The creative scorecard
The creative card is your judgement of the work: the festival's questions, the written feedback boxes the festival has switched on — two, one or none — and — optionally, when the film is eligible for any — up to three awards you think the film should be considered for.
Several judges file a creative card on the same film, independently, and none of you ever sees another's. Unless the festival has switched it off, the card is offered only once the film's technical review has been approved — in a category that has a technical checklist; see When the creative card waits for the technical review. Everything about the screen around it — taking a film, autosave, filing, leaving, reporting an issue — is on Scoring a film.
What the card says at the top
The heading is Creative scorecard. Under it, the festival's own description of the scorecard if they wrote one, otherwise a line explaining the scale:
Score each question 1 (weak) to 10 (exceptional). Everything stays editable until you submit.
On a screen holding this card alone the line reads instead: "Score each question 1 (weak) to 10 (exceptional). Click a value to set it; click it again to clear it. Everything stays editable while you watch."
Directly above the questions, one more line says which end of the scale is which: "1 is the lowest score, 10 the highest." It is there whenever the card has a 1-to-10 question — the filmmaker's own included — and it stays when the festival has written its own description, which replaces only the line above.
The five kinds of question
A festival writes its own questions, and each one asks for an answer in one of five ways. Whichever it is, the answer saves the moment you give it, and any guidance the festival wrote appears under the question's wording.
| The question shows | How you answer it | What counts as answered |
|---|---|---|
| A row of ten cells, 1 to 10 | Click a value; click another to change it | A value is set |
| Yes and No buttons | Click one | One is chosen |
| A list with round markers | Click a row — picking another moves it | Exactly one row is picked |
| A list with square markers | Click rows to tick and untick — as many as you like | At least one row is ticked |
| A box to write in | Type | Anything but blank |
An answered question's row turns light purple, so the one still to do is the white row among them. On a 1-to-10 row your score is the filled number; Yes/No questions also show Yes or No on the right once answered. The three list-and-box kinds show what you picked in the control itself. A filed card has no purple rows — there is nothing left to do on it.
Nothing is optional. Every question the card asks has to be answered before it can be submitted, and the footer counts them for you.
Questions from the filmmaker
On some films a second block sits under the festival's questions, headed
Questions from the filmmaker — up to two questions the person who entered
the film wrote themselves, marked Q1 and Q2. They use the same controls,
they save the same way, answering them is required before you can submit,
and none of them is scored, including the 1-to-10 kind.
They are covered in full on Scoring a film — including what happens when one appears while you are already working on the film.
The feedback boxes
Under the questions sit the scorecard's written feedback boxes. There are two of them, and the festival decides, scorecard by scorecard, which ones you are given:
| The box | Its prompt |
|---|---|
| Positive feedback | "What worked, and why it worked." |
| Opportunities for improvement | "What could be stronger, and how." |
- Most scorecards ask for both. Some ask for one of them, and some for neither — then there is no feedback section on the card at all, not an empty one.
- Every box you are shown is required. A blank one keeps the card from being submitted, and the footer names it — "Add positive feedback and opportunities for improvement to submit.", or only the one that is blank.
- A box you are not shown is never asked for. Nothing about it holds the card back, and nothing you could not see is filed.
- On a screen holding this card alone the two labels are capitalised — Positive Feedback, Opportunities for Improvement — and that is the only difference.
If the festival changes which boxes its scorecard asks for while you are working, your card follows the scorecard as it stands the next time it is read: a box that has been switched on appears, empty, and is required; a box that has been switched off disappears, and is no longer asked for. Anything you had typed into a box that has been switched off is kept, out of sight, and comes back if the box is switched on again; it is not required to submit. A card you have already filed is never reopened by a change like that.
Under each box, the line that says where it goes:
Shared with the submitter after coordinator review.
— or, on a screen holding this card alone, "Written in your own words; shared with the submitter after coordinator review."
Read that literally. The feedback boxes are the only thing you write that a filmmaker may ever read — apart from your answers to their own questions, which reach them the same way, and any answer to a festival question it shows on the scorecard — it goes through the festival first, and the festival decides whether to pass it on. Everything else you record — scores, notes on award recommendations, anything on the technical card — is for the coordinator only.
The boxes save about a second and a half after you stop typing, and at once when you click out of them.
Award recommendations
The section under the feedback boxes is optional and headed Award recommendations. On a screen holding this card alone the line under the heading reads:
Optional. Recommend this film for any award it is eligible for. A recommendation is free for the filmmaker and enters the film in that award's pool for the coordinator to weigh.
On a screen holding both cards it is shorter: "Optional. A recommendation is free for the filmmaker and enters the film in that award's pool." On the right of the heading, a running count: "1 of 3 picked".
Leaving it empty is a normal outcome. A recommendation is a note to the coordinator that this film deserves a look for that award. It decides nothing and costs the filmmaker nothing. The film enters the award's pool once the festival approves your scorecard, and who wins is still decided by the people running the festival. See Award pools for what a pool is.
A film eligible for no award has no Award recommendations section at all — no heading, no count, nothing to scroll past. There is nothing to recommend it for, which is a normal state, not a fault. The one exception is a pick you made before the film stopped being eligible: the section stays to show it — see below.
Picking an award
Every award this film is eligible for is listed, A to Z, as a row with a
tick box — the award's name, its AWD- code and one line of its description.
Which awards are listed is worked out from the categories the film competes
in, not from anything about you. The list stays in that order as you tick, and
a long one scrolls inside the section.
- Find the award. A search box sits above the list — "Search 14 eligible
awards" — matching an award's name or its
AWD-code. Escape clears it. A search with no matches shows one line —No award matches "x".— and a Clear search link. - Tick it. It is picked at once, the row is highlighted, and a note box opens under it — see The note.
- Untick it to take the recommendation away again.
Three at most on one card. Once three are ticked, every other row greys out and reads Remove one to pick another; untick one of yours and the rest open up again. A card that already held more than three keeps them all, and nothing more can be ticked until it is under three.
Some rows are greyed out with a pill, and they are never hidden, so you can see why you cannot pick them:
| The pill | What it means |
|---|---|
| In the pool | "The filmmaker already entered this award." — they paid for or asked to enter it, or a coordinator put them in. |
| Remove one to pick another | You have already picked three. |
| Added by coordinator | A coordinator added this pick to your card after you filed it. It stays ticked. |
| Changed by coordinator | A coordinator moved a pick on your card to this award after you filed it. It stays ticked. |
"In the pool" is never another judge's recommendation. It only ever reflects what the filmmaker or the festival did.
A coordinator's pick is not yours to change. You cannot untick it, move it or edit its note — not even on a card the festival has sent back to you — and it counts toward your three. A pick the festival has withdrawn no longer shows on your card at all — and ticking that award again does not bring it back: the tick comes straight back off, and a red line above the blue button at the bottom of the card reads "A coordinator withdrew this recommendation, so it cannot be made again on this scorecard." On a card sent back to you, your own picks are open again: tick, untick and rewrite their notes as before. See Scorecards sent back to you.
The note
Each award you tick opens a box under its row:
Why this film, in a sentence. Optional.
The note is capped at 280 characters and is "Seen by the coordinator only, never by the filmmaker." It saves about a second and a half after you stop typing.
The footer keeps a running line — "1 award recommendation goes with this scorecard." — because the recommendations are filed with the card, not separately.
If a film's eligibility changes after you picked an award, that pick moves to the top of the list, still ticked, named "This award is no longer eligible", and the scorecard will not file. This holds even when the film is now eligible for no award at all: the section stays, holding only that pick, so you can untick it. The refusal does not explain itself — you get the general "This card could not be filed" line — so if a submission refuses to file, check this section first: untick the stale recommendation and try again.
Filing it
The card can be submitted once every question is answered and every feedback box you are shown has something in it — and, on a film whose submitter asked any, once their questions are answered too. The button reads Submit creative scorecard, and the line at the foot tracks it: "4 of 6 scored, feedback incomplete", then "All 6 scored, feedback complete". On a scorecard with no feedback boxes the line leaves feedback out altogether — "All 6 scored". On a film with the filmmaker's block, that line ends with it — "All 6 scored, feedback complete, 1 of 2 filmmaker questions".
The confirmation before filing says what goes with the card, naming only the boxes you were given: "It goes to the coordinator as it stands. Your scores, both feedback fields and any award recommendations go with it." — "your positive feedback" or "your opportunities for improvement" when the scorecard asks for one box, and "Your scores and any award recommendations go with it." when it asks for none.
After submitting, the card locks. Scores, choices, boxes and notes all become read-only, and the award list shrinks to the awards you picked — no search, nothing to tick, each note read-only. A card filed with no picks reads "No awards recommended. Leaving this empty is a normal outcome." in place of the list — or, on a film eligible for no award, shows no award section at all. The feedback boxes keep a line saying where they go:
Filed with the card. Shared with the submitter after coordinator review.
A few seconds after you submit, your feedback is proofread for spelling, grammar and punctuation, and the corrections replace the text on the filed card — see After you file.
There is no unfiling and no editing. If something in a filed card is wrong, message the festival.
If you also hold the technical card on this film, a green strip appears on it confirming the creative card is in, with its figure and a reminder that the technical card is still yours to file — or not.