Opening a judge call

A judge call is your season's advertisement for judges: it puts the season on the Open calls board that every judge on FilmScorecard can read, so people you have never met can apply to work on it. The Open judge call card is where you write one, open it, and close it again.

It is the second card on Settings → Judging (…/settings?tab=judging), under the Scoring card. Like every card on that tab it starts folded: its title, its CALL- code and status pill, its sentence — "Invite judges to apply to judge this season. The call is listed in the judge portal, and every application comes to you to accept or decline. One call per season." — and its requests line. Click Open judge call to open it. Only the people who can open Settings can reach it — owners, org admins and festival admins; see Festival settings.

One call per season, and this card is the only place one exists. There is no other screen for creating, editing, opening or closing a call, and a season can never end up with two.

The switch is the listing

Everything else on the card describes a listing. The Accepting applications switch decides whether there is one. Its sentence: "Turn this off to stop new applications. Any you've already received stay open for you to decide on."

Beside the switch, a few words say which: "Open. Listed in the judge portal." or "Closed. Hidden from the judge portal." While it is off, the line under it adds:

Judges can't find this season or apply to it, but invites still work. The roles, submission types and categories you pick are kept for when you open it again.

Three things follow from that, and they are worth knowing before you touch it:

• Inviting judges by email is unaffected either way. A closed call closes the public door only — Judges and Invites sent work exactly as before.
• Closing does not cancel the applications you already have. Every request filed while the call was open stays on your Requests tab, still shortlistable, counterable, acceptable and declinable. The judge who filed it keeps seeing their own application too, marked closed.
• Nothing is written until you press Save changes on the tab's bar at the bottom of the screen. Flipping the switch marks the tab unsaved, like any other edit on this screen.

While your festival's public page is on, an open call is on it too, as its Judging tab — see What your call looks like to a judge.

The header line

Beside the card's title:

• A CALL- code in monospace — CALL-214 — but only once the call exists. A season that has never been saved on this card shows no code, and nothing is invented in its place. Quote that code if you ever need to refer to a call; it is the same one the judge sees.
• A pill reading Accepting applications in indigo, or Closed to applications in grey. It follows the switch as you move it, so the card is always a preview of what Save will do.

Under the title sit the card's sentence, the requests line on a call that has had applications, and Review requests, which is there either way — see Requests, and where they are decided. All of it shows while the card is folded.

The state is worked out, never stored. A call whose close date has passed reads closed the next time you open the screen, exactly as it now reads closed to judges. There is no separate "listed" flag that could disagree with what the board is doing.

Opening a call for the first time

On a season that has never had one, the card starts closed, with no code, and its rows already filled in with sensible defaults — both judge roles, every submission type that has a category attached, and every category selected. The one thing it cannot guess is your deadline.

1. Click Open judge call to open the card.
2. Turn Accepting applications on. The rest of the rows appear.
3. Set Applications close.
4. Check Judge roles wanted, Submission types open to applicants and Categories open to applicants — the defaults are usually right.
5. Press Save changes on the bar at the bottom of the screen.

The bar goes, a CALL- code appears beside the heading, and the season is on the board. Nothing else has to happen: there is no publish step and no approval.

You can do all of this while judging is already open. The amber notice on the Scoring card above — the one about the number of creative judges — does not apply here. A season that needs another judge mid-window is the ordinary reason to open a call.

Applications close

A date, not a time.

• It is read in the season's own time zone, the one on the Season tab, not in your browser's. A host in London setting a deadline on a Los Angeles season is setting a Los Angeles date.
• The call closes at the end of that day. "Applications close on the 18th" means the 18th is the last day anybody can apply.
• Today is allowed. A call opened for the last day of your own window is a real thing to want.
• A past date is refused: "That date has passed. Pick today or a later date."

The row's sentence states the rest:

The last day judges can apply. This can be different from when judging closes.

It is not the judging dates. The Judging row's Opens and Closes, on the Season tab's Dates card, are when your panel scores; this is when you stop taking applications. Nothing links them, and neither one moves the other.

When the date arrives, the call simply stops. It leaves the board, your card reads closed the next time you open it, and the requests you already have are untouched. Nothing is emailed to anybody at either end.

Judges see the deadline as a whole-day countdown — "Closes in 5 days" — counted in universal time, so it can read a day out from your own calendar. See The closing line.

Judge roles wanted

Two chips, Technical and Creative, and you can pick either or both. This is the kind of judging you are recruiting for, and it is real: it decides what an applicant can apply as.

On a call hiring for one role the applicant is never asked the question — their application is for that role. On a call hiring for both they choose Creative, Technical or Both, and Both is one application: it asks for a creative and a technical figure on every category, and lists only the categories scored both ways. When you accept it you can still take the judge on for just one of the two — see Accept and add to season. See Step 1 of the application.

One thing this card does not check for you. A judge can only be assigned from a category that has a scorecard for the kind of judging they applied as. If you open a Technical call on a season whose categories carry no technical scorecard, applicants reach the call and are told "This call has no categories listed yet" — and cannot apply at all. Attach the scorecards first: see Categories and scorecards.

Pay shown to applicants

Read-only, and derived. There is no rate field on a call and there is not meant to be one: what a judge is quoted comes from the per-category rates on the Categories tab, so the call can never quote a figure the season does not actually pay. The row's sentence says so — "Judges are paid for each scorecard they file, at the rate set on each category. This range is worked out from those rates. Change them on the Categories tab." — and Open Categories under it takes you there. The row was called Pay shown in the call.

One box per role you are recruiting for, each naming the role and showing a span — Creative $8.00 to $16.00 per scorecard:

• The span is across the whole season's categories, not across the ones you ticked in the picker. It is what this season pays, per scorecard filed.
• Rates of $0.00 are left out of it. A zero on a paying season is an unfinished rate rather than free work, so it never drags the bottom of the range down.
• It collapses to one figure when every priced category pays the same: $16.00, not "$16.00 to $16.00".

The figure the judge is shown can be narrower than this one. The span on the board card and on the call's page is worked out from the categories you opened; the box here is the season's. Opening a call to your two dearest categories leaves your own card reading $8.00 to $16.00 while the judge reads $16.00. Both are right — they are spans across different sets.

Three things in its place are not money and must not be read as $0.00:

Neither Volunteer nor Not priced yet stops you listing the call. A judge can still apply to a call with no prices on it, and name what they want for each category they pick — see Money on these screens.

To change any of it, go to the Categories tab. The per-category rates and the season-wide Paid-or-Volunteer choice, Judge pay this season, both live there — see Judge pay.

Submission types open to applicants

Two chips, Film and Screenplay, each carrying the number of this season's categories it covers — 6 categories, 1 category. The row was called Work types open to applicants.

They decide which categories can be opened at all, which is what the row's sentence says: "Judges can only apply to judge categories of these types."

Two behaviours to expect:

• A chip with no categories under it cannot be picked, and it says so with a 0 categories count. If it is already picked — because the last category of that type was detached after the call went up — it stays pickable, so you are never trapped behind a dead control.
• Unticking a type drops its categories from your selection, there and then. Ticking it again does not bring them back; the picker starts from what is selected now.

Picking neither is refused, in the message's own older words: "Pick at least one work type. The call cannot be listed without one."

Categories open to applicants

A button that states the answer rather than the question, and opens a picker. The row's sentence: "Leave this on all categories, or narrow the call to some. Applicants only see the categories they could judge."

Inside the picker, under the heading Open to applicants:

• A search box — "Search 75 categories" — matching category names and their CAT- codes. It is empty every time the picker opens.
• Select all, which becomes Select all 6 matching while a search is narrowing the list and then applies to those matches only. Nothing you cannot see is ever ticked for you.
• A monospace "12 selected" count, and Clear.
• One row per category, with its CAT- code on the right. A one-off category with no library record shows no code.
• "No category matches “xyz”." with a Clear search button when the search finds nothing.

All of them keeps up with your season; some of them does not

The two are stored differently, and the difference matters later.

• Every openable category picked — the button reading All 39 categories, whether you left it alone or ticked every row yourself — stores no restriction at all. The call is open to the season's line-up, whatever that line-up becomes — so a category you attach next week is automatically open without anybody coming back here.
• Any smaller selection is stored as a restriction naming exactly those categories. A category attached next week is not in it.

Detaching a category takes it out of the restriction too. Nothing is left pointing at a category the season no longer has, and a call whose entire restriction is detached goes back to being open to everything remaining.

What the restriction does on the judge's side

The row's sentence — "Applicants only see the categories they could judge." — is true as written. From the moment you save, a restriction narrows every place a judge meets your call:

• The card on the open-calls board names only the categories you opened. It is also what the board's search matches on, so a judge searching for the name of a category you did not open will not find your call that way.
• The call's own page lists only those categories, with their prices, and the count in that card's heading is the number you opened.
• The pay span on the board card and on the call's page is worked out from them alone — the cheapest and the dearest of the categories you opened, not of the season.
• The application form offers only those categories on step 1. There is no way for an applicant to ask to be assigned from a category you did not open.
• An application naming a category you did not open is refused when it is submitted, so a form somebody left sitting open while you narrowed the call cannot slip one through. They pick again and resubmit.

The restriction narrows; it does not overrule anything else. A category you opened is still only offered where the kind of judging on the call can actually be scored there — one with no scorecard for that kind carries no price and cannot be picked, exactly as before. And if none of the categories you opened can be judged the way this call hires, the call reads "This call has no categories listed yet" and nobody can apply to it at all.

Applications already on file are untouched. Narrowing a call after somebody applied leaves their application exactly as they filed it: the Requests tab still names the categories they picked, you still decide it, and accepting still scopes them to those picks — including a category the call no longer opens. The restriction governs who can apply next, not what you already have.

The two empty states

When the picked submission types reach no category, there is no picker to open — the row shows a grey No categories box instead:

What applicants send

A row that is a statement, not a setting. Its sentence: "Every application has the same parts at every festival, so there is nothing to set up here." Beside it, a list of the three parts: Past credits, A short bio and The categories they want to judge.

There is no application form to design, no question to add, and nothing to switch off. What an applicant is asked is fixed for the whole platform — see Applying to an open call for the three steps they walk. The application does not ask how many submissions a judge can take a week, or when they are away. Credits and a bio come from the judge's directory profile, when they have one.

Where applicants send questions

An optional email address, the card's last row, for judges' questions about this call — "An email address on your public festival page, for judges who want to ask something before they apply." It was called Questions from judges. It is there whether the switch is on or off, and it saves with Save changes either way.

Where it shows: on your festival's public page, as Judging coordinator in its Contact card — and only while the call is open, the address is set, the page is on and its Contact card is switched on. It is not on the open-calls board, on the call's page in the judge portal, or in any email.

Leave it blank and the line under it says what happens: "Leave it blank and your page shows no address for judge questions." The page has no Judging coordinator row — the season's contact email does not stand in for it — though judges can still use the festival office address on the same card. An address that is not a valid email is refused under the field, and nothing on the card is saved.

Editing the call from your public page

Two of this card's fields can also be changed on your festival's public page, while its judge call is open: in edit mode the Judging tab carries Apply by — this card's Applications close — and Judging coordinator — this card's Where applicants send questions. They are the same values, saved by the same rules: a change on either side is a change on both, and a past date or a bad address is refused there in the same words as here. The same tab also edits the season's judging dates and each category's creative and technical rate. See Editing the page.

The switch, the roles, the submission types and the category picks are edited here and nowhere else.

The four rules that block a listing

A call cannot be listed without a close date, at least one judge role, at least one submission type, and at least one category. With Accepting applications on, each rule turns its own line amber the moment the card is in the wrong state:

While any of them stands and this card holds an unsaved edit, the Judging tab cannot save. The card opens itself if it was folded, and Save changes on the bar is greyed out, with "Fix the highlighted setting before saving." — for the Scoring card's changes too. Nothing is written; the stored call is exactly as it was.

None of these rules applies to closing. They gate listing. Turn the switch off and the same card saves without complaint, whatever the fields were in the middle of saying.

Closing the call, and opening it again

1. Turn Accepting applications off. The roles, pay, submission types, categories and What applicants send rows go; Applications close and Where applicants send questions stay, and the line under the switch reads:

   Judges can't find this season or apply to it, but invites still work. The roles, submission types and categories you pick are kept for when you open it again.

2. Press Save changes on the bar at the bottom of the screen.

That takes the season off the board immediately — and off your festival's public page, whose Judging tab goes with it. Judges who never applied cannot find it; judges holding a filed request keep their own application, shown as closed, and you can still decide it — see Closing the call does not close these rows.

Your work survives the close. The close date, the roles, the submission types and the category picks are all kept, so re-opening is the switch plus a fresh date.

Two details worth knowing about an OFF save:

• It writes the closure, the close date and the Where applicants send questions address, and nothing else — which is why only those two rows stay on screen. If you edited the roles, the submission types or the categories in the same sitting and then turned the call off, those edits are not stored — the card will show the previously saved values again. Save your content changes with the switch on, then close.
• On a season that has never had a call, saving with the switch off still creates one, born closed. That is where the CALL- code comes from, and it is invisible to every judge.

To re-open, turn the switch back on. The date you had is still in the field — and if it has since passed, the amber "That date has passed" line will be waiting for you, because a call cannot be re-listed on a deadline that is gone. Pick a new one and save.

Requests, and where they are decided

In the card's head, under its sentence — so they show even while the card is folded — a line about what has arrived and a link out.

"Awaiting a decision" means the same here as on the Requests tab: New and Shortlisted, plus every countered request the judge has answered, because their answer hands the move back to you. A request you have countered and the judge has not answered yet is not in it.

Review requests goes to this season's judge requests — /org/<organization>/<festival>/<season>/judges?tab=requests — which is where applications are actually read, countered, accepted and declined. It is there whether or not anything has arrived, and it is an ordinary link, so a middle click opens it in a new tab. See Judge requests.

Sending judges your public page

This card no longer has a Copy link button. The address to send judges is the festival's public page — the one a stranger can open without an account, and which shows an open call as its Judging tab — and it is on the Festival tab, in the Festival profile card's Page link box, with Copy and Open ↗. See Sharing the page.

What your call looks like to a judge

Worth reading once, because the card gives you no preview.

• On the board it is one card: your festival's name, a monospace "CALL-214 · Spring 2026 · Judge call" line — the code, the season and the round — then what the work pays and the closing line. "Judge call" is a fixed label on every call written here: the card collects no name for the round and there is nowhere to change it.
• The call's page lists the categories you opened, with what each one pays, under a Film heading and a Screenplay heading — the whole season's line-up when every category is picked. The application groups them the same way. See What the restriction does on the judge's side.
• The page is mostly bare, and that is expected. A call written here carries no film estimate, no pace, no languages, no written brief and no judges-needed figure, because this card collects none of them. The judge's "The work" panel simply closes up around what is missing.
• On your festival's public page, while it is on, the call is the Judging tab — its pay, its categories and an Apply to judge button — and the page opens on it. A visitor with no FilmScorecard account can create a judge account from that button, past the private beta, and is brought back to your application form once their profile is set up. See Applying to judge from the page.
• No email goes out when you open a call, to anybody. Judges find it by looking at the board, or at your public page.
• Nobody is told how many people have applied — not other judges, and not the applicant.

The whole judge's-eye view is Open calls.

Saving, and the amber dot

This card shares the Judging tab's one Save bar with the Scoring card above it.

• Change anything on either card and the bar appears — Unsaved changes on Judging, Discard and Save changes — and the Judging tab's name gets its amber dot. Folded, this card shows an amber dot of its own beside its title while it holds an unsaved edit.
• Save changes saves both cards, each to its own record. If one is refused, the other is still saved. The refused card opens and says why — under the setting it refused, or at its top — and the bar stays, reading "Some changes weren't saved. The card above says why."
• Discard puts both cards back to their last saved values with no confirmation, the switch included.
• The tab's "Last saved" time is whichever is later — this call's last save, or the season's.

Leaving the screen with anything unsaved raises the browser's own "leave without saving?" confirmation. See The two save models.

What this card cannot do

Named plainly so you do not go looking:

• A second call for one season. One per season, by design.
• Deleting a call. Close it; the record and its CALL- code stay.
• Naming the round, writing a brief, or posting how many judges you need, how many films there are, what pace you expect or what languages the slate is in. None of them is collected here, and the judge's page leaves them out.
• Setting a rate on the call. Prices come from the categories — see Judge pay.
• Restricting who sees the call. Every judge on FilmScorecard can read every open call; that is the point of the board.
• Warning you that a category you are closing is named on applications you already hold. Narrowing a call is silent about the requests on your Requests tab, and it does not change them.
• Telling anybody a call has opened or closed. No email, no notice, no announcement.

Related guides

• Festival settings — the screen this card lives on: its tabs, who can open them, and how each one saves.
• The public festival page — where an open call becomes the Judging tab, the Where applicants send questions address is shown, the page's address is copied from, and strangers can sign up to apply.
• Judge requests — what arrives when your call is listed: reading an application, countering the prices, accepting somebody onto the season, and declining.
• Judge pay — the per-category rates the pay row is derived from, and the season-wide Paid or Volunteer choice.
• Judges — the roster, inviting judges by email, and narrowing what somebody may be assigned once they are on.
• Open calls — the judge's side of the board your call appears on.
• Applying to an open call — the three-step form an applicant fills in, and what they are asked for.
• Categories and scorecards — where a category gets the scorecards that decide which kind of judging can cover it.