Rewriting written feedback

A creative scorecard carries up to two written boxes — Positive feedback and Opportunities for improvement, whichever of them the scorecard has switched on — and the person who submitted the film eventually reads them word for word. Some also carry a written answer to a question that filmmaker asked themselves, which they read the same way. Anyone who can approve scorecards has two ways to hand text from any of those boxes to OpenAI, and neither one saves anything until you save or file the scorecard yourself:

• The Rewrite button beside each box. Press it and the whole box is sent, tidied up, and put back in place of what was there — under an Undo.
• The selection bar. Highlight some words inside a box and a small bar appears over them with four actions — Rewrite, Extend, Shorten and Custom. Each one changes only the words you highlighted and leaves the rest of the box exactly as it was, under the same Undo.

The button is a clean-up, not a rewrite of the opinion: spelling and grammar, swearing replaced with professional wording, fragments made into sentences, plainer words, and a shorter version when the text runs long. The bar's Rewrite is the same clean-up on a smaller piece; Extend and Shorten change its length; Custom does what you tell it to. Read what comes back before you keep it.

Judges do not have either. A judge's own scoring screen has no Rewrite button and no selection bar, in any state — not on the two feedback boxes and not on their answer to a filmmaker's question. They belong to the staff who moderate feedback before it reaches a filmmaker.

Where it is

One Rewrite button sits beside each box, and the selection bar appears over any words you highlight inside one, on every screen where staff edit written feedback:

• The scorecard panel — the one described in Reading and editing a scorecard, wherever you open it from: a row on the Review Queue, Edit on a submission's Scoring tab, or a scorecard in a judge's panel on the Judges screen.
• The feedback pop-out on the Review Queue — the box that opens when you click a written answer in its Positive feedback or Opportunities column, described in The two feedback columns. It holds one box at a time, with the same button and the same bar.
• The scoring form, when you are filling out a scorecard yourself — on the scoring page and on the form that opens over the Submissions list alike.

And which boxes, on the panel and the form:

• Positive feedback and Opportunities for improvement, at the right end of each one's label row — each only where the scorecard has that box switched on, because a box that is off is not drawn at all. The pop-out holds one of these two and nothing else.
• A written answer to one of the filmmaker's own questions, in the block headed Questions from the filmmaker — the button sits above the answer box rather than on a label row, because the question itself is the label. Only the free-text ones: there is nothing to rewrite about a Yes, a number or a picked option.

Some things about where it is and is not:

• Creative scorecards only. A technical checklist and a press-kit card have no written boxes, so there is nothing to rewrite and no button or bar.
• Approved scorecards included. The panel and the pop-out both let you edit an approved scorecard, and both are there exactly as Save is.
• Those boxes and no others. An award reason, a fail note, an announcement, a message — none of them has a Rewrite button, and highlighting words in them opens nothing. Nor do the festival's own free-text questions, even though they sit a few rows above a filmmaker's question that does have it: the filmmaker's question is one the submitter will read an answer to under their own words, and the festival's is not, yet. That difference is deliberate for now and may not survive.
• On a narrow screen the label-row buttons drop under the label, still right-aligned.

Where the bar appears

On a desktop or tablet the bar floats just above the first line you highlighted — centred over the highlighted words when they sit on one line, centred over the box when they run across several. When there is no room above, it sits just below the last highlighted line instead. It follows the box if you scroll it or resize it, and if you scroll the highlighted lines out of view inside the box it waits at the box's edge.

On a phone — a screen 640 pixels wide or narrower — nothing floats. The same four buttons appear as one full-width row between the box's label and the box itself, and go away with the highlight.

Who has it

The same capability that lets you edit: "Approve scorecards and resolve flags." Festival admins and coordinators have it by default; organization owners and org admins always have it — see Who can work here. Without it the panel opens read-only, there is no Rewrite button on it at all — not greyed, absent — and highlighting words opens no bar; the queue's pop-out opens as plain text with no box. The scoring form is only reachable with the capability in the first place.

If you can approve scorecards and still see no button anywhere, FilmScorecard has not been connected to OpenAI. The button and the bar exist only once that connection is set up; until then neither is drawn on any screen, and nothing about your role is wrong.

What a rewrite asks for

Every instruction is fixed — the same one for every box, on every festival, every time. There are five: one for the button, three for the bar's one-press actions, and an opening line that your own words follow when you use Custom.

The Rewrite button

Please rewrite this text. Fix any grammatical and spelling errors. Replace any profanity with more professional language. Convert any sentence fragments to full and complete sentences. Make sure that all words used are easily readable at the 8th grade level. If the text exceeds 100 words, please rewrite the contents of this field to 100 words or less.

One further line asks for the rewritten text on its own, with no preamble, no quotation marks and no explanation, and never an em dash: where the text has one, a comma, a period or parentheses takes its place.

Text under 100 words is not asked to be shortened. The cap applies when the box runs over it.

The selection bar

Rewrite:

Please rewrite the selected text. Fix any grammatical and spelling errors. Replace any profanity with more professional language. Convert any sentence fragments to full and complete sentences. Make sure that all words used are easily readable at the 8th grade level. Keep it about the same length.

Extend:

Please expand the selected text by about half its length, adding no more than two sentences. Develop the points it already makes with more detail and clearer explanation, in full and complete sentences readable at the 8th grade level.

Shorten:

Please shorten the selected text to roughly half its length. Keep every point it makes, remove repetition and filler, and use full and complete sentences readable at the 8th grade level.

Custom is a fixed opening with your own words after it:

Please apply this instruction to the selected text:

followed by whatever you wrote in the instruction box — exactly as you wrote it apart from spaces trimmed from either end, never reworded, never wrapped in quotation marks.

Every bar request also carries one further line in place of the button's, telling the model what it is looking at:

You are editing one part of a film festival judge's written feedback. Change only the selected part; the rest is context. Do not add new critique or praise. Return only the replacement text, with no preamble, no quotation marks and no explanation. Never use an em dash; where the text has one, use a comma, a period or parentheses instead.

Things to read into all of that:

• "About half its length", "roughly half" and "about the same length" are targets. Extend's one hard line is "no more than two sentences". Extend on four words and Shorten on four words both come back as whatever OpenAI made of the request.
• "Do not add new critique or praise" goes with every bar action, Custom included. An instruction asking for a new point about the film is asking against a line that has just said otherwise; what comes back is what OpenAI decided between the two.
• It is a request, not a rule. A reply that arrives wrapped in quotation marks, or that changed more than you wanted, is yours to edit or undo before you save. Nothing checks it for you.
• The instructions do not change on a filmmaker's question. The line above still says "a film festival judge's written feedback", which is exactly what the answer is — but the model is never told what the question was.

What is sent, and what is not

This is the one place in FilmScorecard where text leaves the platform for a third party, so it is worth being precise.

When you press the Rewrite button: the text of that one box, as it stands at that moment — the judge's words, or your edited version of them — together with the fixed instruction above and one line saying what the judge was answering (see below), and nothing else.

When you use the selection bar: more than the highlighted words. The request carries, in this order:

• the action's instruction — or, for Custom, the fixed opening followed by yours;
• one line saying what the judge was answering (see below);
• the highlighted words on their own, under the heading "Selected text:";
• the whole box, under the heading "The full field, for context only:" — every word in it, highlighted or not, exactly as the box holds it. The model is told which part to change and shown the rest so that the replacement fits its sentence.

A Custom instruction is your own writing, and it goes too. Everything else that ever leaves is the judge's feedback or your edit of it; the instruction box is the one place where something you typed for the purpose — "warmer", "address the director as you", "keep the point about sound" — is sent to OpenAI as it stands. Nothing reads or changes it first, beyond trimming the spaces at either end and the 500-character limit the box itself enforces. Write it as something that leaves the building.

What the judge was answering goes with every request, as the line "The judge was answering: …". On the two feedback boxes that is the box's name — "Positive feedback" or "Opportunities for improvement". On a filmmaker's question it is the question itself, as the filmmaker wrote it. It is there so the model knows the subject: Extend and Custom add words, and without it they drift, or an improvement box comes back reading like praise.

What does not go, from either the button or the bar: the other boxes, the film's title, its tracking number, the category, any score, the judge's name, your name, your festival's name, or anything else that says whose film or whose words they are. Two identical boxes with the same words highlighted send two identical requests, whichever scorecards they belong to.

Both go to OpenAI's API, to the gpt-4.1-mini model unless FilmScorecard has been configured to use another. A bar reply is given twice the room a button reply has (1,024 tokens against 512), because Extend can lengthen a long passage; a reply that runs past its room is refused whole either way.

The request is sent with OpenAI's storage setting turned off, which asks OpenAI not to keep it on its side. What OpenAI does with a request beyond that is governed by OpenAI's own API terms, not by FilmScorecard.

FilmScorecard keeps no record of the rewrite — not the text, not which action you pressed, not a Custom instruction. The text that comes back is a draft in your box like anything you might have typed; once you save or file, it is simply the text of the scorecard — on the panel and the pop-out, the scorecard's history records the change as your edit, the before and the after under your name; on the scoring form it is filed as your scorecard, and proofread a moment later like any filing — see What filing does — and nothing marks it as a rewrite. Pressing Rewrite and then undoing it leaves no trace anywhere.

Using the Rewrite button

1. Open the scorecard and find the box. Rewrite is dim while the box is empty; write or paste something and it lights up.
2. Press Rewrite. That box goes grey and read-only, the button reads Rewriting… with a spinner, and you wait — usually a few seconds. The other boxes stay live: you can keep typing in one, or press its own Rewrite at the same time.
3. When the reply lands, it replaces the text in the box, the box is live again, and a quiet Undo appears to the left of Rewrite. Read it.
4. Keep it, edit it, or press Undo to get the original back.
5. Save or file as you normally would. Nothing has been written yet — see Nothing is saved until you save or file.

A screen reader hears "Rewritten." when the reply lands, and the two buttons name their box — "Rewrite positive feedback", "Undo rewrite of opportunities for improvement" — so two identical buttons on one card are never confused. On a filmmaker's question the box's name is the question itself, so the button reads "Rewrite the question as they wrote it".

Using the selection bar

1. Highlight the words you want changed — a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, or a single word. Drag with the mouse, double-click a word, or hold Shift and use the arrow keys. With the mouse the bar appears the moment you let go of the button; with the keyboard it follows as the highlight grows. A highlight that is only spaces or line breaks opens nothing.
2. Press Rewrite, Extend or Shorten. The bar collapses to one line — "Rewriting 5 words", "Extending 5 words", "Shortening 5 words" — the box goes grey and read-only, and you wait, usually a few seconds. Or press Custom and write an instruction — see Custom instructions.
3. When the reply lands it takes the place of the highlighted words, and only those. The box is live again, the new words are highlighted in turn with the bar back over them, and a quiet Undo appears on the label row. Read it.
4. Keep it, edit it, press another action on the same words while they are still highlighted — Extend and then Shorten, say — or press Undo.
5. Save or file as you normally would. Nothing has been written yet.

The count in "Rewriting 5 words" is the number of words you highlighted, and so is the count a screen reader hears when it lands — "Rewrote 5 words." — whatever length the reply turned out to be.

The highlight is what the bar acts on, so whatever changes or drops the highlight changes the bar with it:

• Highlight different words and the bar moves to them.
• Click anywhere in the box and the highlight is gone, and so is the bar. Typing, pasting or cutting in the box closes it the same way.
• Click or tap anywhere outside the box and the bar closes. Highlight the words again to bring it back.
• Press Escape and the bar closes but the words stay highlighted. That same highlight does not bring it back: make a different one, or click to drop it and make it again.
• It never opens on a box you cannot edit — a read-only panel, or a box whose Rewrite button is still working — and it closes if the box's text changes underneath it, which happens when the panel picks up a colleague's save.

Custom instructions

Custom swaps the four actions for an instruction box with a back arrow (‹) on its left and Apply on its right, and puts the cursor in it. Write what you want done to the highlighted words — up to 500 characters; the box grows to a few lines and then scrolls — and then:

• Enter, or Apply, sends it. Apply stays dim, and Enter does nothing, until you have written something other than spaces.
• Shift+Enter starts a new line inside the instruction.
• Escape, or the back arrow, returns to the four actions and drops what you wrote. The words stay highlighted and the cursor goes back to the box.

While the instruction box is open, the highlight you made when you pressed Custom is the one that will be sent; changing it in the box does nothing until you go back or apply. The instruction travels exactly as you wrote it, spaces at either end trimmed — see What is sent.

The bar reads "Applying to 5 words" while a Custom request is out, and a screen reader hears "Applied instruction to 5 words." when it lands.

Undo

Undo puts back exactly what was in the box when you pressed the button or the bar action — character for character, including anything you had typed before pressing it. It is one level deep: there is one Undo per box, shared between the button and the bar, and it holds the text from the most recent change of either kind.

After a bar action, Undo also puts the highlight back on the original words, with the bar over them, so trying a different action on them is one press away. After the Rewrite button it puts back the text and nothing else.

Undo goes away when:

• you type in that box — the change is now yours, edited;
• you press the Rewrite button or any bar action on that box again — the moment you press it, whether or not the new reply comes back. A failed attempt leaves nothing to undo, and when a reply does land the new Undo holds the text from just before that press, not the original;
• you press Discard changes in the panel;
• you close the panel, the pop-out or the form.

Undo survives Save in the panel. Save the scorecard with the change in it, read it again, and change your mind: Undo is still there, and pressing it puts the original text back and marks the panel as having unsaved changes — save again to keep it. The one exception: the panel re-reads its scorecard about once a minute, and if a colleague's edit to the same box lands in that window after your save, the panel shows their version and that box's Undo goes away — the text it would have put back is no longer the text that was changed. In the queue's pop-out, Save closes the box, so there is no Undo after it: reopen the answer and put the wording back by hand.

Each box's Undo is its own. Undoing one leaves the others' changes in place.

While it runs

• Only the box being rewritten is locked. The rest of the scorecard — the other boxes, the scores, the recommendations — is yours to work on.
• One request per box at a time. While a bar action is out, that box's label-row Rewrite is unavailable — dim, still reading "Rewrite"; the bar is what names the running request. While the Rewrite button's own request is out, highlighting words in that box opens no bar. The other boxes are not affected either way: a bar action in one and the button in another can run together.
• Save changes and Approve scorecard (or Save and approve) are held in the panel while any rewrite is out, the pop-out's Save is held the same way, and File and approve is held on the scoring form, so a box that is about to change cannot be written half-way. A rewrite of a filmmaker's answer holds them exactly as one of the two feedback boxes does. They come back the moment the last reply lands. Discard changes and closing are not held.
• Discard changes drops a rewrite that is still running. So does closing the panel, the pop-out or the form, or opening a different scorecard. A reply that arrives afterwards is thrown away; it never lands on text you have already reverted or left. Escape while a request is running is not the bar's to catch: in the panel it closes the panel, as it always has, and the request goes with it.
• It waits at most 20 seconds. If nothing has come back by then the wait is given up and the box is handed back to you unchanged.

If it fails

A failure is one red sentence directly under the box. The text in the box is untouched and the box is live. After the Rewrite button, the button reads Rewrite again and trying again is one press. After a bar action, the words you highlighted are highlighted again with the bar back over them — and if it was Custom, the instruction box is reopened with your instruction still in it — so trying again is the same press as before. The sentence clears the next time you send a request from that box or type in it.

A failed rewrite never blanks the box and never lands half a reply. A reply that OpenAI cut short is refused whole rather than pasted in as a sentence that stops mid-way.

Keyboard and screen readers

With the bar open and the cursor in the box:

• Tab moves into the bar, onto Rewrite; Tab again walks along Extend, Shorten and Custom, and Tab past Custom closes the bar and puts the cursor back on the highlighted words. Shift+Tab from Rewrite puts the cursor back on them with the bar still open. The highlight stays painted while you are in the bar.
• Escape closes the bar — from the box or from inside it — and leaves the words highlighted with the cursor on them. With the bar closed, a second Escape does what it did before the bar existed: in the panel, it closes the panel.
• In the instruction box, Enter applies, Shift+Enter is a new line and Escape goes back to the four actions. Shift+Tab from the back arrow does the same as pressing it; Tab past Apply closes the bar and returns to the box.

A screen reader hears the bar as a toolbar named for its box — "Selection actions for positive feedback" — with buttons "Rewrite selection in positive feedback", "Extend selection in positive feedback", "Shorten selection in positive feedback" and "Custom instruction for selection in positive feedback"; the back arrow is "Back to selection actions" and the instruction box "Instruction for selection in positive feedback". On a filmmaker's question the box's name is the question, so those same phrases carry the filmmaker's own wording — which is long, and is the honest answer to "which field is this?". While a request is out the box's status line reads "Rewriting 5 words" (or Extending, Shortening, Applying to); when it lands, "Rewrote 5 words.", "Extended 5 words.", "Shortened 5 words." or "Applied instruction to 5 words." — and "Rewritten." after the Rewrite button. A failure sentence is announced as an alert.

Nothing is saved until you save or file

Neither the button nor the bar writes anything. They change the text in the box on your screen, and that is all. What puts the text on the scorecard is the same act as for any other edit:

• in the panel, Save changes or Save and approve — the change flips the footer to "Unsaved changes." and reveals Discard changes, exactly as typing would, and Discard changes puts every box back to the last save;
• in the queue's pop-out, Save — which writes that one answer and closes the box;
• on the scoring form, File and approve — the change counts as unsaved work, so the browser's "leave site?" warning stands in the way of closing the tab, exactly as it does for anything you typed.

Close without saving and the change is gone, as any unsaved edit is.

Once saved, it is the scorecard's wording — and, on an approved scorecard that has been released, the filmmaker reads your saved version the next time they open their page, with nothing to say it changed. See The written feedback and, for an answer to one of their own questions, The filmmaker's own questions.

What it does not do

• It does not offer a fifth action, or let you change the instructions for your festival. The four are fixed; Custom is how you ask for something else, one highlight at a time.
• It does not show you a preview. The reply lands in the box; Undo is the way back.
• It does not touch the scores, the recommendations, a technical note, or any other box. A bar action does not touch the rest of its own box either.
• It does not reach the festival's own free-text questions, only the two feedback boxes and a filmmaker's own written answer.
• It does not mark the text as rewritten — not on the scorecard, not in its history, not for the filmmaker.
• It does not keep a copy of anything. FilmScorecard stores neither what was sent, nor what came back, nor a Custom instruction; a failed attempt leaves one line in FilmScorecard's own error log naming what went wrong, and never the text.
• Judges never see it, on any screen, in any state.

Related guides

• Reading and editing a scorecard — the panel the boxes live in, and what saving records.
• Filling out a scorecard yourself — the scoring form, and everything that happens the moment you file.
• Review Queue — the screen most scorecards are opened from, the pop-out that edits one feedback answer on its own, and the capability that makes it a working one.
• Building a scorecard — the two switches that decide which of the boxes a scorecard has.
• Releasing scorecards — what the filmmaker eventually reads, every box that is switched on included.