One Man's Life, One Second at a Time

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By Fran Berkman2013-08-17 23:40:46 UTC

With 86,400 seconds in every day, at least one must be worth remembering. That was one young filmmaker's philosophy when he decided to string together one second of footage each day for the past eight months.

Matt Skuta, a 21-year-old film and media studies major at the University of Oklahoma, took up the project on a whim last December. He was inspired by a similarly-conceptualized video he discovered through Reddit. Eight months later, Skuta posted the above video to YouTube.

See also: Baby's First Year Beautifully Captured One Second at a Time

"If I'm trying to convey anything," Skuta told Mashable, "it's that life goes by incredible fast."

Skuta carries cameras around at all times — a Sony point-and-shoot and his iPhone — and plans out some of the shots in advance, while others are spontaneous. Then, he edits the bits of film together using Final Cut Pro.

"Cool things happen all around you," Skuta said. "If anything, taking out a camera and filming it has made me look at what's around me and appreciate it for what it is."

While the video is comprised of a compelling variety of shots, you'll notice three recurring characters: Skuta's dog Emma, his brother's chocolate lab Zoey and his family's bichon frise Ginger, who recently passed away.

The fireworks seen on May 10 are from the University of Oklahoma's commencement ceremony. The next time those fireworks go off, they will be for Skuta, who is going into his senior year at the school. He's not planning to waste even a second, however, as he expects to go on to study film in graduate school at the University of Texas or the University of Pittsburgh.

As for his "A Second Every Day" project, Skuta said he plans to keep it going indefinitely: "I imagine it will be kind of hard to stop."

Image: Flickr, North Charleston

Topics: Film, Video, Videos, viral video, Watercooler, YouTube