Faculty Eligibility Requirements

Entries can be submitted to the following competitions: Audio, Documentary, Film & Video, Interactive Multimedia, News, Open, Photojournalism, Sports and VR, XR and 360 video .

Questions or concerns?  Email mdbruce@ua.edu or heather@beaweb.org.

1. Predominant Authorship and Originality: The competition invites submissions of original creative works in which the entrant maintained predominant authorship over the project’s content and aesthetics (producing, directing, writing, editing, etc.).
a. Entries under the role of executive producer are accepted ONLY if, as producer, the entrant was significantly involved in the entry’s design and creation.
b. Previously submitted works to BEA creative competitions or the Festival of Media Arts will not be accepted. However, a derivative of a previous work may qualify for submission if it can be shown that substantial changes have been made to the original work assuming that the author has legal rights to the original. In these cases the entrant must provide additional clarification.
c. Partial works or works-in-progress will not be accepted.

2. 2-Year “Completion Window”: Only works completed between June 15, 2021 and June 15, 2023 are eligible for submission.

3. Two Entries Per Competition: Faculty may submit two entries per “competition” are allowed. For example, a single entrant may submit two submissions to the News Competition and two submissions to the Video Competition.
a. Entrants are responsible for submitting their work to the appropriate competition. If the chair determines that an entry does not fit the selected competition, the entry may be reassigned or rejected. Entry fees will not be refunded for rejected or reassigned entries.

4. BEA Membership and Faculty Status: The competition is open to full-time faculty members who were employed at a university, college, or community/technical college in 2021-23. The lead author must be an individual member of BEA. Membership forms and information are available on the BEA website at www.beaweb.org.

5. Legal Permissions: The entrant agrees to clear all licenses, copyrights, and permissions to ensure that the submission can legally and ethically be presented at the BEA On-Location convention and website. If an entity other than the entrant owns the rights to all or part of the submitted program, the entrant must attach written consent from the owner or an authorized representative of the owner to the entry form.

6. Language: Works must be in English or have English subtitles.

7. Submission Deadline: All entries must be submitted online. Online submissions will be accepted through June 15, 2023

Submission Requirements

1. One Entry Form for Each Entry: The entrant must complete one entire entry form for each work submitted. Each entrant is permitted to submit up to three different entries. However, each entry must only be submitted once to a single category. In the event that an entry is submitted more than once, the chair may reject the entry or assign it to the most appropriate category for adjudication.

2. Entry Fee: A non-refundable entry fee is required for each work submitted. Paying online by credit or debit card is the best way to ensure that your payment is received on time. Check or money order payments are accepted but must be received by June 15, 2023.

3. Submission Process: Entrants must follow the online procedures for electronically submitting video, audio, scriptwriting, and multimedia entries. Media submissions that fail to work or are not understandable for any reason will result in the disqualification of the entry. Failure to properly complete any portion of the submission process (completing the online entry form, uploading media, joining BEA, or paying the entry fee) will disqualify the entry from the competition.

4.  What size file can I upload for On-Location?   When you upload files to On-Location, the file goes into Amazon’s servers and transcoders. As a quick answer to many of your file size questions, we would recommend a 2 GB or smaller file in a MP4 format (Also could beH.264 or WebM).  Please reach out to us if you have any questions about uploads issues, email jd@BEAweb.org. We discovered the rate of an upload error rate increases dramatically above 2 GBs. Additionally, we recommend you try to keep your file size close to or below 1 GB to ensure a smooth viewing experience for the judges, as some file formats require full download of the entry before streaming begins. The larger your file, the more buffering that may take place for the audience of your event, please take this into deep consideration before you upload your file. 45-60 min files should easily be able to fit into our guidelines with the following recommendations – For assistance with encoding, refer to the recommended encoding settings published by YouTube or Vimeo.

Judging Process

1. Evaluation Criteria: Entries are evaluated according to the following criteria: 1) professionalism; 2) the use of aesthetic and/or creative elements; 3) sense of structure and timing; 4) production values; 5) technical merit; and 6) the overall contribution to the discipline in both form and substance.

2. Judging: A panel comprised of media educators and/or industry professionals with expertise in the submitted category will judge each entry. Short-form entries (less than 15 minutes) will be viewed in their entirety. For long-form entries, judges are required to watch at least 15 minutes of each entry. An entrant may serve as a judge for a festival competition, however, the entrant may not judge in any category in which he or she has entered. Judges will not be assigned to review an entry where there is an obvious conflict of interest or in cases where the judge is institutionally affiliated with an entrant.

3. Blind Review: Every effort will be made to conduct a blind review of each submission. Wherever possible, entrants should remove information that points to the identity of the work’s author and/or co-author(s).

4. Competition Chair: The Competition Chair(s) reserves the right to re-distribute award-worthy creative work to another competition if a particular competition doesn’t receive a sufficient number of entries to merit a single award.