The Basics

Age of Entrants: 18-30



Entrants must be individuals or independent teams, not professional companies. Any films made for direct commercial gain (adverts, company promos, professional tech demos, etc) will not be accepted. We want this to be a platform for anybody to showcase their work, from the highly seasoned to the absolute newcomer. You do NOT have to be a student at The University of Bristol.

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Number of Submissions Allowed: You are free to submit as many films as you like, provided they are yours to submit. We would say 5 or 6 is probably a good maximum, more may just be greedy. Most filmmakers submit one or maybe two.



Entry Fee: There is no entry fee for Jump Cut whatsoever. All films submitted will be judged on their merits, no money necessary. Bribing the judges is at the entrants discretion*.



We are a not-for-profit festival but we do have costs to cover, so the festival events themselves will be ticketed, and we would encourage all of our entrants to try and come to the event. The prices of tickets are £6 for the Festival Screenings & Talks (where the shortlist will be screened), £5 for the Festival Awards & Drinks (where prizes will be awarded), or £10 for a Twin Ticket (the full Jump Cut experience). Online payment for tickets will open when the prices are announced.



International Submissions: Jump Cut is committed to providing a platform for as many filmmakers as we can so there is no restriction on overseas submission. We have had to review international submissions policy and we can only make international entrants eligible for the long list, not the short list, as we want to encourage as many of our entrants to come to the festival event to experience the films and pick up their awards. With this in mind, we will happily include your films in the submission list online and on YouTube for online exhibition, but they are not eligible for any of the main awards.



Length: Between 2 Minutes and 10 Minutes

Animations can be between 30 seconds and 10 minutes.

We are also accepting films that are 10% over or under this limit. Absolute minimum therefore: 1min 48secs to 11mins. We do not count titles or credits in the time limit, unless they are tightly incorporated into the body of the film.



Genre: Anything you like.

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Content: Nothing unduly offensive, pornographic or extremely violent. Nothing that would breach BBFC's 18 classification (have a look at what they say here, and work out roughly where your film stands).

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Jump Cut is open to filmmakers aged 18-30, therefore swearing, scenes of a sexual nature and violence are permissible as long as they are not found to be unduly offensive or explicit by the festival team. Jump Cut recognises that swearing, scenes of a sexual nature and violence may be inherent to a film's message, genre or style, and will take this into account when entries are submitted, however we reserve the right to not screen or publish material that is gratuitous without purpose and breaches our standards or ethos.



Licensing & Permissions: By submitting you agree that you have obtained all the relevant permissions and copyright licences for all content in your film. Please also ensure that you have obtained signed release forms from those who appear in your films, and that you have gained permission to use all of your locations. Jump Cut will not check whether your films breach copyright for you and does not take any responsibility for any copyright breaches. By submitting you agree that any breach of copyright and any subsequent issues will be covered by the you, the submitter. Please contact us if you are worried by licensing and permissions.



Submissions dates: Open 11/02/13 (12:00) - Close 05/05/13 (18:00)

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Animated Entries Closing Date is now 05/05/13 NOT 10/04/13. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to push forward Animated Entries final submission date (apologies for any inconvenience caused).



Basic Tech Specs

Maximum File Size: 2GB



Formats Accepted:

H.264 with AAC or uncompressed audio (we strongly recommend this format)

MPEG (2, & 4)
WMV / WMA

(AVI - Though we'd recommend recompressing using H.264)

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Formats NOT Accepted:

FLV



If you submit using a format not listed here, we will still try and view your film, and if we feel we wish it to be in another format we will contact you about your options.



​Minimum Resolution: 720x576

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We would prefer films to be submitted at higher resolutions than the above (720p or 1080p). Submit at the highest resolution your film can be.​

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We would love to accept all films, including those below this resolution, but we require a certain resolution for exhibition, should it be shortlisted. All submitted films will be reviewed in accordance with these tech specs, and if anything requires tweaking, the team will let you know. Any films that wish to submit at a lower resolution for particular aesthetic reasons should contact us to discuss submission. All shortlisted films will be contacted individually to ensure their films are correctly formatted for exhibition.

 

 

Your Rights

Copyright & Intellectual Property: We are not seeking any financial gain or profit from your work. Your work is your own, and all intellectual rights to it remain yours. If we upload your films, we will only host them for the duration of the festival, other than our winners, whom, by submitting, agree that we can continue hosting their videos for two months after the festival. If you are entering another film festival that prohibits public upload of your film (on YouTube or other sites) please tell us when you submit and we will not upload your film publicly. We will not use your films in any other venture, whether for profit or not. If your films do not have the relevant permissions for online exhibition, YouTube's rules may block their content or the film in total. This is out of our hands. The Festival takes no responsibility for the permissions of copyrighted content, and will comply with YouTube to remove copyrighted content if need be.



Final Rules: We do reserve the right to disqualify or remove any films we deem inappropriate or which do not fulfil our technical specifications, though we will contact you first to try and help resolve the issue. We also reserve the right to remove any films designed to elicit profit from the festival or other entrants' work. We reserve the right to change these rules, submission criteria, awards, prizes and previous announcements at the discretion of the festival organisers at any time.

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Any questions on this, or if there's any details we've missed from this page, or for further details on your rights, specs, or anything else, please email us at: tech@jumpcutfestival.co.uk.





*Bribing is not allowed, in cash or in kind.