A Gratification Generation Retaining Information

Human Virality: Kevin MacDonald and Ridley Scott show us 'Life In a Day'

On July 24th 2010 Director Kevin MacDonald and Producer/Director Ridley Scott posted an international challenge on Youtube for anyone, with any camera, to film that exact day, morning to night, and show us, Life in a Day.

The objectives for those filming around the globe were prompted by questions like "what do you fear?", "What do you carry in your pockets?", "Where do you work?", and so on. This footage would be edited down into a 90 minute film to be screened at the Sundance film festival.

Vidcred- Christian A.V. Petrozza

Photocred- Christian A.V. Petrozza

I had personally partook in the venture and filmed a few tapes of footage upon the designated day. In total, the amount of footage that was collected from around the world consisted of over 4,500 hours. Although I was happy to find out one of my clips made it into the top 100 hours, it did not make it into the final cut, but their end product was impressive.

Last night, Life in a Day was screened at the festival and was also live streamed on their designated Youtube Channel for the whole world to see. The concept and ability to simultaneously show the world people, places, and opinions they had never seen or experienced before made the "eventness factor" of watching it on my simple laptop mind-blowing. The film was intended to be a way of developing human interaction and understanding of different people, classes, cultures, dreams, and beliefs. From the gardener of an oil prince in Dubai, to a living-large American speeding in a Lamborghini, the film as captured by countless people around the world, makes us laugh, cry, cheer, and fall in love.

The intention of using virality as a means of international unity and understanding was used to its full potential by the team of Life in a Day and much like the films made by Ridley Scott, convey a fair, engaging, and loving view of all people, places, and things. This new avenue of producing a mainstream production through a viral vein has given a whole new interaction with Hollywood and the world, rather than Hollywood versus the World.

Christian A.V. Petrozza

BACK ON TRACK: Fedora's, Trench Coats, Small Towns, and Big Houses

So after the Successful screening of Pretty Boys and Dabbling In Histories: Now and Sven at the Next Generation Film Festival I am finally free of my academic obligations. I will have a copy of Pretty Boys delivered today and I will post at some point on Vimeo, but until then Dabbling is on youtube.

With the release of these huge projects which turned out amazing and after several awesome nights of celebrating with film people after two years of being limited due to my Athletic Obligations (which I don't mind at all, love you fencing people) I am finally able to get back to the long arduous task of continuing to capture the last 4 hours of the new webseries coming soon. By the end of the month, with some help from a friend, I will have a trailer ready.

But until then stay tuned and I shall continue to keep you all updated on the webseries and its post production. But in the meantime,if you have not seen it already, here is my animation.





Christian A.V. Petrozza

The Power of Parody

With cheap and availability to editing equipment and cameras everyone and their mothers can make video's. Although the dawn of this phenomenon sparked skits a la America's Funniest Home Videos some more creative amateur film makers decided to re enact or re imagine their favourite cinematic moments. For those not acquainted with Stephen Spielberg's great 1991 classic Hook this scene is a ode to the editing and concept of one of the key scenes in the film when an older Peter Pan, played by the wonderful Robin Williams begins using his imagination again as part of his Pan re-orientation.

The comedy troupe Goodneighborstuff filmed this skit and are an internet based group that has some ties in theatre and used clever devices such as out of sequence shooting with a flowing script in order to fool the eye and add the magic to the scene, thus making the food miraculously appear. They also used the original music from the very same scene (scored and conducted by the magical John Williams) in order to hit the point home and let the audience identify with the scene that they may remember from their childhood as some sort of nostalgic 'a-ha' moment.

This nostalgia factor to comical renditions of pop culture films, music, or television connect to the viewer differently than other forms of comedy and entertainment because of their familiarity to a media filled audience, which are likely to respond to such an iconic film director, film, and score.

In our media and 3-screen age, the power of parody prevails

Christian A.V. Petrozza

we ♥ sharing