Delivering a Short Film to Festivals: A Technical Checklist

Every festival, big or small, sends the same email to the films it selects: a technical request, a deadline and a list of things the film has to be before someone can put it on a screen. Most short films are finished in the sense that the edit is locked. Fewer are finished in the sense that a projectionist can run them.

This is the checklist for the gap between those two: what programmers and projectionists need after you are selected, and what to capture at the shoot so none of it is a rescue job.

Read the festival's specification first

Festivals publish their own technical specifications, and they do not agree with each other. Resolution, accepted file types, audio configuration, loudness and timed-text format all differ. Nothing below gives a number, because the number that matters is in the email you were sent. Read it before you export anything. Do not treat one festival's spec as every festival's.

A screener is not an exhibition master

The screener is the file the selection panel watched: often compressed and sometimes watermarked, made to be viewed and not to be projected. The exhibition master is the file the festival plays in a cinema. It is made from your highest-quality finished picture and final mix, with no watermark and no burnt-in timecode. Keep the two separate, and keep the master in the form it was finished in, because anything the festival asks for will be made from that file.

One frame rate, one resolution, start to finish

A common technical fault in a short is not a bad shot but an inconsistent one: a phone clip at a different frame rate, a drone shot at another, an archive insert at a third. In the edit they look fine. On a cinema screen they judder or stutter. Choose the project's frame rate and resolution before you shoot, and conform everything that is not that rate deliberately, not by letting the timeline resolve it. The camera settings guide covers how to lock them on the day.

Audio: the mix and the loudness

Festivals ask for a specific audio configuration, such as stereo or surround, and often a loudness figure. Deliver the configuration they name and the loudness they name, not the one you used for online. The same care applies inside the film. Dialogue should sit at one level from scene to scene, music should not swallow it, and the quietest passages should be quiet because you chose it, not because the room was noisy. Cinemas expose problems that headphones hide. If your film has music, a festival may ask for a cue sheet and the licences, so the paperwork guide is worth a read.

A festival will tell you its specification in one email. A poor recording cannot be fixed by anything in that email.

Subtitles, captions and timed text

If any of the dialogue is not in the festival's language, you will be asked for subtitles. Some festivals also ask for subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. They are supplied as a timed text file, a separate file with each line and its in and out times, not as text burnt into the picture, unless the festival says burnt-in is what it wants. Check the format it names. Time the file to the final cut, not an earlier one, because any change to the cut, or to the head of the file, moves every line after it. If a section of the film is in a language that needs subtitles, that is a creative decision, and the festival should be told.

Textless, credits and the slate

A textless version is the film with the titles, credits and any burnt-in text removed, so a festival or a distributor can make its own. Ask whether it is wanted before you make one, but keep the project in a state where you could. Keep the credits as the last thing on the timeline, with the cut to black clean. Then run a format check on the file you are about to send against the festival's specification. Add a slate and black head and tail only if the specification asks for them, and to the length it names. Play the whole file once, start to finish, on a different machine from the one that exported it.

DCP: usually the festival's job, or yours with them

A DCP, a Digital Cinema Package, is the folder of files a cinema server plays. Many festivals either make the DCP themselves from the master you supply or tell you exactly how they want it made. Do not make one speculatively. A DCP built to the wrong specification is a day of work that has to be redone. Ask what they want, and read their specification for the answer.

What to capture at the shoot

Most of the checklist above is cheap if you plan for it before the shoot and expensive if you do not. Sound is the clearest case: dialogue recorded in a quiet room can be mixed to any spec, while dialogue recorded in a noisy one needs a rescue. Studio B is the sound-treated room, built as a room within a room, which is why it is the dialogue room in a short film shoot. Studio A is not sound treated, so plan scenes there with that in mind, and record wild lines or voiceover in the music studio's treated vocal booth.

• Record room tone at every location, thirty seconds of the room with nobody speaking, before the crew leaves it.
• Record wild lines and any sound that was compromised while the actors and the set are still there.
• Lock one frame rate and one resolution for the whole project, and check every camera before the first take.
• Keep the clean plates, titles and any graphics as separate files, so a textless version is a render and not a rebuild.
• Collect the releases, cue sheet and licences as you go. Sound for video covers sync, wild and ADR.