How scoring works

How FilmScorecard turns your judges' scorecards into one score out of 100, and how to set it up for the way your festival judges.

Festivals score films in very different ways — one overall mark per judge, an average of judges' totals, a technical pass before anything else counts. FilmScorecard has one model, and almost every one of those habits fits inside it. This page explains the model, walks one film through it, and shows how to set it up for the way you already work.

The short version

• Every category a film is entered in is scored out of 100. A film in two categories gets two scores, one in each.
• That 100 is split between three kinds of scorecard — Creative, Technical and Press kit. The split is the season's weights, and a new season starts at 60% / 20% / 20%.
• Each scorecard earns its slice in proportion to how it was marked. A technical card that passed 15 of its 20 points earns three quarters of the Technical slice.
• The Creative slice is shared by a panel. The season says how many creative judges each category needs, and each of their scorecards earns an equal part of the slice. Technical and press kit are each filed once, so their whole slice lands the moment that one card is approved.
• A score is what has been earned so far. A film has no score until its first scorecard is approved — it reads No scores, never 0 — and from then on the score grows as the rest are approved. It is not a forecast of where the film will finish.
• It is the same number everywhere. The Submissions list, a submission's Scoring tab, the award screens, the CSV export, a connected AI app and the filmmaker's own scorecard and share card all show one figure for one film in one category.
• Judges never give an overall score, and never see one. They answer the questions on their scorecard; FilmScorecard does the arithmetic, and only your team sees the result.

Where you set it

Open Settings → Judging and click Scoring to open its card. The How a score is made up row is a small table, one row for each kind of scorecard:

The three Counts for shares are the season's weights, and they must add up to 100%. The line under the table keeps count as you type — "The shares add up to 100%." — and turns amber while they do not: "The shares add up to 90%. They need to add up to 100%." Choose Save changes on the bar at the bottom of the screen to keep them; it stays greyed out until the shares make 100. How scoring works ↗, under the row's sentence, opens this guide in a new tab.

Two things lock, at different moments:

• Creative's Judges figure locks while judging is open, because judges are already being offered films against it. The foot of the table says "The creative judge count is locked while judging is open."
• The shares lock once any scorecard has been released to a filmmaker, because a change would move a score somebody has already read; the foot of the table then reads "Shares are locked because scorecards have been released." Before that you can re-balance them at any time, even mid-judging — weights never touch a judge's marks.

Every field on the tab is described in Festival settings. What goes on each scorecard — its questions and their points — is set in the library; see Categories and scorecards.

One film, start to finish

A season set to 60% Creative, 20% Technical, 20% Press kit, with 3 creative judges per category. A film entered in one category, whose scorecards are worth:

• Creative: five 1-to-10 questions, so 50 points
• Technical: checklist items worth 20 points between them
• Press kit: items worth 10 points between them

Here is its score as each scorecard is approved:

Where those numbers come from:

• Creative is 48. The three judges marked 120 of a possible 150 between them — an average of 80% — so Creative earns 80% of its 60. Each judge's card could earn at most a third of the 60, which is why one judge in shows 16, not 48.
• Technical is 15. 15 of 20 is 75%, and 75% of 20 is 15.
• Press kit is 16. 8 of 10 is 80%, and 80% of 20 is 16.
• The score is 79, the three added together, out of 100.

The order does not matter. Had the technical checklist been approved before any judge filed, the film would have read 15 from that moment, and each judge's share would have been added to it as they came in. That is in fact the usual order: on a season where creative judging waits for technical approval — the default — no judge is offered the creative scorecard until the checklist is approved. The arithmetic comes out the same either way.

Fitting the way your festival judges

Your judges give one overall mark, out of 10. Give the category a creative scorecard with a single 1 to 10 scale question, and weight the season 100% Creative, 0% Technical, 0% Press kit. The score is then the judges' average mark, out of 100: an average of 7.5 reads 75. The category still needs its technical checklist filed — at 0% it only decides when the film is complete. If the checklist is approved before any judge files, expect the film to read 0 until they do; see What happens when….

You average your judges' totals. That is what Creative already does once the panel is in. With a weight of 100% Creative, the score is exactly the average total as a percentage.

The technical check is a gate, not part of the score. Weight Technical at 0%. The checklist is still filled in, the filmmaker still sees it, and a film is still not complete without it — it simply adds nothing to the score. Leave Creative judging waits for technical approval on, as it is by default, and it is a gate in the other sense too: no judge is offered a film's creative scorecard until its checklist has been approved.

You do not judge press kits. Leave the category's press-kit slot empty in the library. The category is then scored over the two scorecards it does have (see below), and nobody is asked to file one.

You do not use creative judges in a category at all. Leave its creative slot empty in the library. The category is scored over its technical review and press kit, still out of 100, and it is fully judged once those are approved — no panel, so nothing waits for judges.

Some categories need more judges than others. That cannot be set: Judges is one number for the whole season. Your own team can add creative scorecards to any film — see Filling out a scorecard yourself.

What happens when…

A category has no press kit. It is scored over the scorecards it uses, and still out of 100. On a 60/20/20 season a category with no press kit is scored 75% Creative, 25% Technical — the two weights keep their proportions and fill the whole 100. The exact split for any one category is written out on a submission's Scoring tab.

The technical review is approved before any judge. The film has a score straight away: the technical points it has banked. On a 60/20/20 season, a checklist passed at 18 of 20 reads 18, and the judges' shares are added to it as they are approved. An approved press-kit card starts a score the same way.

The press kit fills itself in, and nobody has scored the film yet. No score. Press kit items that watch a field on the submission — the tagline, the synopsis, the poster — count only once an approved scorecard counts toward that category: a judge's creative scorecard, the technical review, or the press-kit card. A film nobody has judged reads No scores however complete its record is.

A weight is 0%. That scorecard is collected but not scored: still filled in, still shown to the filmmaker, still needed before the film is complete, and worth nothing in the score. If it is the first scorecard approved on a film, the film's score starts at 0 rather than reading No scores — something has been approved, and none of it carries points — and climbs as the weighted scorecards arrive.

Every weight a category uses is 0%. The category then has nothing to score out of. It reads No scores on your screens and on the filmmaker's scorecard and share card — never "0 / 100" — and it is not ranked anywhere. Its scorecards are still collected, and still needed before the film is complete.

A film is in two categories. It is scored separately in each, both out of 100 — never added together or blended. When two categories share the same technical or press-kit scorecard, one filing serves both, and each category applies its own weights to it. The Submissions list shows whichever of the two has earned the most so far; see About scores.

More creative scorecards come in than Judges asks for — usually because someone on your team added their own opinion. The Creative slice is then shared among all of them, so no film can earn more than its 60.

The numbers do not divide evenly. FilmScorecard works with the exact figures and rounds once, at the end, to a whole number. The three slices are rounded so that they always add up to the score shown. A figure out of 10 — a judge's result on the filmmaker's scorecard, a card's chip in the Review Queue — is rounded half up to one decimal: 163 points of 200 reads 8.2.

When a film is fully judged

A film is fully judged in a category when every scorecard that category uses has been approved:

• Creative — as many approved creative scorecards as the Creative row's Judges figure asks for, and never fewer than one. A colleague's own filing counts as one of them.
• Technical — the approved technical review, even when its checklist is worth no points or is weighted 0%.
• Press kit — the approved press-kit card, but only when the press kit has items somebody marks by hand. A press kit whose every item watches a field on the submission owes no card.

A scorecard the category does not use owes nothing. A category with no creative slot never waits for judges. A film in several categories is fully judged when each of them is; a film attached to no category never is.

That one definition decides:

• when a season set to release When every submission is approved or As each submission is approved sends a scorecard out — see Releasing scorecards;
• when a category's rank can be released on the Awards screen — see Releasing a category's rank;
• when a submission's Scoring tab says "All scorecards filed".

The Submissions list's Scoring filter is the one exception. All scores in looks at the creative panel and the technical review only, and leaves the press kit out — see About scores.

Reading scores fairly

A film that is still being judged reads low, and it is meant to. One judge in out of three can only have earned a third of the Creative slice. Before you rank anything, set the Submissions list's Scoring filter to All scores in, so you compare finished films with finished films — see Overall is points banked, not a forecast.

The colours show quality, not progress. A score's colour compares what has been earned with what could have been earned so far — so the one-judge film above reads 16 in green, because 16 of a possible 20 is 80%. There are five colours: green from 80%, light green from 70%, yellow from 50%, orange from 40%, and red below 40%. See The number and the colour answer different questions.

Who sees what

• Judges see their own scorecard and nothing else: no weights, no totals, no colours, and nothing another judge filed. That cannot be turned off — see Blind judging.
• Filmmakers, once their scorecard is released, see their score out of 100 — or No scores for a category whose every section is weighted 0% — but not your weights, and not how many judges are still to come. See Releasing scorecards.
• Your team sees everything: every score, every slice, and the split behind each category.

Related guides

• Festival settings — the Judging tab field by field, including Judges per category and the weights.
• Categories and scorecards — the scorecards each category carries, and the questions and points on them.
• Submissions — the scores on the list, the Scoring filter, and which category a row shows.
• Filling out a scorecard yourself — your team's own creative, technical and press-kit cards.
• Releasing scorecards — what a filmmaker sees, and when.