Open calls

Open calls is the row under Next submission in the left navigation of your judging screens, at /judge/open-calls. It is the one screen in FilmScorecard that looks past the festivals you already judge for: every festival on the platform that is hiring judges for a round posts it here, with the work they need covered and what each category pays.

The board is a wall of cards. Each one opens a page about that call — what the round is, which categories need covering, what each of them pays, and what an application will ask you for.

You can apply now. The form behind Start application has a guide of its own — Applying to an open call — which also covers answering a festival that replies with different rates, and withdrawing an application afterwards.

Your own queue — the film in front of you at a festival that already has you on its panel — is on Your judging home. Whether you judge for pay or as a volunteer, and whether you are listed in the judges directory at all, are on Your account.

Why the board can still be empty

Nothing is wrong with your account. Festivals can now post a call themselves — there is a switch on their own settings screen that lists a season here — but posting one is optional, so how much is on this board depends entirely on how many festivals have turned it on. Meeting "No open calls right now" is not a fault.

A call that is posted is a real call. Start application opens a real form and files a real application — see Applying to an open call.

If a festival wants you on a panel without going through the board, they invite you by email — see Your judging invitation.

Getting to the board

Open calls is the second row of your judging navigation, directly under Next submission, on every judging screen. It carries a plain grey number — deliberately not the amber one the Inbox uses:

• The number is open calls you have not applied to.
• No number means none, rather than a 0.
• It is not an alert. Amber in FilmScorecard means something is waiting on you; an open call is a noticeboard, not a message, so it stays quiet.
• It does not change when a festival replies to you. A counter waiting on your answer shows as a pill on that call's card and page; the navigation row stays the plain market count.
• It moves the moment you do something — apply, withdraw, open an unread inbox item — and on a full reload. Simply moving between screens leaves it as it was, and it does not tick over while you sit on one.

Both screens need you signed in with a finished judge profile. Signed out, you go to the log-in screen; with an unfinished profile you are sent to finish it first — see Setting up your judge profile. And if you have not agreed to the current Judge Code of Conduct, a one-box confirm page stands in front of both screens until you do — see The two role agreements. The application form itself is not held back by it: its own Submit carries the box.

You do not have to be on anybody's panel to read this board. It is the whole platform's calls, not the calls of the festivals you already judge for.

The line at the foot of the sidebar on these screens states the rule these screens are built on:

Your rate and your application are visible to the festival you applied to, never to other judges.

The three tabs

Under the heading sits a strip of three, each with a plain count and each with an address of its own:

Every tab shows its count on every tab, so you never have to click one to find out whether it is worth clicking. No count is ever amber — the pill on the card is what marks a call that is waiting on you.

Which calls are on the board

Every open call on FilmScorecard, at every festival, whoever runs it. This is the one screen that deliberately crosses between organizations — a marketplace nobody can see across is not a marketplace.

A call is open when the festival's opening date has passed (or there is no opening date) and its closing date is still in the future (or there is no closing date at all).

A festival can take its call down at any time, and it comes off the board the moment they do — even if the closing date it was showing is still weeks away. If you had already applied, nothing is lost: your application stays on your Applied tab, marked closed, and the festival can still accept or decline it — and you can still answer a counter on it.

A call also leaves the board while its festival is unavailable on FilmScorecard — from the Open calls, Applied and Past tabs alike, and from their counts, even when you have applied to it. Its page, and your application's, give "page not found" meanwhile, so there is nothing to apply to and no counter to answer. Nothing is lost: once the festival is available again, the call and your application are back where they were. See When a festival is unavailable.

Withdrawing your application to a closed call takes it off the board, because your application was the only reason a closed call was listed for you. See Withdrawing an application.

The order

The board arrives in a fixed order:

1. Open calls, soonest to close first.
2. Open calls with no closing date, after those.
3. Closed calls you applied to, most recently closed first.

The line under the grid says the same thing back to you: "5 open calls and 1 closed call, all festivals. Open calls first, closing soonest first, then closed calls you applied to." — with "filtered" in place of "all festivals" while anything is narrowing the board.

You can change it with the Sort menu — see Searching, filtering and sorting.

Reading a card

"View application" opens the call's page, not your application. The two are different screens: the call's page is the advertisement, and your application lives at the same address with /apply on the end — see Finding your own application again.

"4 judges needed" is what the festival is hiring, never how many seats are taken. Nothing on this board counts applicants or filled places, on any call.

No category names are printed on the card, though the search box still matches them: the call's own page lists the categories that call opens, with what each one pays. A festival can open a call to some of its season's categories rather than all of them, and a category it left out is not on the page, not in the form, and not something the search will find that call by.

The closing line

The date at the foot of each card, and the Applications row on a call's page.

Two things worth knowing about that number:

• It is whole days and never hours. "Closes today" is the floor: a call closing in four hours says "Closes today" and nothing more precise, because a countdown in hours invites you to start something you cannot finish.
• The day is counted in universal time (UTC), so the figure reads the same at nine in the morning and at eleven at night, and it can be a day out from your own calendar if you are far from UTC. A call that closes later today reads "Closes today" right up to the moment it closes, and then reads "Applications closed" — both are true.

The festival chose a date, not a time. A call closes at the end of its closing day in that festival's season time zone, which is another reason the countdown can look a day out from where you are sitting.

The deadline is real at the moment you submit, not at the moment the form opened. An application submitted after the close is refused with the date on it — see If applying is refused.

Closing a call does not close the conversation. A festival can still decide an application it already holds, and you can still answer a counter on one, however long ago the call closed.

Money on these screens

A call does not post one rate. The season behind it posts a price per category, and that is what you see.

• Every figure is per scorecard you file. One category, one film, one card, one payment of that category's price. There is no flat-fee-for-the-round option on this surface.
• The figure on a card and on a call's rail is a span across the categories — the cheapest and the dearest — and it collapses to one figure when every category pays the same. It spans the categories that call opens, not the whole season, so two calls at one festival can quote different ranges. It is never a total, and nothing on these screens adds two rates together.
• The per-category prices are on the call's own page, one against each category name. See Categories they need covered.
• Every figure carries two decimal places — $200.00 to $350.00, never $200 to $350, and thousands are grouped: $1,200.00. Elsewhere in FilmScorecard a whole-dollar rate can print without the cents; here it never does, so that two calls' figures can be compared without a second look.

Two states are not money and must not be read as $0.00:

You are quoted these prices and paid these prices. Applying on Festival pricing accepts what is posted; choosing Custom and changing a figure asks for something else, and the festival can reply with a figure of its own — which you then accept, or answer with figures of your own. What is finally agreed per category is what an accepted application is worth — see Step 3 and When the festival replies with different rates.

These prices stay the call's, whatever you and the festival settle on. The per-category figures on this page are always what the festival posts to the market; your own ask, and any counter, live on your application and nowhere here.

The price is frozen the moment you apply. A coordinator who edits a category afterwards does not change what you were quoted or what you agreed to.

When the festival has set payment terms, they sit beside the prices — on the card and under the call's category list — as one line: "Paid 30 days after invoice", or "Paid on the 1st of the month". No line means the festival has set none, not that it pays on the spot.

Nothing here is a payment. No money moves through FilmScorecard: the festival pays its judges itself — see the Payment card at the foot of a call's page.

Your status on a call

Five states, and they are the same on the card, on the call's page, on your Applied tab and on your application itself.

"Applied" covers everything between filing and a decision that is not waiting on you. A festival works through applications privately — marking one to come back to, for instance — and none of that changes your status here. In particular:

• Counter received is the one state that asks you for something, and it is the only reason a pill turns amber before a decision. It appears the moment a festival replies with different figures and goes back to Applied as soon as you answer — whether you accept their rates or send back your own — because neither is waiting on you any more. It also goes back to Applied if the festival withdraws the counter without replacing it.
• The pill is not a link and the figures are not on the card. It says a reply is waiting; what they are offering, per category, and the two buttons for answering it are on your application — see Finding your own application again and When the festival replies with different rates.
• Nothing tells you where you stand in a queue of applicants, because no such number is sent to your browser at all.

Applied and Counter received are the states you can withdraw from. Once a call reads Accepted or Not selected there is no withdraw control anywhere. See Withdrawing an application.

Accepted means you are on that panel for the categories you picked. A festival that accepts your application puts you on the season scoped to the categories your application named and the kind of work you said you could cover — not to everything they run. They can widen or narrow it afterwards, and nothing tells you when they do.

Finding your own application again

Nothing on the board or on a call's page links to it, which is worth knowing before you go looking: Start application is the only button that points at the application address, and it is drawn only while you have no application. Once you have one, there are two ways back to it:

• The address. It is the call's own address with /apply on the end. Open the call from the board, then add /apply — or bookmark it the first time.
• The festival's email. When they reply with different rates, that message carries a link straight to the screen where you answer.

Everything the application screen shows is described in After you apply.

Searching, filtering and sorting

Everything on the toolbar applies as you set it. There is no Apply button — the whole tab is already on the screen.

• The search box is headed "Search festivals and categories", and that is exactly what it matches: festival names and category names, and nothing else. Capitalisation is ignored and it matches anywhere in a word, so short finds "Documentary Short".

  The category names it matches are the ones each call opens. A festival that runs a Documentary Short category but did not open its call to it will not be found by searching for it.

  It does not match the round line printed on the card — "Round 1 shorts panel" is a festival's own shorthand and searching it would make the same word mean two things. It does not match the CALL- code either, though the code is printed on the card: search is for finding work you might want, and you already have the call in front of you if you can read its number. And it does not match a place: calls carry no city in this version, so there is nothing to search for.

• Format — Film and Screenplay, with a count each. Ticking both means "either". It carries Select all and Clear, and picking an option leaves the list open so you can pick a second. (Feature and short are not formats here; they live in category names.)

• Sort — the trigger shows the order you are in, and the menu offers four: Closing soonest (called Recently updated on the Applied and Past tabs), Festival A-Z, Rate, high to low, and Films, most first.

• Clear filters appears in the toolbar as soon as the search or the format filter is set. It does not reset the sort, which hides nothing and removes nothing.

There is no filter for your own status, so a call waiting on your answer is found by looking rather than by narrowing. On the Applied tab, Recently updated brings it near the top: the festival's reply counts as an update, and so does your own answer to it.

"Rate, high to low" orders by the dearest category each call posts. A call that pays nothing yet, and a volunteer one, sort to the bottom.

The count beside each format option is of the whole tab and never moves when you pick something else. A count that shrank as you chose would only be telling you what you had already chosen.

At the right of the toolbar, a monospace line reports both at once — "3 open, 1 closed, of 5 open and 2 closed" — so a narrowed board can still tell you how much it is hiding.

The tabs and the toolbar stay pinned to the top as the cards scroll under them, so search, the filter and the other tabs are always one tap away.

Your filters are in the address

Search, Format and Sort all live in the page's address, and each tab is an address of its own. So a filtered board can be bookmarked, shared or reached again with the back button, and reloading keeps what you set.

An address somebody mistyped or edited by hand never breaks the screen — a value FilmScorecard cannot read simply narrows nothing, and an unreadable sort falls back to the default order.

When nothing is listed

Three different empty states, and they are not the same thing:

• Your filters exclude everything — "No open calls match these filters" over "No call matches the filters you have set.", or "Nothing matches what you typed with these filters.", with a Clear filters button.
• The Open calls tab is genuinely empty — "No open calls right now" over "Festivals post a call here when a round needs judges." There is no button, because nothing you can do changes it. See Why the board can still be empty.
• The Applied tab is empty — "No live applications" over "An application shows here until a month after the festival answers it, or a month after the call closes."

The Past tab has its own pair — "No past applications yet" over "An application moves here a month after its call closes, or a month after the festival answers it. Nothing has reached that point." — and, when it does hold something, Older applications and Back to the newest at the foot.

One call in detail

A card opens a real page with an address of its own — /judge/open-calls/ and a long identifier — so a call can be bookmarked, shared, and opened in a new tab. A call's page keeps working after the call closes; only the board drops it. ← All open calls at the top goes back.

The heading block carries the round, the festival's name, and a monospace line — "CALL-201 · Spring 2024" — with your status pill beside it. That pill is the same one the card wears, including the amber Counter received.

The work

Up to five labelled facts, and then the festival's own paragraph about the round.

Anything the festival did not post is left out entirely — no dashes, no "Not specified" — and the grid closes up around the gap. Expect most calls to be sparse here: the screen a festival uses to open a call collects the deadline, the kind of judging and the categories, and none of the five facts above, so a call posted from it arrives with an almost empty grid. A call with none of them still shows the card and its heading. A festival's expected pace is no longer shown here, even on a call that posted one: films differ in length, so a films-a-week figure misled more than it told.

A sparse call still takes a full application. Nothing the application asks depends on these facts. See Applying to an open call.

Categories they need covered

The categories this call opens, with what each pays — under a Film heading and then a Screenplay heading. A heading with no categories under it is not drawn, and an episode category, or one with no kind of its own, sits under Film. The count in the card's header is the number of categories on offer here.

The prices are in columns, headed once: Category, then Creative and/or Technical — one column for each kind of judging the call hires for. The list scrolls inside the card once it is long, with the headings staying put.

On a paying call whose festival has set payment terms, one line under the list says when it pays — "Paid 30 days after invoice".

• The prices are live, read at the moment you open the page, and they come from the season's own category pricing rather than from anything typed on the call. They are the call's posted prices and never your own — a figure you asked for, and any counter the festival made, are on your application.
• This list can be narrower than the season's line-up. A festival chooses which of its categories a call is open to. Where they opened it to all of them, this is the whole season; where they picked a few, it is those few, and a category that is not listed here cannot be applied for — it is not on the form either.
• A category is also left out when nothing on it can be judged the way this call hires. The restriction and the scorecards narrow the list together, so a listed category is one you could genuinely be assigned from.
• There is no film count here. Festivals tell you the size of the round — "About 30" above — and not how it splits across categories.
• Under the list: "You pick the categories you want in the application. Taking fewer than all of them does not weaken your application."
• A call with nothing left after both of those narrowings keeps the card and says "No categories listed yet" rather than showing an empty list. Such a call cannot be applied to at all — see When you cannot apply.

What your application states

The last card is the list of things the application will ask you for, so the cost of applying is known before the form opens: Categories you want ("Pick from the 6 above. The coordinator assigns inside what you pick."), Formats you can cover ("This call takes films and screenplays."), Languages and subtitles, and What you are paid. It no longer mentions your pace or the dates you are away, because the application no longer asks for them.

The last bullet is where the money is stated in a sentence:

Bullets that depend on something the festival did not post are dropped, so a bare call shows a shorter list.

That list is what the form asks, over three steps — the form also asks which kind of judging you want when the call hires for both — see Applying to an open call.

The right-hand column

Pay, per scorecard at the top, and under it the span across this call's categories. Under that, a line saying what to do about it:

Then a short summary — the Applications closing line, Judges needed when the festival posted one, and the Season.

Under that, one of these, and never more than one:

Four notes on the Application in review block:

• It names no figure, on purpose: your application is a price per category now, and one number in this sentence could only be a summary of several. The full breakdown is one click away on the application itself, and putting it in two places is how the two come to disagree.
• "2 categories" is dropped when there is nothing to count, and the sentence falls back to "the categories you picked". That is what an application filed before the application form existed looks like. An application filed before per-category pricing reads the same sentence as every other — the single per-film figure it once quoted here is gone.
• It does not change when the festival replies with different rates. The words are the same; only the pill beside the heading turns amber and reads Counter received. The figures, and the two buttons for answering them, are on the application itself.
• Withdraw deletes the application, here exactly as it does on the application's own screen, with the same confirmation — with one difference: the extra line about a standing counter is only on the application screen's own Withdraw. See Withdrawing an application.

Open your queue goes to that festival's judging home. If the festival has since paused or removed you there, that address gives "page not found" rather than an explanation — the Festivals tab of your account is where your standing at each festival is spelled out.

Then About the festival: the festival's one-line description — at most two lines of it, however long it is — what the festival wrote about itself, a monospace "9 seasons on FilmScorecard", its location and website when it has given them, and your own history line when you have one.

And last, Payment:

The festival pays you directly. FilmScorecard keeps your statements and invoices but does not pay judges.

Paid by — The festival

That is the whole arrangement, and the Judge Code of Conduct says the same. FilmScorecard holds no judge pay and there is no payout account to connect anywhere in it. Treat a figure on this surface as a record of what was agreed. Once you are on a paid panel, your statement on Earnings is where that record lives.

When a call's address does not work

"Page not found" covers four different situations and deliberately does not distinguish them: an address that was mistyped, a call that never existed, a call a festival has scheduled but not opened yet, and a call whose festival is unavailable on FilmScorecard at the moment. A closed call is not one of them — those pages keep working.

What other judges see

This screen is built around one promise, and it is worth stating in full:

• Your prices and your application are visible to the festival you applied to, and to no other judge. Not their contents, not their existence, and not whether either of you has replied to the other.
• You never see another judge's anything either — no name, no rate, no application, no ranking.
• The board shows no applicant counts and no filled seats, on any call, ever. "4 judges needed" is the size of the panel being hired, and there is no figure anywhere for how much of it is spoken for.

None of that is a setting, and no festival can switch it on. The private facts are never sent to your browser in the first place.

On a narrow window or a phone

• The sidebar becomes a bar across the top with a Menu button.
• The cards reflow to fewer per row, and to one on a phone.
• Format and Sort fold into one Filters button the moment the toolbar would run onto a second line, and always on a phone. It opens a panel with one row per filter; the button shows how many formats are picked.
• On a phone the toolbar is one line — search and Filters — and the count gives way to the line under the cards, which says the same.
• The tabs are one line; if they do not fit, swipe them sideways.
• On a call's page, the right-hand column moves underneath the left one.
• Start application goes full width, and every control is a comfortable size.
• Apart from the tabs, nothing on these screens scrolls sideways.

What these screens do not have

Named plainly so you do not go looking:

• No link to your own application. The pill says a reply is waiting; getting to the screen that answers it means the address with /apply on the end, or the festival's email — see Finding your own application again.
• No answering a counter from the board. The accepting and the sending back are on your application — see When the festival replies with different rates.
• No badge and no notice from the board itself when a festival replies. The pill appears when a page loads; the festival's own email is the only thing that arrives unprompted.
• No filter or sort by your own status, so a call waiting on your answer is found by looking down the Applied tab rather than by narrowing it.
• No editing an application you have already sent. Withdraw and apply again, while the call is still open, is the only way to change one — and the second application is quoted at today's prices. Sending back a revised ask changes the figures only, and only in answer to a counter.
• No alert when a new call appears. The quiet number beside Open calls is the only signal, and it moves when a page loads. No email goes out for a new call — and none goes out when you apply, either.
• No saving or shortlisting a call for yourself. Keep the link.
• No location. Calls carry no city, so there is nothing to filter or search by, and none is shown.
• No film counts per category, anywhere, on any of these screens.
• No sign of the categories a festival left out of a call. You see what the call opens; the rest of the season is not shown and there is nothing to ask for.
• No different categories for each kind of judging. On a call that hires for both, one application can ask for both — but for the same categories under each.
• The board itself writes nothing. Filtering, sorting and searching change only what you are looking at. The only things on these screens that write are Start application and Withdraw application, both of which live on a call's own page.

Related guides

• Applying to an open call — the three-step form behind Start application, what each step asks, what happens when you submit, answering a festival that replies with different rates, and withdrawing afterwards.
• Your judging home — the screen the Open calls row sits under: the film in front of you at a festival that already has you.
• Your account — listing yourself in the judges directory, whether you judge for pay, and the festivals you judge for.
• When a festival is unavailable — why a call can leave the board and come back.