The complete film deliverables checklist

Every acquisition deal comes with a delivery schedule tucked into the back of the contract as an exhibit. Between 40 and 80 items. Video masters, audio, captions, key art, cast lists, chain of title, E&O certificates, music cue sheets. The bulk of the minimum guarantee doesn’t move until every one of them is delivered and accepted, which on most indie features means the producer is holding out for 60 to 90 percent of the money.

Nobody publishes what a delivery schedule actually contains. Producers see one for the first time about ten minutes before their attorney signs. Then they have three months and a bunch of vendors to line up.

This is the schedule, laid out. Seven categories, 65-ish items, current tier-1 streaming specs. I built it as the starter template for DistroDash and pulled the specifics from the current Netflix, Amazon, and Apple partner portals plus the SMPTE standards where those pointed. If you want the whole thing as a PDF you can print and mark up, link’s at the bottom.

Video Masters

The picture. Every indie deal wants three things here: an archival master you’ll never delete, delivery-ready packages for whichever platforms the sale covers, and a screener the acquisitions team can watch on their laptop without piracy risk.

The archival master is a ProRes 422 HQ (or 4444 XQ if you’re graded HDR). Native resolution, whether that’s HD or UHD. Native frame rate. One second of black and silence at head and tail. Full multi-channel audio embedded. Correct color-primaries and transfer-characteristics metadata flagged in the file so a downstream encoder doesn’t have to guess.

For tier-1 streaming delivery, that ProRes isn’t the thing they want. Netflix requires an IMF package. SMPTE ST 2067-21 Application 2E, specifically. JPEG 2000 video in MXF, PCM audio in MXF, IMSC1.1 subtitles, and CPL/PKL/AssetMap XML metadata. Amazon and Apple both accept IMF for the same reason Netflix built the workflow around it: everything is modular, so the platform can spin up a territory-specific version without re-encoding the whole master. Photon (Netflix’s open-source validator) will tell you if your package is clean.

If you’re graded HDR you also owe them a Dolby Vision XML metadata sidecar with Level 1 metadata on every frame, plus a separately-graded SDR trim pass. Auto-tone-mapped down-conversions don’t count. Netflix and Apple will bounce them.

Then, depending on the deal: a SMPTE DCP if theatrical is included (Interop DCPs still work in most theaters but nobody’s proud of shipping one anymore), a trailer master at 2:30 max for MPA-attached theatrical, and a watermarked H.264 screener at 8-15 Mbps. Awards and press screeners usually need two watermarks: a visible burn-in with the recipient’s name and a forensic invisible one from NexGuard or Cinavia. If the acquisitions rep asks for “just the trailer” and doesn’t specify watermarking, ask.

Audio

Where indie deliveries get bounced. Nine times out of ten it’s the channel order in the 5.1, or an M&E that isn’t fully filled.

The stereo mix is 48 kHz, 24-bit BWF. Loudness target depends on where it’s going: -24 LKFS for US broadcast under the CALM Act, -23 LUFS for EU under EBU R128, -27 LKFS dialog-anchored for Netflix. True peak under -2 dBTP. A 1 kHz 2-pop two seconds before program start, plus five seconds of room tone at head and tail. If the mixer forgot the 2-pop, send it back.

The 5.1 is six discrete channels in SMPTE order (L R C LFE Ls Rs). Netflix, Amazon, and Apple all reject the older ITU/broadcast order. If the dub stage calls it “5.1 broadcast layout,” that’s ITU. Politely correct them. Deliver as six separate mono WAVs with obvious naming, not an interleaved 6-channel file, because the interleaved version has a channel-order flag that people set wrong. LFE low-passed at 120 Hz.

Then Atmos, but only if the deal actually specifies it. Netflix supports Atmos for originals but doesn’t require it, and no smaller platform requires it either. If you are delivering Atmos, it’s an ADM BWF file mixed in a room that’s at least 7.1.4. Dolby certification of the room is not required (Netflix confirmed that publicly a few years ago).

The M&E is the deliverable that catches the most first-time producers. It has to be “fully filled.” Every non-dialogue sound present, matched in pan and level to the original mix, including foley, backgrounds, principal music, source music, effects, and non-verbal walla (crowd chatter, grunts, screams, laughter). Any dialogue leakage will get it rejected. Deliver both stereo and 5.1 M&E if the deal includes any international sales, plus an “optional fills” track for the vocals a foreign dub mixer might want to swap out.

Split stems if you can: dialogue, music, SFX/foley. Any one of these can save a deal months later. Music license lapses, cue needs to be replaced, you pull the music stem instead of remixing from session files that may or may not still open on a machine you own.

Accessibility and Localization

Captions, subtitles, continuity. Legally required in most territories: FCC 47 CFR § 79 in the US, AVMSD in the EU, Ofcom in the UK. The single biggest change here over the past five years is that SCC is a legacy format. Tier-1 streaming wants TTML-based files.

Closed captions get delivered as a bundle covering wherever the film is going. IMSC1.1 or TTML1 for Netflix (they have a “Netflix Text Profile” subset that’s the actual spec, not just base TTML). iTT for Apple TV+, which is another TTML flavor unique to Apple. SRT for Amazon and as the universal fallback. SCC if the deal includes US broadcast rights, because CEA-608/708 is still what over-the-air needs.

Netflix has specific timing rules that apply to all of them: minimum 5/6 of a second per subtitle event, maximum 7 seconds, minimum 2-frame gap between events. UTF-8 encoding, correct language code, and none of this matters if you have burned-in captions in the master.

A Combined Continuity and Spotting List (CCSL) is the traditional theatrical delivery document: timecoded transcript with shot-by-shot continuity and subtitle spotting cues. PDF plus editable DOCX. For a feature it’s 100-300 pages of “shot 47, EXT. WAREHOUSE, DAY. CU on Sarah’s hand.” A dubbing house works from this document.

If the deal includes UK broadcast or the film is animated, add a Photosensitive Epilepsy compliance report. Ofcom Broadcasting Code Rule 2.12 requires it. Netflix requires PSE testing for all animated content regardless of territory. The Harding FPA test is what everyone uses; the certificate is a PDF that costs a few hundred pounds to get.

Marketing and Artwork

The kit that sells the film. What the distributor uses internally to pitch, what downstream platforms slap on their tiles, and what press uses when they cover the release.

Key art is a fully layered PSD. Minimum 3840 pixels on the long edge. That’s Netflix’s canvas floor for tier-1 platform artwork, and it’s the minimum you should be delivering to anyone in 2026. Layered means the title treatment lives on its own editable text layers, not rasterized into the background. Photography embedded at native resolution. RGB (Adobe RGB or sRGB) for digital, CMYK only if the deal includes physical media. Ignore DPI when talking pixel-based digital delivery. Only pixel dimensions matter.

Platforms want the art in multiple aspect ratios: vertical 2:3 poster, horizontal 16:9 billboard, 1:1 square for social, 9:16 vertical for mobile and TikTok. A separate title treatment file (the film’s logotype on transparent background as a layered PSD or vector EPS) saves your marketing team weeks when localization starts.

Production stills. Minimum 20 images, shot by a unit photographer during production, not framegrabs from the edit. Minimum 3000 pixels on the long edge. IPTC metadata embedded on every file: photographer, copyright, caption, date, subject. Missing IPTC gets images auto-rejected by any press desk that ingests at scale, which is most of them. Add another 20 or so BTS shots. Talent has to approve everything per the standard cast contract.

The trailer is a web-optimized H.264 MP4 for marketing distribution (not the ProRes trailer master, which lives in Video Masters). Streaming platforms want 60-150 seconds. Theatrical is capped at 2:30 by the MPA voluntary guideline. Also expected: teaser (:60-:90), TV spots (:30, :15), and social cutdowns in vertical 9:16 and square 1:1. Someone has to make them all.

The EPK is a PDF plus an organized folder. Logline, short synopsis, long synopsis, production notes (five to twenty pages of story background and making-of), director’s statement, cast and crew bios, technical fact sheet, publicity contact. Featurettes and B-roll ship separately.

Metadata

Structured facts about the film that feed the distributor’s catalog and every downstream platform. Wrong or missing here becomes wrong or missing on every VOD platform where the film ends up. Cast and crew lists. Runtime to the second. Genre. Language. Country of origin. Year. Synopsis in short and long forms. Festival selections. Rating if the film’s rated.

Two additions that indie producers routinely miss. EIDR ID, the industry-standard universal identifier funded by MovieLabs and used by Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and the majors. Format looks like 10.5240/XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-C. You register the title at eidr.org. Increasingly expected on tier-1 delivery. And the IMDb ID once assigned (tt0000000), because every downstream system that touches your film will use it as the cross-reference.

Legal and Contracts

The paperwork that proves the distributor legally has the right to distribute the film. This is where indie deals stall. One missing release, one lapsed music license, one E&O certificate that lists the wrong company as Additional Insured, and delivery grinds until it’s fixed.

Chain of Title is a package, not a document. A binder that traces ownership of every creative element from source material through the current rights holder. Underlying literary rights if the film is adapted from anything (book, article, play, life rights). Original screenplay: writer employment agreement, WGA Certificate of Authorship, USCO Form PA copyright registration. Subsequent writers. Production company assignment. Producer agreements. Financier and investor rights. Distributor and sales agent assignments to whoever is currently selling the film. Underlying music. Talent agreements. Prepared by production counsel or a title-clearance company. Typically 200 to 500 pages. If yours is 30 pages, it’s not done.

E&O insurance is the one where the numbers you’ll see on the internet are all slightly out of date. Industry baseline for indies is still $1M per occurrence / $3M aggregate, $10K deductible, 3-year term. That covers most indie deals. Tier-1 platforms and higher-profile titles sometimes want $3M/$5M or $5M/$5M. Ask your acquiring distributor what they need before you buy the policy. Coverage has to trigger on copyright infringement, defamation, invasion of privacy, right of publicity, plagiarism, and breach of underlying-materials contracts. The distributor and its subsidiaries have to be named as Additional Insured on the actual certificate, not just the policy.

Music licenses are two per pre-existing recording: a sync license from the publisher for the composition, a master use license from the label for the recording. Original score is one composer work-for-hire agreement that covers both. Grants have to cover all media (theatrical, non-theatrical, home video, SVOD, AVOD, TVOD, FAST, broadcast, international), all territories, in perpetuity, and all contexts (film, trailer, TV spots, promos, EPK, festivals, awards screeners). The trailer sync is often a separate negotiation, and if the license doesn’t explicitly cover the trailer, the trailer sync isn’t covered. Read the fine print before you cut the trailer.

The cue sheet goes with the licenses. Standard format is ASCAP/BMI’s shared “RapidCue” template. Cue number, title, composer with percentage share and PRO affiliation, publisher with percentage share, duration, in/out timecodes, use type coded per ASCAP conventions (VV, BV, VI, BI, TO, TC, L). You email it to cuesheets@rapidcue.com and both ASCAP and BMI pick it up. Excel is preferred over PDF because PROs re-key PDF submissions by hand.

Then the things producers forget, in rough order of how often I’ve watched them forget:

The Lab Access Letter. Also called the Delivery Materials Access Letter. It authorizes the distributor to request masters from your post facility or storage vendor directly. Without it, if you become unreachable, the distributor can’t pull materials from the vault. Single most-forgotten legal document in indie delivery. Get your post house to give you the template.

Location releases for every filmed location, including permits for public spaces. One release per location. If you shot in a coffee shop and didn’t get the owner to sign, that scene is a liability.

Personal releases from every on-camera person not covered by a SAG contract. Documentary subjects, extras with speaking roles, real-world bystanders who are recognizable. If the film is a biopic or dramatization of a real person, add depiction releases from the person or their estate.

Key crew agreements. Director, writer, DP, editor, composer, production designer. Work-for-hire language, IP assignment. The WGA Certificate of Authorship for the writer specifically, because it’s what makes the chain of title hold together.

Copyright registrations. Form PA for the screenplay before or during production. Form PA for the completed motion picture. WGA registration is not a substitute. Only USCO registration lets you claim statutory damages if you have to sue over infringement.

Clearance reports. Title report (USPTO, state trademarks, existing film/TV titles), script clearance report (character names, product mentions, song lyrics, visible logos), copyright search. Common vendors are Thomson CompuMark and Dennis Angel for titles, De Forest Research and Act One for scripts.

Guild residuals paperwork. SAG-AFTRA final cast reports, DGA director paperwork, WGA credit notices. These aren’t the payments themselves, just the setup so the distributor knows who to pay when residuals start.

W-9 or W-8BEN. For the rights holder receiving royalty payments. If the rights holder is foreign, W-8BEN-E. State withholding forms as applicable.

Supplemental

Bonus content and delivery infrastructure. Optional per deal but frequently requested for physical media releases, streaming platform extras, and international value-add packages.

Audio commentary. Making-of featurette. Deleted scenes. Outtakes. Interview footage with cast and crew, uncut. Storyboards and concept art. Everything in this category still needs music and effects rights cleared. An unlicensed music cue in a deleted scene makes the deleted scene unusable.

One item worth adding that isn’t traditionally on the list. A delivery manifest with file checksums, MD5 or SHA-256, listing every file delivered, its size, its checksum, and which line item on the delivery schedule it satisfies. Lets the distributor verify integrity after transfer and gives both parties an auditable record when the argument about what was delivered comes up eighteen months from now.

The full checklist

That’s the shape of it. Full reference is 65-plus items with the exact technical specs on each one, formatted as a PDF you can print, mark up, and hand to your post supervisor and your attorney.

Get the checklist as a PDF. No charge, only asks for an email. You’ll also get notified when DistroDash opens to early access. DistroDash is what happens when this checklist stops being a document and starts being a workflow: your producer gets a portal that shows them exactly what to send, files get validated against the spec at upload, and you stop chasing missing items in email.