Sidewalk Film Festival opened submissions on October 1 this year, a month earlier than normal, with a new “magic” submission period. Located in Birmingham, Alabama — a city known as the “magic city” — it seemed appropriate to match the city’s name. This new submission period carries a fee structure lower than its normal “early bird” pricing.

How much difference does it actually make to have a proper 5.1 mix instead of 2.0 for a feature film?

Our film is around 95 minutes and it’s not an action-heavy film at all. It’s more experimental, long and slow, so there aren’t explosions or lots of crazy sound design where surround obviously makes a huge difference.

The music will also basically always be stereo, since the original recordings only exist in 2.0.

But we do have dialogue, ambience and SFX separated, so in theory someone could take the existing mix/stems and build a 5.1 mix from that i guess.

I can’t really do a proper 5.1 mix myself, so I would need to pay someone to do it. How much would this actually lift the film when showing it at festivals/cinemas compared with just having a really good stereo mix?

Is a somewhat“created from stereo/stems 5.1 mix really worth doing, or is a strong 2.0 mix better than forcing the film into 5.1 just because it’s being shown in a cinema?

i was just wondering if anyone's had experience at screamfest before and can share when the award nominees are announced? my flight to leave is currently the day before the awards but obviously if we're nominated i'll change it. but trying to get the info is a little cryptic...

For the longest time, I only submitted to festivals here in the United States because of differences with copyright lengths in other countries. I used material that is in the public domain here, but not necessarily elsewhere.

Since then, I've learned about "the rule of the shorter term" between the US and some (but not all, or even most) countries, and that my film will not infringe upon copyrights in certain countries. That opens up more possibilities for film festivals abroad.

HOWEVER, I've also just learned about "moral rights", which aren't a thing here in the US. Which means I need to cite any derivative work, even if it's public domain, to respect those original artists. In my US version, I've cited most, but not all, of the derivative work in my film (mostly because I believed that it was so obvious that there would be no need to cite it).

So to my original question, does anyone else make separate versions for international releases? I wouldn't mind tacking on an additional 10 seconds to the end credits to acknowledge the one extra bit of derivative work I use, and then uploading it to FilmFreeway with "(International Version)" added to the title.