Screen Australia and YouTube to put Oz summer in the can

Australian film makers are aiming to replicate the user-generated feature film "Life in a Day" experimental project pioneered by YouTube and producer Ridley Scott. The film that resulted from that project was recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival.

Screen Australia and filmmaker George Miller are coordinating the ‘Map My Summer’ project.

The initiative is designed to "engage the nation in sharing the collective Australian summer experience". It may well make for an epic work of drama given Australia’s tumultuous summer thus far, featuring floods, cyclones and fires of Cecil B DeMille scale.

Budding auteurs can upload videos, which must have been shot after 1 December, to the YouTube "Map My Summer" portal.

Miller will select and mentor one filmmaker to create a final short film funded by Screen Australia using the uploaded footage from the YouTube Map My Summer portal. This film will then have its premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2011. ®