The 2012 San Diego Undersea Film Exhibition (SDUFEX) is making a final call for entries to the 2012 exhibition. There is no entry fee, and the selected entries will be projected onto a state-of-the-art 30 foot projection screen at the Irwin M. Jacobs Qualcomm Hall in San Diego, California. The event is to be held on 5 and 6 October.

The deadline for entries is 27 July.

This is a Call for Entries for the 2012 San Diego UnderSea Film Exhibition (SDUFEX), scheduled for Friday and Saturday evenings, October 5th and 6th, 2012 at the Irwin M. Jacobs Qualcomm Hall in San Diego California.

Here is your opportunity to see your work projected in a High Definition format in a state of the art venue on a 30 foot screen. An independent panel of distinguished judges will select approximately 32 films to be shown during the two night event. There is no entry fee!

Filmmakers whose films are selected are encouraged to come to the show and introduce their film(s) in person on the night of the exhibition.

Below are the 2012 Entry Guidelines and Rules:

In 2011 SDUFEX moved to an all-digital working flow. This means that video tapes will no longer be accepted. Please submit your video as a high-resolution H.264 file that has been archived (copied) to a data DVD disk. (Note: this is NOT a self-playing DVD! This is NOT a Blu-Ray Disk! This is NOT an HD-DVD Disk!)

Almost every video editing program in use today has a way to export a high quality H.264 encoding of a video from that program. There are also a number of stand-alone video encoding programs that you can use. Please keep your video file image size (resolution) the same as that of your original edited video (for instance, 1920x1080, 1440x1080, 1280x720, etc.) as the venue has state-of-the art-hardware that we will use to “up-scale” your video to its best possible viewing resolution.

If your software allows you to set your actual bit rate for the H.264 export, we encourage you to use a bit rate setting between 20 and 50 Mbits/second. Also, if you can set your program to encode the video with a setting of 2-Pass VBR, that would possibly give a slightly better result, but this step is not essential.

Please make sure that the resulting video file can be archived to a single data DVD disk. This means that your H.264 encoded file needs to be less than 4.3 GB total. Only single-sided, single-layered DVDs maybe submitted. You may enter up to two films per filmmaker. Please submit each film on its own data DVD disk.

Additional information, deadlines, and rules are listed below:

• Submission must be postmarked no later than July 27th, 2012.
• Submissions will not be returned, so do not send originals.
• Black Video Lead-In: Record or add a one (1) second black lead-in at the front of your video.
• Marking: Each DVD should be marked with the filmmaker’s name and the name of the film. •
• No film can be longer than five minutes, and at least 50% of the footage must be underwater.
• You must have the right to use all visual footage, images, audio and music contained in your film. You will be required to certify this on your entry form.
• Each entry must be accompanied by the Filmmaker Entry Form. Please use one form per submission (if you enter two films, submit two forms).
• Judges will not be permitted to submit films for consideration.
• The San Diego UnderSea Film Exhibition reserves the right to use portions of the films for the promotion of this event and future events. All rights will remain with the producers of the films.

Based upon experience, judges do not like watermarks that appear during the whole film. It is recommended that all credits and acknowledgements appear either at the beginning or end of your film.

For further information see our website.

Send your entries to:

San Diego UnderSea Film Exhibition c/o Pete Fowler
14126 Palisades Drive
Poway, CA 92064

For questions or assistance, please email Pete Fowler.