High School Festival: Video
The world is full of stories—stories that must be shared. If you’re passionate about exploring the language of film and telling stories through video, this competition is for you. Choose to shoot a documentary or narrative, or create an animated world all your own.
Competitions
Narrative
Time Limit: 4–6 minutes
One long or two short memorized selections from a novel, short story, poem or play. Introductions and transitions are expected.
Animation
Time Limit: 7–9 minutes
People: 2 or more
Scene excerpted from published play by reputable author; brief introduction needed for each scene; quality of literature will be part of the evaluation. No Readers’ Theatre, lighting, makeup or sound effects.
Small table, two chairs and one stool provided; costumes, props and other set pieces left to discretion of performers. Students must be able to perform their scene in an acting space of approximately 20'x12'.
Documentary
Time Limit: 5–7 minutes
Original speech to stimulate, convince, inform or move to action. May not deal with doctrinal interpretation or religious controversy. Must be delivered without notes.
Guidelines for all categories
The project must have a running time of 3–7 minutes (including credits) and follow these submission guidelines:
- Your video submission should be uploaded to OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or another file sharing service and the link should be set to public sharing. Test your unlisted video link by logging out of the file sharing account and accessing the link. The video needs to be downloadable from the file sharing service for our judges—please test this as well.
- Submit the direct link to the video on your individual High School Festival registration form. The video should be labeled in this format: Director Name – Organization/School name – Video Title.
- All elements contained in the video must be free of copyright issues. Please provide proof of ownership in the ending credits of your film, including but not limited to music, photographs and ideas.
The name of the student and their school, the name of the director, a list of crew members and their positions, and a list of the equipment that was used (cameras, editing software and any other software used in production) must be included in the credits. The director is the one eligible for an award. The film may focus on any subject as long as content is suitable for a general Christian venue. Final decisions about content will be made by the judges. We include narrative, animation and documentaries in the same competition. Tell your visual story with a good beginning, a middle that develops the ideas, and then a powerful ending.
Printable Guidelines for all categories
- Students may enter a maximum of 3 contests.
- Students may win first place more than once in successive years with different pieces.
- Any student who does not fulfill all of the contest requirements will forfeit their right to win but will receive judges’ written critiques.
1st Place Individual
- Trophy
- Paid program fee for the 1st semester of freshman year at BJU ($800–$1475)
- $400 Scholarship for BJU EDUcamp
2nd Place Individual
- Plaque
- $200 Scholarship for BJU EDUcamp
3rd Place Individual
- Plaque
- $200 Scholarship for BJU EDUcamp
These experiences are available for any High School Festival competitors and sponsors, whether or not they are competing in the Speech & Drama categories!
- The BJU Theatre Department will perform a production of Wait Until Dark exclusively for High School Festival Attendees on Monday at 8 p.m. in Performance Hall.
- The Division of Communication will host a tour of classroom and learning spaces used by Theatre, Media, and Communication programs on Thursday at 3 p.m. See the Festival Booklet you receive at check-in for location.
- Video Competition entries will be shown on Thursday.
- Classes in the Theatre, Media, and Communication programs will be available to visit! The Festival Booklet you receive at check-in will have more information.