Making a Movie

Resources

You may of course use your own equipment for some or all of the creation and editing. For Pre-CS and CS students, CS faculty, and CS staff we will have a Macintosh laptop with video editing software and digital videocamera available for checkout. Undergraduates are required to fill out an entry form before checking out equipment.

Microsoft MovieMaker is installed on the hosts running Windows XP in the CS labs on the 3rd and 5th floors of Painter. These machines are available to anyone with a CS account.

Check out is for a fixed period: 11am on any day until 10:30am the next workday. You may sign up on the waiting list no more than once and it will be emptied at the rate of one person per work day; if you miss your day (equipment must be picked up before 4pm and returned by 10:30am regardless), you may sign up at the bottom of the waiting list again.

In order to get in line to check out these resources for the film festival, please visit the av request form and submit a request.

The Department of Radio, Television and Film has a resource center for UT student filmmakers called The Cage.

Video Format

Format suggestions are not intended to limit creativity, and any format that you clear with the media team will be acceptable. We will make a best effort attempt to accomodate any format.

For optimal display, we recommend 720x480 video at 12,15,24,or 30 frames per second. We can deal with higher or lower resolutions and different frame rates, but they are more work for the conversion crew and may not look as good when displayed for the judges or during the public screening.

Please submit your entry on a video DVD, Mini-DV tape (as is compatible with the camera available for check out) or as an MPEG-1,2,or 4 file on a data CD or DVD. Audio will end up being 48KHz, but 44.1KHz is not a problem. VHS submissions will be accepted, but please be aware that the quality will suffer in comparison.

Digital formats are strongly preferred. If you have something other than an MPEG 1,2, or 4 media file or one of the above-mentioned media types please contact the media team.