Q & A

He asked people from all around the world to film what they were doing that day and speak about their hopes and fears. Over 80,000 did just that, in 192 countries, leaving Macdonald 4,500 hours of footage to work with.

"My aim was to create a whole movie from intimate moments," he says," - the extraordinary, the mundane, the preposterous - and thereby take the temperature of the planet on a single day, 24 July."

What came back was a rich variety of experiences, each a small but telling window on life on planet Earth. There was heart-rending singing from AngolaA country in central-south Africa. It has a population of nearly 37 million. ; ghostly footage of elephants bathing by moonlight; intimate records of family life in the shadow of cancer; humorous tales of travel around KabulThe city became the capital of Afghanistan during the reign of Timur Shah Durrani, the second Afghan emir, in 1776. and beautiful shots of a family living on a boat on then NileThe longest river in the world, passing through eleven different countries. It is an exceptionally old river, thought to have existed in some form for 23 million years. Egyptian civilisations have sustained themselves on the Nile, whose floodplain creates very fertile soil, for 7500 years.. "All human life (and quite a lot of death) was there," says Macdonald.

How was the vast amount of material handled? The film's editor Joe Walker explains: "In the time schedule we had, which was basically only a few months from start to finish, no one person could possibly see all that material.

"So the best thing we could do was set up an office with 24 researchers. Each of them was a very accomplished filmmaker, or somebody with some documentary or drama background."

The team sifted through the videos, whittling them down to 200 hours of the best submissions. A one-to-five star system was developed, although a special six-star rating was reserved for "so bad it's good" material.

"This usually meant boys showing off embarrassing dance routines in front of their mirrors," says Macdonald, "or the clip we christened 'the naked Korean milk-spilling organist'."

One concern when planning the project was that they'd just end up with lots of footage from media-savvy westerners. To ensure it was truly representative, the filmmakers spent 40,000 on 400 cameras.

They sent these cameras to parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America where they were distributed through aid agencies and other outlets to people in some of the remotest parts of the world.

One person's story

Comprised of hundreds of short clips, Life in a Day isn't a normal film with script and lead character. But Kevin Macdonald believes it almost becomes that.

"I keep saying that it's like one person's story," he says, "It's almost telling the story of the world as one person, but one person who keeps mutating in form."

Why July 24th? They knew they had to wait until after the World Cup and they needed it finished by January. They chose a Saturday because people generally have more time at the weekend and as luck would have it, it also turned out to be a full moon.

Are all the clips fun? No, some are very dark. As the film editor Joe Walker says: "You are allowed in, for ten minutes, to somebody's head who has a peculiar view of the way things function. There are a few clips where you think this person needs help, not a camera."

With no star names, what's the film's appeal? We're all fascinated by how others live their lives and how they cope with hardship and triumph and this film gives us a truly global view.