Adding a festival

One organization can run as many festivals as it likes. Your first festival is created alongside your organization, on the form described in Setting up your festival. Every festival after that is created on a screen of its own, headed Add a festival.

Finding the screen

Two ways in, both leading to the same page:

• The festival switcher in the top bar. Open the button carrying your festival's name — it reads Overview on your organization's own screens — and + Add festival sits at the bottom, under a divider.
• The Festivals list in the left navigation, on your organization's own screens — the Overview, the library, the judges directory and Organization settings. + Add festival is the quiet row under the last festival. See Your festivals list.

Its address is:

/org/<organization>/festivals/new

Who can add one

Owners and org admins only. For everybody else the Add festival entry is not there at all — not greyed, absent — in both places, and typing the address gives an ordinary "page not found". That includes festival admins and coordinators, whose access is to festivals that already exist.

Which organization it is created in

The one whose screens you were on when you pressed Add festival, and the name of that organization is printed in small capitals above the Add a festival heading so you can check before you type anything.

This matters if you belong to more than one organization. Switch first — see Working in two organizations — then add the festival from inside the organization it belongs to. FilmScorecard checks your role in that organization when you press the button, so a form opened in an organization you only coordinate for cannot create a festival somewhere else.

The form, field by field

The form collects everything the Festival tab of Settings would ask for, and the season's description, location and contact email besides, so a festival can be born ready for its public page. Only two things are actually required: the festival name and the first season's year. Everything else can be left blank and filled in later on Festival settings.

Description, location, contact email and final deadline belong to a season, not to the festival. What you type here lands on the first season's Season tab in Settings — its About this season and Dates cards — and each later season keeps its own. The website, the FilmFreeway link and the logo are the festival's and are shared by every season. See Festival settings.

"Description" is the field this form used to call Tagline, and Settings calls it Description too. It used to take 320 characters here while Settings took 90; both then took 160, and both now take 640. Your public page and open judge calls show its first two lines, with a More that opens the rest.

The address line

Under Public address sits the address this festival will actually have, updating as you type:

filmscorecard.com/riverside-collective/riverside-shorts-festival

• It follows the name until you type an address yourself. Blank means "work it out from the festival name".
• What you type is tidied up. Capitals, spaces and punctuation become a plain lower-case, hyphenated address.
• Six addresses are refused, because your organization's own screens already use them: categories, scorecards, judges, settings, festivals and overview. A festival name that comes down to one of those is refused too, with "That name is reserved"; an address is answered with "That public address is reserved. Choose another."
• Text with no letters or numbers in it is refused rather than silently replaced: "That public address has no letters or numbers in it."

The logo

Add a logo opens your computer's file picker. The image is checked by the same rules as the logo on Settings → Festival, the moment you pick it:

• PNG, JPEG or WebP. Anything else is refused under the button — "Logos must be a PNG, JPEG or WebP image." — and nothing is kept.
• 4 MB at most. A bigger file is refused with "That image is larger than 4 MB. Choose a smaller file."

A file that passes shows as a small preview with its file name, and the button becomes Replace logo. Nothing is uploaded until you press Create festival: your browser then shrinks the image to a PNG at most 512 pixels on its longest side, and it goes up right after the festival is made, in the same press — prepared the same way as one uploaded in Settings.

If your browser cannot shrink it, the file is sent as you picked it, and one over 1 MB is refused before anything is created: "That image couldn't be resized for upload. Choose one under 1 MB." appears in amber above the buttons, and no festival is made. Pick a smaller file and press Create festival again.

If the festival is created but the logo does not upload, the festival is kept — nothing is undone — and its Welcome page says so in an amber line:

Your festival was created, but the logo didn't upload. Add it on Settings → Festival, in the Festival profile card.

That is the one card on the Festival tab of Festival settings — add the logo there and choose Save changes.

What this festival will judge

Two tick boxes, both ticked to start with. They narrow what the form attaches — the set is still your library's DEFAULT set, filtered to the kinds of work you ticked.

• Leaving both ticked is the same as not being asked, which is what this form did before the boxes existed.
• Unticking every one is refused: "Choose at least one kind of work."
• It is not stored anywhere. Nothing about the festival remembers what you ticked, nothing later reads it, and it limits nothing: every category it skipped is still active in your library and still attachable on the season's own settings screen. Only which categories get attached now is affected.

What pressing Create festival does

1. The festival is created, with its name, public address, website and FilmFreeway link.
2. The categories in your library's default set are attached to it — every active category carrying the DEFAULT tag, of the kinds you ticked, and only those.
3. The awards in that set are attached too.
4. A first season is created as a draft, carrying a snapshot of those categories with their library judge rates, and of those awards, and holding the description, location, contact email and final deadline you typed, in your browser's time zone. See A season's categories and awards and Judge pay.
5. The logo is uploaded, when you picked one.
6. You land on that season's Welcome page — "<Festival name> is set up", with its counts, how many steps stand between you and opening judging, and two buttons: one to the dashboard, and one to whatever the season needs first. While FilmFreeway is waiting to be connected, the two buttons are Connect FilmFreeway and the import instead, with Go to your dashboard as a link underneath. See Finishing setup.

The festival, its categories, awards and season are one action. If any of those fails, nothing at all is created — no half-made festival, no orphan season. The identity fields and the logo come just after; see If the form refuses.

Nothing is copied into your library by this form. Adding a festival never reaches for FilmScorecard's default list on its own — even when your library holds no categories at all.

Cancel takes you back to the screen you came from and saves nothing.

What the first season starts with

Besides its categories, awards and identity, the new season starts on the same settings as any new season, with one thing taken from you:

• Its time zone is your browser's. The season starts in the time zone the computer you pressed Create festival on is set to — Los Angeles time, say — instead of UTC, so its dates read the way your team says them. If your browser does not report a zone FilmScorecard knows, or that part of the save does not go through, the season starts on UTC and the Season tab says so.
• The first email to filmmakers is Not decided: nothing reaches them on its own until someone chooses how it sends, on the season overview or its Emails tab — see Deciding on the season overview.
• Scorecards are released as each submission is approved.

The time zone is on the season's Season tab, in the Dates card — see Choosing a time zone; the invitations are on its Emails tab and the release on its Results tab — see Festival settings.

What the new festival starts with

The set is curated on the two library tabs, not here:

• Only categories and awards carrying the DEFAULT tag are attached, and only if they are still active. An archived row is never given to a new festival, however it is tagged.
• Categories are then narrowed to the kinds you ticked on the form, which is the one part of the set decided here rather than in the library. Awards are not narrowed — an award is not a kind of work.
• Nothing warns you on the form if the set is empty. A festival created with nothing flagged — or with nothing flagged of the kinds you ticked — is born with no categories, and its first season's line-up is empty. Its Welcome page reads 0 against Submission categories, and the Review categories row on its dashboard turns amber. Attach what it needs on the season's own settings screen — the Welcome page's Set up categories button takes you there, below.
• Changing the set afterwards changes nothing here. It is read at this moment and at no other.

The whole rule is in What a new festival starts with.

The line-up is your library's, not the platform's — a new festival starts with what your organization has grown its library into, and nothing from FilmScorecard's default list arrives unless you import it.

The Welcome page

When the new season comes out with no categories, the Welcome page's second button is Set up categories. Where it goes depends on your library:

• Your library has categories — it opens the season's Categories tab in Settings, where you attach the ones this season should run. See A season's categories and awards.
• Your library has none — it opens your library's Categories tab, where an owner is offered FilmScorecard's preset categories. Once they are imported, the line confirming it links back to this season's Categories tab, where you attach them. See Getting categories onto the season.

A season that came out with categories gets Import submissions as its second button instead.

Where the new festival opens afterwards

Its first season is its only season, so that is where every route into it lands — its dashboard, not the Welcome page, which is only ever shown once, straight after creation. Once the festival has more than one season, you can star the season it opens on from the season switcher — see The season a festival opens on.

Your second festival changes where you land. From then on, signing in and your organization's own address open your organization's Overview rather than a festival — for everybody who can open both.

If the form refuses

Field problems appear under the field they belong to, and nothing is sent:

Two messages can appear just above the buttons instead, in amber. One is the logo that could not be shrunk — "That image couldn't be resized for upload. Choose one under 1 MB.", see The logo — and nothing was created. The other is:

Something went wrong creating your festival. Nothing was saved — try again.

That is the catch-all, and the important half of it is the second sentence. It covers a festival address your organization already uses, a role that changed while the form was open, and an ordinary network fault — FilmScorecard deliberately does not say which, and nothing was written in any of those cases. Check the Festivals list if you are not sure, then try again.

The website, FilmFreeway link, description, location, contact email and final deadline — and the season's time zone — are written just after the festival and its season exist, and the logo is uploaded after that. If one of those later steps fails, the festival is still created and you still land on its Welcome page — what that step was writing is simply empty in Settings, and a time zone that did not land leaves the season on UTC. A logo that did not upload is the one the Welcome page tells you about; for the rest, check the Festival and Season tabs and fill in whatever is missing.

Related guides

• Setting up your festival — the first festival, and the organization created with it.
• What a new festival starts with — choosing the categories and awards this form hands the new festival.
• Importing from the default list — bringing FilmScorecard's presets into your library.
• Festival settings — everything on this form, editable afterwards.
• Finishing setup — the Welcome page you land on and the setup strip on the new season's dashboard.
• The season a festival opens on — once the festival has more than one season.
• Working in two organizations — switching before you add.