The result was fascinating, intimate and raw, sometimes funny and often surprising but most importantly it gave the public a chance to tell their own stories - and it showed us what life was really like for people from all walks of life living in Britain at that time.

Flash forward two decades to 2011 and technology has moved on so much that everyday people all over the country are recording snippets of their lives on minicams, mobile phones and digital cameras.

Recording life in Britain has never been easier.

Whether it's personal family moments, footage of the royal wedding celebrations or shocking images of the summer riots, we're fast becoming a nation of amateur filmmakers.

And the great thing is that although the footage might be a bit wobbly and rough round the edges, for the first time ever, home videos are high enough quality for us to broadcast.

So for some time now, I've been trying to work out how to encourage this new found British talent and reinvent Video Nation for the present day to engage with people's hopes, fears and passions in this country on a scale that's never been possible before.

With the Olympics coming to London next year, I think we have the perfect excuse to create a snapshot of Britain and show the world all the variety and intimacy of people's lives here, whether it's a nurse working in A&E in Newcastle, a farmer living in the Welsh valleys or a student studying in Edinburgh.

Earlier this year, I started a conversation about this idea with Oscar winning documentary director Kevin Macdonald, whose feature-length film Life In A Day had just premiered at Sundance.

Life In A Day used footage shot by ordinary people all over the globe to tell a story of one day on earth, to show future generations what it was like to be alive in 2010.

And it got us both thinking about how we could build on the experience and expertise he gained making the film, and make it work for the UK. Soon afterwards Britain In A Day was officially born.

There is no doubt we are living in interesting times in this country.

We're in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s with the gap between rich and poor ever widening, and we're also about to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and play host to the Olympic Games.

So this is your chance to make history, get involved and help us create a definitive self portrait of the UK at an important moment in time.

On 12 November I want you to get out your camera and record something that captures the uniqueness of your life in the UK, whether it's something you're worried about, something that makes you happy, or something you particularly like or dislike about living in Britain.

You then need to upload the footage to the Britain In A Day channel on YouTube, where the director Morgan Matthews and his team will begin watching all the footage and cutting a selection of the clips together to make a feature-length film that will be shown on BBC Two next year ahead of the Olympics.

Britain In A Day is about more than just a film though. All the clips uploaded to YouTube will be kept in a permanent online archive - a sort of time capsule for future generations.

Think how fascinating it would have been if our grandparents and great-grandparents had filmed their day and told us what they thought of Britain, their hopes, their dreams and their fears?

I hope this is what the Britain In A Day archive will give to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The success of this project relies on you, so I hope you will take this opportunity to show the world - and future generations - what life here is really like.

Morgan Matthews will be back here before the film is broadcast to let you know how we get on...

Charlotte Moore is the Commissioning Editor of Britain In A Day.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

When I started filming with him, I was there in the room when he was told that his bone cancer had come back. The doctor explained that they couldn't cure him any more but they could prolong his life - and they offered him another bout of chemotherapy to keep the tumours at bay. His mother Vicki was naturally very keen for him to agree to the treatment if it meant a few more months with her son.

But Jonathan felt differently. He decided what was important was the quality of his life. He wanted to live out the remainder of his days on his own terms, away from the hospital and the gruelling effects of cancer treatment.

Jonathan was an extraordinary young man and I'm still inspired by his courage and strength. But what also struck me about his case was the way the decision was made.

Gone were the days when doctors would decide on the best course of action without consultation with the patient. Gone also were the days when the parents' will would automatically prevail. And whilst this is all undoubtedly a good thing, it made me think about how difficult decisions are made in hospitals across the country on a daily basis.

When Films of Record approached us with an idea to make a series in Great Ormond Street Hospital, I was keen to see if we could explore this complex issue further.

We knew we wanted to follow patients' stories, but we also wanted to see if we could focus on the side of the story we rarely see - the perspective and point of view of the doctors as they wrestle with the most complicated dilemmas.

One of the most powerful things that documentaries can do is to give viewers an insight into a situation that they wouldn't usually have access to. Although there has been no shortage of series in the past featuring doctors talking about their work, this series' director Ricardo Pollack and his production team managed to forge such a level of trust with hospital staff that they were allowed to film the meetings where teams of doctors discuss individual cases candidly and try to reach a consensus on what the best course of action is for the patient, both medically and ethically. The doctors allowed them to film when not everyone agreed on a course of action. And they allowed them to film their differences of opinion.

I don't believe Great Ormond Street's doctors have ever allowed this level of access before, and this is what is so compelling about the series. We are witness to conversations that you or I would never normally hear. And the doctors have been brave enough to let the cameras in to capture the raw honesty of their discussions.

What's extraordinary is that you are there in the moment with the doctors as they make the decisions, and what comes across most clearly is that these decisions are not always black and white - there are huge grey areas.

When medical science has come so far, it's often not a question of can they save a child's life. It's much more a matter of should they really keep the child alive.

In the first film we follow the cardiac team as they attempt to treat four very difficult cases. In one case the doctors decide that there's nothing they can do for a little eight-month-old baby girl called Aicha who's suffering from a very rare and serious heart condition.

In their view the risks associated with the operation are too great. But her parents are adamant that there's still hope for their daughter and plead with the doctors to reconsider their decision.

Their cardiologist is Dr Philip Rees and he agrees to bring their case back to the cardiac team to see if there is anything at all that can be done. He feels it's important to push the boundaries and try to do everything possible to help Aicha, but he also has to be careful not to embark on treatment that could be regarded as futile.

This is the crux of the dilemma, and we see Dr Rees admit to the team that he recognises he has become too emotionally involved in the case to make an objective decision.

The team agonise over the right thing to do - before deciding to get a second opinion from a number of teams in other hospitals who will be able to look at the case through fresh eyes. That way the parents won't waste their time raising money to take their child for treatment abroad. And that way the doctors can take the decision to try out a new surgical technique. The outcome is a welcome development for Aicha's parents.

Now that patients - and in most cases at Great Ormond Street the parents as well - have a say in the treatment they receive, doctors' jobs have inevitably become much more complex.

Add to this the fact that advances in medical technology now offer parents hope that wasn't there in the past, and you begin to get a sense of the pressures that doctors are faced with. But what I hope people will take from this series is a greater understanding of these ethical dilemmas and how doctors go about making some of the most difficult decisions you can ever imagine.

Charlotte Moore is the BBC commissioning editor, documentaries