One Day in Los Angeles
One Day in Los Angeles is a community-based, one-day filmmaking event in which participants across L.A. will document the challenges and hopes of our local communities. Participants will film during a 24-hour period with the goal of raising the level of community engagement in L.A., and inspiring action towards a better city by 2050. The resulting media will be made available to the public through a geo-tagged archive and video map of Los Angeles.
In a region divided by mountains, freeways, economic barriers, and municipal boundaries, many of us identify more strongly with our own neighborhoods than with sprawling and fragmented L.A. County. This relationship can manifest as a deep sense of neighborhood pride, but can also take the form of ostracism along poverty lines and language barriers. One Day in Los Angeles will tell stories of the neighborhoods that make up our region, and in doing so expose the challenges and human potential of a large and diverse community.
The 24-hour media-creation event will take place across Los Angeles County, and will feature filmmakers, local charities, city policymakers, community organizations, and student groups filming stories emblematic of the particular struggles and hopes of their communities. In the process, we will create a video dialogue crossing the cultural and economic barriers that inhibit social connectedness, and inspire volunteerism towards enhancing human development in Los Angeles by the year 2050.
The event will be organized by One Day on Earth, an L.A.-based nonprofit organization with experience coordinating cause-based media creation events on a global scale. The project will culminate with the release of a geo-tagged video archive featuring all media captured during the event. The technology platform will be based on software developed by One Day on Earth for our annual global collaboration: https://vimeo.com/18910284
One Day in Los Angeles participants are welcome to film any subject matter. The only parameters are, a) all filming takes place within Los Angeles County, b) all filming takes place during the one-day event, and c) the motivation behind filming is for L.A. to become an even better place to live by the year 2050.
To ensure diverse participation, the One Day in Los Angeles staff will reach out to local schools, charities, policymakers, and inspired citizens to join the project’s social networking platform, www.onedayonearth.org. Onedayonearth.org currently hosts a community of over 35,000 participants representing every country in the world, with over 1200 in L.A. County alone. All prospective participants will be given access to the educational toolkit which was developed to train students of all ages in the use of digital filmmaking technologies
(http://www.onedayonearth.org/page/education-1.) The toolkit is currently in use in over 70 countries around the world, and has been invaluable to empowering high-level participation from individuals with access only to camera phones or consumer-grade video cameras.
Beyond educational support, project producers will reach out to prominent issue-based filmmakers within the region to serve as localized producers, ensuring that there is comprehensive coverage across all regions of the city, and across all key indicators set forth by the LA 2050 initiative.
One Day in Los Angeles will impact the Social Connectedness indicator by providing an opportunity for region-wide social engagement; generating media that will inspire volunteerism; creating accessible media through the interactive online video archive; and forming a framework for local filmmakers to collectively produce an inclusive view of the current state of human development in Los Angeles.
While One Day in Los Angeles primarily affects the Social Connectedness indicator, we believe that this is not an insular category. By creating a dialogue between Angelinos communities, the project’s residual effects could potentially cover all indicators listed by this initiative. A socially connected L.A. will allow citizens to collaborate on shaping their own future and engaging in activities that will most impact the region’s improvement.
To inspire specifically directed participation we will put forth the following call to action:
If you had one day to document what Los Angeles needs to change by 2050, what would you show us? Tell the story. Take action. Be heard.
What are some of your organization’s most important achievements to date?
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ONE DAY ON EARTH SOCIAL NETWORK:
In early 2010, One Day on Earth launched an online social-networking platform to organize an international community of filmmakers. The site (www.onedayonearth.org) currently hosts over 35,000 members representing every country of the world, and over 1,200 in Los Angeles County alone. Through the One Day on Earth platform participants collaborate on an annual film, as described below.
GLOBAL FILMING EVENTS:
One Day on Earth has produced three annual filming events on 10.10.10, 11.11.11, and 12.12.12. These events have generated over 12,000 hours of video submissions representing every country of the world. The filming events have been adopted by NGOs and nonprofit organizations around the world as an effective means to engage talented filmmakers on local and global issues.
GEO-TAGGED VIDEO ARCHIVE:
All footage produced during One Day on Earth filming events and uploaded by participants is available to the public: archive.onedayonearth.org
The archive is interactive and searchable by location or content-specific metadata tagged by participants upon upload.
FEATURE DOCUMENTARY FILMS:
One Day on Earth has recently released a feature film cut exclusively from footage captured during the 10.10.10 filming event. This film was released theatrically and is now publicly available on home video. The 11.11.11 and 12.12.12 films are currently being edited.
THE WORLD'S MOST GLOBAL PREMIERE
One Day on Earth premiered in over 160 countries on Earth Day 2012 (April 22, 2012), making it the world's most global film premiere:
NONPROFIT PARTNERSHIPS:
One Day on Earth has developed organizational partnerships with over 100 global NGOs and nonprofit organizations around the world, and we have helped many of those organizations work towards their missions by empowering widespread media-creation in support of their cause.
Please identify any partners or collaborators who will work with you on this project.
One Day in Los Angeles will draw on One Day on Earth’s extensive partnership building experience and forge new relationships with local organizations to document the key indicators of LA 2050.
Current partners of the One Day on Earth global filming initiative include:
350.org
The American Red Cross
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
Human Rights Watch
Oxfam
UNAIDS
UNESCO
UNHCR
The United Nations Development Programme
UN Women
Water.Org
WWF
One Day in Los Angeles will seek support and participation from our unprecedented team of partners to film topics related to:
Education
Environmental Quality
Health
Social Connectedness
Arts & Cultural Vitality
Income & Employment
Housing
Public Safety
Please explain how you will evaluate your project. How will you measure success?
If awarded the LA 2050 Challenge Grant, One Day in Los Angeles will meet the following core criteria of a successful project:
– All areas of Los Angeles are documented by participating filmmakers.
– Over 300 participants take part in the One Day in Los Angeles filming event.
– One Day in Los Angeles engages partnerships with no less than 5 local charities to participate in the filming event and works with those organizations to create media around the key hindrances to human development as put forth by LA 2050.
- No less than 10 educational institutions participate in the filming event.
– One Day in Los Angeles releases a geo-tagged video archive of all content produced by the filmmaking community.
Beyond these benchmarks of a successful project, One Day in Los Angeles will seek additional partnerships in funding and working towards the following goals:
- A public screening in Los Angeles that showcases the films produced during the one-day filming event.
– Corporate sponsorship for the One Day in Los Angeles event to provide additional resources to participants, expand the scope of the project, and work towards a fully edited One Day in Los Angeles film.
- Broadcast opportunities for a One Day in Los Angeles film or series through traditional channels, including distribution opportunities through the educational market.
How will your project benefit Los Angeles?
One Day in Los Angeles will benefit L.A. by providing a participatory, cause-based media creation event related to civic and social engagement. The event will produce residual benefits across many fields, as local filmmakers will be asked to document hindrances to human development across greater Los Angeles. The archive will provide access to firsthand experiences, giving a first-hand view of the issues that face Los Angeles and, ultimately, an opportunity to create more informed solutions.
The undeniable power of seeing the diversity of the Los Angeles experience through a single day enriches the perspective of who we are, interconnecting both our joys and struggles.
One Day on Earth has over 100 nonprofit partners. Our staff will engage partner organizations as well as build new relationships with local nonprofits specifically for this initiative. By working with local community organizers our producers will draw attention to real frontline issues. One Day in Los Angeles will present an opportunity for local nonprofits to generate media to communicate their mission and to rally support for their cause.
In addition to nonprofit outreach, our staff will focus efforts on inspiring students and educators to participate. Preparing young people to effectively communicate through digital media is a critical tool in expanding civic and social engagement. As with previous One Day on Earth initiatives, One Day in Los Angeles will inspire volunteerism around the issues that matter most to Los Angeles.
With the filming event yielding hundreds of hours of media, the geo-tagged archive will be searchable by location, keyword, and subject matter. This robust video resource will be a useful tool for local policymakers, community organizers, and educators to reference and support greater insight into both high-priority local issues and cultural diversity.
What would success look like in the year 2050 regarding your indicator?
One Day in Los Angeles looks forward to a city in 2050 that has overcome civic apathy and social division by engaging the skills of the world’s most talented digital media community. Los Angeles trails the national average in volunteerism, voting rates, newspaper readership, and civic engagement. We are a city that remains deeply divided along racial and economic lines.
Our vision of L.A. in 2050 is a city that expands its amazing ability to captivate and move audiences through media, and focuses that ability to educate and expose topics that are critical to the sustainability of our city, and beyond. The vision is of a city where the media-makers have inspired widespread volunteerism, advocacy, and interconnectedness.
We are looking forward to deploying the One Day on Earth platform as part of our shared vision. Our filming event and resulting archive will seed a dialogue to help develop a clear path towards a more united L.A. in 2050. By using the great strength of our media-making community, we can help turn the corner on our long struggle with disconnectedness. Los Angeles can bring down the barriers of economic disparity and cultural exclusion. By 2050 we can see a Los Angeles with a united identity – a connected city.