticket sales, he said, ?I wouldn?t say I?m ecstatic, but I?m satisfied.? Litman and Ruddick received technological support from Vimeo.com, a competitor to YouTube, and Ning.com, a social network organizer. Other corporate partners are a possibility, but the men are stepping carefully. ?One reason we were able to team with the UN, which is extremely difficult, is that it wasn?t a logoed-up, corporate project,? Litman said.
Making money, at least for themselves, is a secondary aim of the project, they insist. ?We don?t want to just create a film,? Litman said. ?We?re trying a create a movement.?