Rules
Your film must be:
- Related to any branch of Science, Technology, Engineering or Maths. See note 1.
- No longer than 2½ (two-and-a-half) minutes.
- All your own work — including music, sound effects, still photographs, backgrounds, and so on — or using the work of others under appropriate licenses. See below.
- Not boring.
If you’re expecting a huge long set of complicated rules — sorry to disappoint. Do check the page on eligibility, too, but that’s about it. Just to be clear, the stuff you’d expect from any other competition applies here too. We don’t usually get into arguments, but just in case:
The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. We reserve the right not to publish submitted films, at our sole discretion.
In particular, we will decline to publish films which we think may be unduly offensive, or that might put anyone at particular risk, especially children and young people.
SciCast Physics
The Institute of Physics-supported SciCast Physics category has one extra rule:
- Your film must explain some aspect of physics.
If there’s no explanation, your film will be eligible for all categories except Physics.
Using other peoples’ stuff
Usually, where we’ve declined to publish a film, it’s for licensing reasons. That is, the film uses music, pictures, or video clips for which we don’t have a publication license. If you’re in any doubt about whether you can use somebody else’s work, the simplest advice we can offer is: don’t.
Since that’s not particularly helpful, we’ve a whole section in Film School about using other peoples’ stuff.
Notes
[1] By ‘related to’, we mean, for example: about a demonstration, experiment or activity; explaining some phenomenon; or revealing science, technology, engineering, or maths in peoples’ work. Your film could be a drama, documentary, animation — we don’t mind. Just as long as it’s broadly about science or engineering stuff.↵