Filling out a scorecard yourself

You do not have to wait for a judge. From the Submissions list, anyone on the season's staff who can approve scorecards can fill one in themselves — a creative scorecard, a technical checklist or a press-kit card — and it counts toward the film's score the moment they file it.

Your scorecard counts exactly as a judge's does. That sentence is on the dialog itself, and it is the whole of the arrangement: your creative card joins the same average, takes one of the same places on the panel, your technical marks fill the same slot, your award recommendations enter the same pools. Nothing about the arithmetic knows that a coordinator wrote it. What tells your colleagues apart from your judges is the attribution: every screen that names a filer writes yours as "Your name (staff)".

Use it for the work judges cannot or should not do — the press-kit card no judge is ever offered, a technical review nobody picked up, a film that needs one more opinion before a decision — not as a way of quietly out-voting a panel.

A press kit is now half your job and half the submission's. Most of a press kit card's items watch a field on the submission record and satisfy themselves the moment that field has something in it; only the rest are yours to mark. See A press kit card.

Who can do this

It needs the "Approve scorecards and resolve flags" capability — the same one the Review Queue runs on. Filing and approving are one action here, so somebody who cannot approve must not be able to mint an approved scorecard from the list.

• Festival admins and coordinators have it by default; organization owners and org admins always have it.
• Without it, the menu item is not there at all — not greyed, absent — and the scoring page answers "page not found" if you reach it by address.
• A Viewer is refused even with the box ticked. The capability boxes on festival access can be ticked for anyone, but a viewer cannot write to a season whatever they say. Today that refusal arrives late: the menu item appears, the form opens, you can fill the whole thing in, and only the final confirm answers "You do not have permission to file a scorecard on this season. Nothing was recorded." Leave a viewer's boxes alone.
• Judges cannot reach any of this. Being on a season's judging roster grants nothing on a festival's staff screens — see Judging coordinators are staff, not judges.

A submission On hold can still be filled in. Holding a film keeps it away from judges, not from your own team — see Holding a submission out of judging.

Opening the chooser

The three-dot menu at the end of any row on the Submissions list carries Fill out a scorecard, under Edit categories and above the amber Withdraw block. Like Edit categories, it only ever opens a dialog — nothing is written from the menu.

The item is on every row, whatever has already been filled in. Which scorecards are still open is a question the dialog answers, not the list.

The dialog lives in the address (?score=… on the submissions URL), so it survives a reload and a link to it opens the same dialog for a colleague. Opening it closes any submission panel you had open — FilmScorecard shows one floating surface at a time.

Reading the chooser

Headed Fill out a scorecard for Title under a small Scorecards pill, with one sentence under it: "Your scorecard counts toward this film's score exactly as a judge's does."

Under that, one block per category the submission competes in, A to Z, and inside each block one row per scorecard attached to that category — in the order Creative, Technical, Press kit. Each row names the slot and the scorecard's own name ("Creative — Drama Feature v2").

Each row is in one of these states:

A name with (staff) after it is a colleague's filing; a plain name is a judge's.

A Creative row also carries a count, in parentheses beside the word Creative — (1/3) — which is how many creative scorecards have been filed on that category, judges' and colleagues' together, against the season's Judges per category. Two categories on one film can stand at different counts, and this is where you see which one is behind. A panel that has filed more than it was asked for reads honestly, "(4/3)". Until the season's Judges per category is set, no count is shown.

Under an open Creative row, two lines say who is already there. The first names the colleagues who have filed a creative card on that category — "Filed by Fay Festival and Sam Staff · 2 staff cards" — and the second names the judges who hold or have filed one. Neither closes the row: a creative row is never taken, only accompanied.

When judges' creative scorecards on that category are done and waiting for your review, a third line says so, in amber — "2 are done and waiting for your review". It is a nudge to look at theirs first, not a lock: the row still opens, and the form says it again at its top — see The scoring page. A scorecard sent back to its judge is not counted, because it is theirs again.

There are no scores in this dialog, deliberately. It tells you which slots are taken and by whom, and nothing about what anyone gave the film. A coordinator whose scorecard counts as a judge's fills it in the way a judge does — with the film in front of them, not with the panel's marks. The full picture is one click away in the Review Queue.

What "open" means for each slot, exactly

The three slots do not answer the same question, and the difference matters:

• A Creative row is open to every coordinator who has not filed on it, and open again to each one who has. Each of you may hold one creative card per category on a film, and a colleague's card does not block yours: the row reads Open until you have filed, and Edit afterwards. Judges' creative cards do not block it either — several creative opinions per film are the point — but they are shown: the judges already on that category are named under the row, and the (1/3) count includes them and every colleague's card. So an open Creative row means "you have no card here", not "nobody has scored this film". It stays open even when the category's panel is full — you can always add your own opinion. The submission's Scoring tab has what the panel actually gave it.
• Technical and press-kit rows are one filing per scorecard, for everybody. Once anyone has filed one — judge or staff — the row reads Filed by, and it stays that way. A judge who is holding one right now blocks it too, and reads as working on it: staff can never file over a review a judge is in the middle of.
• A technical or press-kit scorecard shared by two categories appears under both, because it is one review serving both. Filling it in once fills it for both, and both rows then read Filed by.

Press-kit cards are never offered to judges at all. Filling one in here is the only way one ever gets done.

A press kit that fills itself is not offered here

A press kit row is missing from the dialog entirely when its scorecard has nothing for a coordinator to mark — that is, when every item on it watches a submission field. That is not a slot somebody already took and not an error: there is nothing to fill in, so no card is ever created for it. The press kit never holds the film short of complete, and it keeps moving as the submission record is filled. Its points join the film's score in a category once another approved scorecard counts toward that category — a judge's or a colleague's creative scorecard, or the technical review; on their own, its satisfied items score nothing.

Where you read that press kit is the submission's Scoring tab, which lists every item and its state whether or not a card exists.

So a category whose only scorecards are a self-filling press kit shows just its creative and technical rows, and a submission whose every slot is either taken or self-filling reads "Every scorecard on this submission has been filled in."

When there is nothing to fill in

The dialog still opens and says why:

The scoring page

An open row opens the scoring form in a panel over the Submissions list, straight away and without reloading the list underneath, so your place in it stands. The address gains ?fill=…, so a reload or a link opens the same form, middle-clicking the row opens it in a new tab, and the browser's Back button closes it. An older address, …/submissions/score/<submission>?slot=…, still opens the same form on a page of its own.

The header names the category and the slot, then the film's title, then the scorecard's own name. Under the header, a light-purple banner reads "Staff review · unpaid, not counted in judge pay": a card you file earns nobody any judge pay. The scorecard's top bar names the card once — Creative scorecard, Technical review or Press kit — and below it come the questions exactly as that scorecard asks them.

On a creative card, an amber notice can come first. When judges' creative scorecards on this category are filed and waiting for your review, the top of the form reads "You're about to start a scorecard, but 2 are done and waiting for your review." with a link, Review them in the Review Queue (Review it in the Review Queue for one), that opens the Review Queue on creative scorecards, searched by the film's title. Nothing is blocked: the form under the notice works exactly as it would without it, and it shows however you arrived — the row menu, a + in a Creative cell on the Submissions list, or a link to this page. Following the link with answers on the form asks before leaving, as ✕ does. The count is judges' cards only — a colleague's card is approved as it is filed, and one sent back to its judge is not waiting on you.

The film pane beside the form is the judges' own — see The film pane. A screenplay the festival stored as a PDF shows "This screenplay is a PDF" and an Open PDF ↗ button, which opens the script in a new tab. Each press makes a fresh link that works for about ten minutes, so if a tab you left open stops loading, press Open PDF again.

An Edit row opens the same page with your own answers already in it — every question, the feedback boxes and any award recommendations you ticked — ready to change. Nothing is different about the form; only the confirmation at the end, which says it is replacing your card rather than filing a new one.

A creative scorecard

Identical to what a judge fills in, on purpose — a staff filing that carried less would be the one numbered judge with no notes on the filmmaker's page.

• Every question the scorecard asks, in the scorecard's own order and in whatever kinds it was built from: a row of ten cells for a 1-to-10 question (clicking a set cell clears it), Yes / No, a pick-one row, a tick-several list, or a text box. When the form has any 1-to-10 question — the filmmaker's included — one line above the questions reads "1 is the lowest score, 10 the highest.", exactly as a judge's card does. See Building a scorecard for how those get written.
• The filmmaker's own questions, when they wrote any — see Questions from the filmmaker below.
• The feedback boxes the scorecard has switched on — Positive feedback, Opportunities for improvement, or both — and every one of them is required. A box the scorecard has switched off is not on the form and is not asked for; on a scorecard with both off, there is no feedback section at all. See Written feedback. The filmmaker reads the boxes word for word, once their scorecard is released — with the season, or on its own. See Releasing scorecards.
• Each feedback box carries a Rewrite button at the right of its label. It sends that one box's text to OpenAI and puts a tidied version back in its place, under an Undo; the box is locked only while its own rewrite is out, and the rewrite itself files nothing. Highlight words inside a box and a small bar offers Rewrite, Extend, Shorten and Custom for those words alone. What is sent and what is not, and everything Undo does, is in Rewriting written feedback. The button and the bar are the one thing on the form a judge's screen does not have.
• Award recommendations, optional, and only when the film is eligible for any — the same list a judge sees: every award this film is eligible for, A to Z, each with its code and a line of its description, under a search box. Tick one and a note box opens under it — "Why this film, in a sentence. Optional.", up to 280 characters, "Seen by the coordinator only, never by the filmmaker." Three at most on one card: the count beside the heading reads "2 of 3 picked", and once three are ticked the rest read Remove one to pick another. An award the filmmaker already entered reads In the pool and cannot be ticked. A recommendation on an approved card puts the film into that award's pool — see Award pools. Only the season's library awards are listed: a category award's pool is the category itself and needs no recommending. The whole list is described on The creative scorecard.

Questions from the filmmaker

Between the scorecard's own questions and the feedback boxes, a creative form can carry a second block:

Questions from the filmmaker

Written by the person who entered this film. Your answers go to them on their scorecard and never count toward the score.

The submitter wrote these on their own private submission page, before anybody filed a creative card on the film. A festival lets each one ask up to two questions, and every creative card on that film — a judge's or yours — answers them. See Letting submitters fix their own details.

• They are marked Q1 and Q2, and answered with the same controls as everything else: ten cells, Yes / No, a pick-one list, or a box to write in.
• Answering them is required, exactly as the festival's own questions are. The footer says which one is short — see The footer tells you what is still missing.
• None of it is scored. A 1-to-10 answer here is a number for the filmmaker; it joins no average and changes nothing about the film's result.
• A free-text answer carries the Rewrite button and the selection bar, the same as the feedback boxes — the filmmaker reads it word for word, so it is moderated like anything else you write for them. The festival's own free-text questions do not have it. See Rewriting written feedback.
• Your answers reach the filmmaker as one more numbered judge, with nothing saying a coordinator wrote them — the same rule as the rest of the card.

Most films have no block at all and nothing is drawn where it would be. It is never on a technical or press-kit form.

A technical checklist

Pass or Fail on every item, with each item's points — "4 pts" — in a column just left of the two buttons. Failing one opens a Note for the coordinator box under it — write what went wrong, or leave it empty; the note is yours to judge, and the card files either way. Passing the item again clears the note.

A press kit card

A press kit card is headed Press kit and is read in two groups, because only one of them is yours.

Under the heading sits one line describing the arrangement — "Field items are satisfied by the submission itself and keep moving as the record is filled until judging closes, if the season freezes its press kit. Mark the manual items below." If the scorecard has a description of its own, that description is printed here instead, so a festival can say something more specific to its own reviewers. See The description.

From the submission — everything on this card that watches a field on the submission record. These are read-only:

• The item's name, its points, and the line "Filled by the submitter. Nothing to mark here."
• On the right, a badge reading On file or Empty, and under it a short description of what is there.
• That description is a shape, never the thing itself — "12 words", "vimeo.com", "1 file", "On file", "$18,000", "2018". You will not read the synopsis here, or the tagline, or the screener address, and that is deliberate: the item's question is only whether something was submitted. To read what was actually written, open the submission's Display or Information tab.
• An item with nothing behind it reads Empty, with "Empty, nothing submitted yet" beside it.

For you to mark — the rest, and the only part this page writes:

• Pass or Fail on every one, as on a technical checklist, with the item's points on a line under its name. Failing one opens a note box.
• Any guidance the scorecard's author wrote for the item shows under its name.

There is no override on a field item, anywhere. If you know the poster arrived by email and the item still reads Empty, the fix is to put the poster on the record: open the submission and upload it on the Information tab, or add the statement, or paste the trailer link. The item satisfies itself the moment you do, and its points are earned everywhere at once, on this card and on every screen that reads the press kit. Nothing has to be filed for that to happen. After judging has closed, a season that freezes its press kit keeps each item as it stood instead — see Freezing the press kit when judging closes.

The footer tells you what is still missing

The bar at the foot of the page follows you down the page and always says where you stand, in one line:

• "3 questions still need an answer." → "One question still needs an answer."
• "Both feedback fields still need writing." → "The opportunities field still needs writing." or "The positive feedback field still needs writing." — and only ever about a box the scorecard has switched on.
• "Both of the filmmaker's questions still need answers." → "The filmmaker's question still needs an answer."
• "2 items still need a pass or a fail." → "One item still needs a pass or a fail."
• Then, when nothing is missing: "Review your answers", and File and approve — or Save changes, on a card you are editing — lights up.

It names one thing at a time, in that order, so the filmmaker's questions are the last sentence you see rather than the first: a form that is short on both a festival question and a filmmaker question says so about the festival's first. Those two sentences never mean the scorecard's own questions — they point at the block headed Questions from the filmmaker, which is somewhere else on the form.

The button is also held while a rewrite of either feedback box is still out, with the line above it unchanged — it comes back the moment the reply lands. A rewrite of a filmmaker's free-text answer holds it the same way. See Rewriting written feedback.

On a press kit card that count is only the items you mark. The read-only half never holds the card back, whatever state the submission is in — a press kit whose every field is empty can still be filed the moment you have marked your own items.

That sentence is the same rule the server applies, so a scorecard the footer calls finished is one the confirm will accept. The rule is read again when you confirm: if somebody switches a feedback box on while your form is open, the confirm refuses with "This scorecard is not finished yet. Nothing was recorded." — reload, and the box is on the form.

Nothing is saved until you file

There is no autosave and no draft. Nothing exists in FilmScorecard until you confirm — no half-written card sitting anywhere, nothing for a colleague to stumble on, nothing to clean up if you change your mind. On a card you are editing, the same holds: your filed card stands untouched until you confirm.

The cost is that closing the tab loses your answers. Once you have typed anything, the browser puts its own "leave site?" warning in the way of a close or a reload — the standard browser dialog, not a FilmScorecard one. ✕, Escape or a click on the list beside the form asks first too: "You have unsaved changes on this page. Leave without saving them?" The browser's Back button does not ask: it closes the form and your answers go with it. Finish the card in one sitting.

The confirm screen

File and approve does not file anything yet. It opens a confirmation headed File this scorecard?, which names exactly what is about to be written — "Solstice — Drama Film, creative" — and says what filing does:

This files and approves the scorecard at once.

It skips the review queue. Your answers, and any award recommendations, go with it.

It counts toward this film's score immediately.

You return to the submissions list. You can change it later from the review queue.

A technical or press-kit card names the scorecard instead of a category — "Solstice — press kit, Press Kit v1" — because that review belongs to the scorecard and to no single category.

On a card you are editing the confirmation reads differently, because you are replacing your own filed card rather than adding one:

Save your changes to this scorecard?

This replaces your filed scorecard, and it stays approved.

with the same two lines about the review queue and the score underneath, and Save changes in place of File and approve.

If every scale question carries the same score, an amber note — "Every question has the same score." — asks you to look again. It asks; it never refuses.

• File and approve (or Save changes) commits it.
• Go back returns to the form with every answer still in place.
• If anything is refused, you stay on this screen, the reason appears in red, and your answers are untouched. See If filing is refused.

On success the form closes over the Submissions list you were on, and the row's figures update in place a moment later.

What filing does

The feedback boxes are filed exactly as you typed them, and proofread just after. Filing does not wait for it. The text of each box then goes to OpenAI for spelling, grammar and punctuation only, exactly as a judge's does when they file, and the corrected wording replaces yours a moment later. Your words stay as you typed them if the correction would change more than that, if it does not come back within ten seconds, if you or a colleague save a change to the card's feedback first, or if the scorecard has been released to its filmmaker by then.

One press, and all of this at once:

1. The scorecard is created, filed and approved together. There is no waiting in the review queue and no second approval step — the card is born approved, in your name.
2. The score counts immediately. The Submissions list's Score column and Scores-in ticks, the submission's Scoring tab, and every award screen all count approved scorecards, and yours is one from the moment you confirm. If nothing else on the film has been approved yet, yours is what starts its score — a technical or press-kit card as much as a creative one.
3. Your award recommendations enter their pools, marked as a judge recommendation exactly as a judge's are. A film already in a pool by any route stays as it was.
4. It joins the Review Queue, on the Approved tab, with your name and the staff marker. That is where you go to read or correct it.
5. It is in line for the filmmaker. A creative filing — its answers, its feedback boxes and your answers to the filmmaker's own questions — is part of what its submitter reads once their scorecard is released, credited as one more numbered judge, with nothing naming you. Two colleagues' cards on one category are two numbered judges. Nothing is sent at the moment you file; releasing is its own deliberate step — for the season on Settings → Results, or for this one submission from its detail panel.
6. It freezes the filmmaker's questions. The first creative card filed on a submission — yours or a judge's — is what stops its submitter adding, editing or removing a question, permanently. That holds even if the card is later withdrawn.
7. A technical review opens the film to creative judges. On a season where creative judging waits for technical approval, no judge is offered the film's creative scorecard until its technical review is approved — and yours is approved as you file it, so judges can be offered the creative scorecard the next time they look.

Saving changes to a card you filed does less, deliberately. Your answers, the feedback boxes, your answers to the filmmaker's questions and your recommendations are replaced by what you confirmed; the card keeps its original filing date and stays approved; the score is re-read from the new answers; and the review queue's history for the card records an edit. A recommendation you unticked leaves the card but does not take the film out of the award's pool — the same rule as withdrawing one in the queue; see Award pools. A recommendation you added enters its pool as any new one does.

A feedback box that is switched off when you save is saved empty. Anything you had written in it before the box was switched off is gone from your card once you save, and switching the box back on later brings back an empty box, not your words. Correcting the card in the Review Queue instead leaves a switched-off box exactly as it was — see Written feedback.

Filing a press kit card is what makes the whole press kit count. Until it is filed, the section is outstanding and contributes nothing to the film's score, however many of its fields the record already satisfies — the sentence on the Scoring tab names it as outstanding, and the score does not include it. Filing releases both halves at once: your marks, frozen as you left them, and the field half, which keeps moving from then on as the record is filled in. On a film nobody else has scored yet, it is also what gives the category a score at all.

There is no email and no notification. No judge and no filmmaker is told anything because you filed.

What it does not do

• It does not leave the judges' places alone. Your creative card counts toward the season's Judges per category exactly as a judge's does: once the creative scorecards filed and in progress on a category reach that number — yours included — the category is not offered to any more judges, and a film whose every category is full leaves every judge's queue. So filling a gap yourself means one judge fewer is sent to it. See How the judging queue works.
• It does not take a film away from a judge already scoring it. A judge holding a place on that category when you file keeps it, and the category ends one over. A judge whose 48-hour hold had already lapsed is a different case: if your card fills the last place, theirs can no longer be filed, and their screen tells them it went back to the queue.
• It does take the shared checklist slot. A technical or press-kit filing is one per scorecard for everybody, so once you file one, no judge will be offered that checklist on that film again.
• It does not freeze a press kit's field items. Filing freezes only what you marked. Every field item on the card carries on answering for itself, so a press kit score can rise after it was filed, simply because somebody finished the record. Once judging has closed that stops, unless the season's press kit freeze is off.
• It ignores the judging window. Neither the season's opening date nor its closing date gates any of this: you can file before judging opens and long after it has closed. Filing a creative card early does still freeze the filmmaker's questions, so a submitter who had not written theirs yet has lost the chance.
• It does not wait for the technical review. Creative judging that waits for technical approval holds judges, not your team: you can file a creative scorecard whether or not the film's technical review has been approved.
• It can take a film past its panel size, and the screens say so. A fourth filing on a panel of three reads "4 of 3", with four ticks all filled — the real number, not a number clamped to look tidy. Judges per category decides how many judges are offered each category, not how many scorecards it may carry.
• No judge ever sees it. A staff filing appears in no judge's payload and on no judge's dashboard, and no judge is told which of your colleagues has filed. What it does change, invisibly, is which films judges are offered and in what order: a film you have started counts as under way, and comes up sooner for the judges who can still take it. Blind judging is unaffected.
• One staff creative card per category, per person. Filing again on a category you have already filed on edits that card rather than adding a second; a second opinion on the same category has to come from a colleague, under their own name.

If filing is refused

Every refusal leaves your answers on screen and writes nothing at all.

A stale link 404s rather than explaining. The scoring page answers "page not found" for a submission that has been withdrawn, for a slot the submission's categories no longer reach, and for anything hand-edited into the address. It is not a wrong answer — it is the same answer a mistyped address gets.

One press-kit case worth naming: if somebody removes the last manual item from the press kit scorecard while your form is open, the card you are filling in stops being one the season needs. Reload and the row is gone from the chooser; the press kit is already complete without you.

Correcting a scorecard you filed

Two doors, same card. A creative card you filed opens again from the chooser — its row reads Edit — with your answers in place, and confirming saves over it. Every card you filed, creative or not, can also be opened in the Review Queue from its row and edited there — answers, feedback, marks, recommendation reasons, and your answers to the filmmaker's questions. It stays approved either way; see Reading and editing a scorecard. The two doors treat a switched-off feedback box differently: saving from the chooser empties it, saving in the Review Queue leaves it alone — see What filing does.

The chooser's door closes when the category's creative scorecard changes. If an organization owner attaches a different creative scorecard to the category in the library after you filed, your Edit row still opens — on the new scorecard, with its questions unanswered — but Save changes is refused every time with "This scorecard could not be filed. Nothing was recorded. Try again in a moment." Trying again does not help. Open the card in the Review Queue instead: it opens there with the questions it was filed on, and saves.

On a press kit card, only your own marks are editable — the field half is read-only in the queue too, for the same reason it is read-only here. The way to change a field item's answer is always to change the submission record.

Three things you cannot do:

• You cannot un-approve it, or delete it. Approval is one-way for every scorecard on FilmScorecard, staff filings included, and there is no verb that removes one. Editing is the correction path.
• You cannot edit a colleague's card from the chooser. Their creative card on the same category is theirs; the chooser offers you your own, or a fresh one. A colleague's card is corrected in the review queue, like any other.
• You cannot edit a creative card whose category has been removed from the submission. It is not deleted: it stays in the Review Queue, approved, labelled "Drama Film (removed)", counting toward nothing on the film. But the chooser no longer lists that category, and in the queue it opens read-only — "This scorecard's category was removed from the submission, so it can no longer be edited." See A scorecard on a removed category.

Withdrawing the submission takes your filings off the Submissions list with the film.

Where your filing shows up

What does not work yet

• There is no way to file one for somebody else, and no bulk filing: one scorecard, one film, one press.
• Nothing marks a scorecard as staff-filed for the filmmaker, by design — see What filing does.
• There is no void or delete. See Correcting a scorecard you filed.
• Nothing on a press kit card links to the field it is waiting for. You read the item's name and go and find the field yourself on the Information tab.
• Nothing on your screens lets you read a submission's own questions before you open a scoring form. They are on the form and in the review queue's panel, and nowhere else.

Related guides

• Review Queue — where every filed scorecard, yours included, is read and approved.
• Reading and editing a scorecard — the panel you correct a filing in.
• Rewriting written feedback — the Rewrite button on the feedback boxes and on a filmmaker's free-text answer, here and in that panel.
• Building a scorecard — where the questions you are answering were written, which feedback boxes are switched on, and where a press kit item's field is chosen.
• Opening a submission — the record a press kit's field items are read from, and the tab you fill it in on.
• Letting submitters fix their own details — the page the filmmaker's own questions are written on.
• Releasing scorecards — what the filmmaker eventually reads.
• Awards — the category rank your filing helps unlock.
• How the judging queue works — how your filings change which films judges are offered.