The American History Film Project is free to all participants.
The American History Film Project is not a competition. Any individual student, or groups of students (K-12), in the USA, can make a film about something in their local history with their parent’s permission.
If your video topic is about local history, is 3-10 minutes long with typed credits listing your helpers, research and music sources, and it has no vulgarity, we will feature the film on our YouTube and Facebook. Your school, youth organization, local museum, Rotary club or community may wish to show your film in a local event. All those who send in permission slips signed by parents by April 1st of each year will be considered for our annual Washington DC exhibition. Summer film projects may be exhibited early locally but will be shown in DC the following year.
Rules for Submission
- The film must be 3-10 minutes long.
- Each film must be finished by the end of each school year, so it can be shared with the students who made it and with other students across the country. A good film can be made in one semester, but you have the entire school year to finish it.
- No film will be submitted without the permission of a parent.
- The films posted through the American History Film Project will be viewed by students of all ages, parents and teachers. Films that contain offensive material will not be considered for inclusion.
- It is assumed that anyone who participates in The American History Film Project can film and edit their film, even with the help of others.
- All participants and their roles in the production must be listed in film credits, and typed into the description uploaded with the YouTube submission. Click for Film Credits Format.
- Film credits must also include proper listing of all sources, including royalty free or your original music, non-original photos and video, persons interviewed, locations where you’ve received rights to film, etc. Watch this short video about citing sources and plagiarism. Although this video is about a research project, the same basic rules apply to all films submitted to us. Be sure to include the names of primary and secondary research sources (books, articles and interviews) and cite music sources using only royalty-free or your own music compositions. See www.copyrightkids.org. You must list all your sources in the final credits. List them after you’ve named your producers, directors, actors.
Permission Form
Click on the permission form and download it; have your parents/ legal guardian fill it, sign it, scan it, save it as PDF and email it to martha@americanhistoryfilmproject.org. You can also give the signed permission form to your teacher to mail with those of your classmates participating. We need to have a permission slip on file before we publish or broadcast your work.
As soon as you mail your permission slip, tweet us a link to your video from your parent’s or teacher’s YouTube page to @KidsFilmHistory, or mail a disk with a copy of your film. We will also accept other links like DropBox.
How to send your film
- Upload your film to your parents’ or your teacher’s YouTube page
- Tweet a link to your film to our AHFP Twitter Page
- Mail us a copy of your film on disk with a signed permission slip