The notion of a crowd-funded film — whose production is financed by money solicited from potential fans online — has begun to gain a bit of traction, but when it comes to crowd-sourced films, Ridley Scott and his production company Scott Free seem to be one step ahead of everyone else. Their 2011 film "Life in a Day" took amateur videos shot by roughly 80,000 people across the globe and edited them into a seamless stream to present a multifaceted view of life on the planet.

With "Japan in a Day," the franchise takes on a greater poignancy and purpose: This project, made in collaboration with Fuji TV, had 8,000 people across Japan film their lives on March 11, 2012, exactly one year after the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit the Tohoku region and the Fukushima No. 1 reactors began melting down. It was a day that changed Japan, and "Japan in a Day" attempts to measure that change.

The submissions ran over 300 hours in full, and I ask Philip Martin — who codirected the project with Fuji's Gaku Narita — whether he actually viewed it all, or let their editors sift through it.