Life in a Day (2011 film) part of the "elite" and to show the intricacy and strangeness of the seemingly mundane." Macdonald began his "Around the world in 80,000 clips" article in "The Guardian" by posing the questions, ""What do you love? What do you fear? What's in your pocket?"" and explaining that "one day last summer, I asked ordinary people around the world to answer those three questions and spend a day filming their lives." The 80,000 individual clips received amounted to 4,500 hours of electronic footage. Macdonald explained that about 75% of the film's content came from people contacted through YouTube, traditional advertising, TV
Life in a Day (2011 film) block of human life—wherever you are," with Walker adding that the particular day, 24 July 2010, was chosen because it was the first Saturday after the World Cup. Concerning the chronology of the film and the order of the clips, Macdonald explained that he let the 300 hours of "best bits" tell him what the themes and structure of the film should be, likening the material to a Rorschach test—"you will see in it what you want to see in it." Joe Walker further explained that "We always wanted to have a number of structures, so it's not just midnight