How My Amateur Footage Got Into a YouTube Documentary

You never know what random opportunities can come from browsing social media. I stumbled upon one of these opportunities in the summer of 2020. While I was browsing Instagram, an ad popped up that caught my eye. It was from YouTube, encouraging people to film their lives for potential inclusion in a brand new documentary film, Life in a Day 2020. The film is a direct sequel to Life in a Day, released in 2010. The original film was distributed by National Geographic, released on YouTube, directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Kevin McDonald, and also includes Ridley Scott as the executive producer. Now, after the insanity that resulted from COVID-19, the creators of the original film wanted to come back and create a time capsule from a single day in the life of the world: July 25, 2020.

This date stuck out to me for one particular reason: it was the date of my high school graduation. The ceremony was originally supposed to take place in May, but it was continuously postponed as staff from both the school and the district discussed whether an in-person ceremony was possible thanks to the global pandemic. Eventually, the date was decided and the location was set. Instead of holding the ceremony in the high school gym or the auditorium, we would hold it on the high school soccer field, large enough for all of us to space out appropriately. One of the biggest reasons why this was possible for my school: my graduating class consisted of 23 students.

The idea of filming my graduation ceremony for potential inclusion in a YouTube original documentary didn’t just catch my interest because the ceremony happened to fall on the day YouTube wanted everyone to film. I went to a combination middle and high school in a small town in Colorado that consists of fewer than 300 students from 6th through 12th grade. It’s a small mountain school, one where the majority of students have grown up together and know each other like the back of their hands. It’s essentially an independent community, a unique perspective to a high school graduation that I thought would be incredible if it was included in such an ambitious YouTube project.

I started filming as soon as I woke up and got ready. I talked to the camera as I explained who I was, where I was from, that I was filming for Life in a Day, and how many students went to my school. I filmed a second take because I felt I was too scatterbrained in the first one, then headed out with my parents. On the way there, I took some establishing shots of the mountains in the distance, the route to my school, and the front of the school building. I filmed myself getting out of the car before my dad grabbed the camera to film me putting on my cap and gown. This would be the start of my final moments of high school. I grabbed a shot of myself in full costume and a shot of the outside of the soccer field, where markers of emojis and letters spelling “PANTHERS,” representing our mascot, had been put up the previous night to celebrate the graduates.

After my parents and I checked into the ceremony and sat in assigned seats, I filmed some establishing shots of the field around me, both handheld and with a tripod. I then set up the tripod to capture my graduation ceremony -- the moment when I would no longer have K-12 education requirements and I would move on to the next chapter of my educational journey. As cliche as that description of a graduation ceremony is, that’s how I saw the purpose of the ceremony, and I wanted to savor it. My principal stated in his opening speech that graduation is the most important moment of every teenager’s life, and that’s because it represents the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. When he finished this speech, the ceremony began. Pre-filmed singing performances of students were played on a projector. One of my classmates gave a speech about the memories we’d made along the way. Finally, all of the graduates were called up alphabetically by last name and received their diplomas. Some felt a bittersweet feeling of having completed high school, while others felt relief that they had finally received their diploma.

Once I got home, I filmed myself summarizing the graduation and my feelings on it. I told the camera that despite the many changes to the graduation ceremony because of COVID, it went about as well as it could have. There always seems to be this feeling of disappointment after a ceremony like that is over. I felt underwhelmed by the event as a whole, as it’s built up as a momentous, grand, unforgettable event of triumph. However, in the end, it mostly becomes an hour of talking about the memories we’ve made and our plans for the future before all of a sudden, we’re throwing our caps in the air and almost fifteen years of education is over in an instant. For what the ceremony was allowed to be, however, with the restrictions of the global pandemic, it went as smoothly as it could have and was as entertaining and memorable as it could have been. After this final summary, I listed the names of every single graduate in case they were included in the final cut of the film.

Immediately afterwards, my parents and I got some video of me opening a giant box of awards, certificates, and high school gifts, a graduation gift that every individual graduate got. I meant to film more footage of me reflecting on my hopes for the world, that I had faith that good people would still be able to make positive changes, but I didn’t film any additional footage until later that evening. I apologized directly to the filmmakers if I wasted any of their time and ended my day of filming, uploading all of the footage to the official Life in a Day website by the next day.

I waited for months to see if at least some of the footage would be included in the documentary. I had heard that the movie was going to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, so I expected to hear back from the team behind the film by the end of December or mid-January. When I didn’t hear anything from the team by then, I assumed my footage just wasn’t good enough to make the cut, but I was still excited to see the final product. However, on January 22, I received an email from a representative of the film, who confirmed to me that a small part of my contribution was going to be in the final cut. Footage I shot was in a YouTube documentary! Excited, I immediately told my parents and my graduating class before realizing I was supposed to keep the news to myself for another three days. I simply told them not to spread it around and kept the mentality that it wasn’t like the secret was going to spread across the country by the time the film premiered.

The email also invited me to two premieres of the film. The first was the digital Sundance premiere on February 1st. The second was a special cast and crew premiere the day before, on January 31st. I initially rejected the cast and crew premiere because it was going to take place at 5 in the morning, and I didn’t think I would be willing to wake up that early just to watch a movie. However, after sitting on it for a couple of days, I realized that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. How many chances was I going to get to attend a premiere where afterward, there would be a Zoom conversation with dozens of the participants from all over the world? I contacted the representative and told him that I would be attending after all.

The premiere was a total blast. Watching how all of the footage came together to create such a beautiful portrait of the world on a single day was absolutely breathtaking. My footage appears about 27 minutes into the final cut of the film. Remember when I mentioned my principal stated that graduation was the most important moment of every teenager’s life? That was the portion of my footage that made it into the final film. Even though the visible video was only on screen for one second and the audio from said footage was only audible for five, I was still beyond elated that any part of my footage was included in the film. With just over 500 contributors selected from over 325,000 entries of footage from almost every single country around the world, the fact that my name gets to be listed among the credits of such a beautiful project is absolutely surreal.

After the streaming of the film, I attended the Zoom meeting with the majority of the cast and crew. It was chaotic in the best of ways, with hundreds of people from dozens of countries talking over each other and sharing their interests in one single space, united by their participation in what they all thought was an incredible movie. I was one of the few people that stayed there for the entire two hour call. There were so many memorable moments and people, and even though I can’t list them all, I want to name a few that stuck out to me. Mario Neves, a young man who submitted footage of a failed marriage proposal, talked about how he stumbled upon submissions for the film by chance while searching for something on YouTube. Sam Morgan, who sent footage of himself using index cards to express his love for his best friend Anna, used a similar index card during the call to thank the production team for involving him. Jeffrey Lopez, another contributor who received only a short amount of screentime, was repeatedly encouraged to replicate the dog bark he made in that short moment.

Suzanne Lucas called me out by name when I commented that, like her, I was from Colorado. She also thanked the filmmakers for dedicating the film to her son Alexander, who she recorded for the first Life in a Day and who passed away in February 2020. Dave Davidson took a lead during the second half of the call and encouraged everyone to speak and introduce themselves. He was another returning contributor whose footage of a cheerleading routine from the first film was even featured in that film’s trailer. Candace Nichols-Sorrell, who filmed a Zoom call with her family hosting a WWE-themed birthday party for her son, introduced us to her partner, who shared his excitement that his family was involved in such a global project. Larisa Buzykanova didn’t speak nor understand English, but she communicated with us with hand gestures. She showed herself making injections for her pet pigeons, although we never figured out what the injections were. There were even producers and reviewers from the film on the call, who talked about various behind-the-scenes tidbits of making the film. For example, the 86 crew members who reviewed the footage came up with a 1-5 rating system to determine which pieces would make the film. Composers Matthew Herbert and Harry Gregson-Williams created a universal note for the film’s score that could run through all 13,000 hours of footage. Finally, as a random fun fact, it was mentioned that taking a single second from every clip submitted for the film would have made the project 226 hours long.

The entirety of the event was an absolutely unforgettable experience, partly because of the attitude of the people involved. There were almost no negative feelings expressed about how much or how little of each individual’s footage made it into the final film. They were all so honored to be there and be included in such an elaborate portrait of the world. They also all held the same mentality of the world -- that it’s the governments that enforce the policies of countries and territories that are the cause of the large amount of negativity and horror in the world, not the individual people who are a part of it. Everyone believed in the inherent good of all people, something that I’ve always believed. Before that Zoom meeting, I started worrying that belief was becoming an unpopular one, that people no longer trusted individuals as a whole because of the constant political tension dividing nations and individuals. That Zoom call demonstrated to me that there are plenty of people out there who still believe in the good of individuals, and that was such a relief to see and hear. Being involved in such a large production was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and it’s an achievement that I will always be proud of.