Scoring a film

The scoring screen is where you actually watch a film and record what you think. You reach it one way — Start scoring on your judging home — and you leave it by filing your card, by leaving the film, or by going anywhere else in the app — the judge sidebar (on a phone, Menu) stays around the scoring screen, and Next submission takes you back to your judging home.

This page covers how a film becomes yours, how long it stays yours, what the screen is made of, how to tell the festival something is wrong, and how work is saved and filed. The two cards have their own pages: The technical review card and The creative scorecard.

While you are holding a film, it is the only one you are offered. That rule, and the two ways out of it, are on One film at a time.

Starting a film takes it

Start scoring is not a link. Pressing it takes the film: it claims every card that is open to you on it, and only then opens the scoring screen. While it works the button reads "Opening…" and cannot be pressed again.

That matters because of what it does for you. From the moment you press it, the cards you hold are out of every other judge's queue. Nobody can take the film out from under you halfway through your notes.

Two things follow from it:

• Opening the address of a scoring screen never claims anything. Loading the page writes nothing at all. If you have no card on that film, you are put back on your judging home rather than shown an error.
• The claim can come back empty. Between your judging home loading and your press, the film may have filled up, been withdrawn by the festival, or left your scope. Nothing is taken, and you land back on your judging home with an amber line above the next film: "That film is no longer available. Here's your next one." — or just the first sentence when there is no other film for you. It never says which of those happened. See If the film is gone when you press Start scoring.

If the press itself cannot go through — the connection dropped, or something failed on our side — you stay where you are and a red line appears under the button:

This film is no longer one of yours to score. Nothing was recorded.

Your hold lasts 48 hours

A card is yours for 48 hours from the moment you take it. Pressing Continue scoring to pick a film back up starts a fresh 48 hours. After that the hold lapses:

• The film goes back into every judge's queue — including yours.
• Everything you typed is kept while the film waits.
• Pressing Start scoring on that film again gives you a fresh 48 hours and, as a rule, picks your draft up exactly where you left it. The exception is a card that comes back on a different scorecard — see Picking a lapsed film up again.

Nothing on the screen counts this down or names the 48 hours. There is no timer, no warning and no email. If a film is going to take you longer than two days, that is fine — just expect it to reappear in your queue, and re-open it from there.

A lapsed hold is only a problem if the card's place was filled while it was lapsed. See When a card goes back to the queue. If the place is still free, you can keep typing and file it as though nothing happened.

Picking a lapsed film up again

Start scoring on a lapsed film is a fresh claim, and it hands out cards the same way it did the first time. Most of the time that is the card you had, on the same scorecard, with your draft on it. It is a different scorecard in three cases:

• Your creative card lands in another of the film's categories, and that category uses a different creative scorecard. On a film in more than one category you are given whichever of them has the fewest scorecards at the moment you press — not necessarily the one you had before.
• Your technical card lands on the film's other technical checklist. Some films carry two, and you are given the first one that is free at the moment you press — not necessarily the one you had before.
• The festival has changed the scorecard your category uses since you took the film.

When that happens, your answers to the old scorecard's questions are cleared, because the card no longer asks them. The card opens on the new scorecard's questions, unanswered.

Only those answers go. Your feedback, your award recommendations and your answers to the filmmaker's own questions stay exactly as they were. On a technical card the answers are everything on it: every Pass, Fail and fail note.

• Nothing tells you. There is no notice on the card or anywhere else; it simply asks different questions.
• The cleared answers do not come back. If the film later puts you back on the first scorecard, that card opens blank as well.
• Two categories that share one scorecard change nothing. If the scorecard is the same, every answer stays where it was.
• Continue scoring never does this. Picking up a film you are still holding keeps you on the card you started, whatever has changed since. Only a lapsed hold picked up again with Start scoring can move you.

A tab you left open from before still shows the old questions. An answer you give there reads Not saved, and trying again does not help. Reload the page to see the card as it is now.

If you leave before you file

The film you are working on stays on your judging home. While you hold a card on it, it is the Next submission — with an In progress pill and a Continue scoring button — and no other film is offered beside it.

So:

• Close the tab whenever you like. Go back to /judge, press Continue scoring, and you are returned to the same sitting with every answer, mark and note where you left it. The 48-hour hold is re-armed at the same time.
• The address still works too, for as long as you hold a card on that film. It is /judge/, your festival's identifier, /score/ and the film's identifier — but Continue scoring is the reliable way back.
• If you filed one of two cards and then left, you are still holding the other one, so the film is still your Next submission and Continue scoring still opens it. It leaves you when the last card in your hand is filed.
• If you file nothing for 48 hours, the hold lapses, the film returns to every judge's queue including yours, and your draft is kept. Your judging home then offers you a new film. Picking the lapsed film up again brings the draft back with it, with one exception.

Continue scoring never quietly gives you more work. Picking a film back up re-opens the cards you already hold; it does not hand you a card on the same film that has become free since you started.

One card, two cards, or the technical card alone

The screen renders whichever cards you actually hold on that film. You do not choose; it follows from the roles the festival gave you and the categories the film competes in.

Two cards means one viewing, not two films. The line under the tabs says so:

You pulled both open cards on this film, so you watch it once. Take them in whichever order you like; each files on its own.

Each tab carries a small marker and a running figure — how much of that card you have done out of its total. A filed card's marker becomes a green tick, and a filed technical card shows its score in place of its count.

Why the sittings differ: the technical card is held by one judge at a time and filed once, while the creative card is filed independently by as many judges as the season asks for in each category the film competes in. You take one creative card on a film, for one of those categories — whichever had the fewest when you pressed Start scoring. Which cards reach you depends on the roles your festival gave you, and on which categories the film competes in.

Press-kit cards are never handed to a judge, whatever a category has attached to it.

When the creative card waits for the technical review

Unless the festival has switched it off, a film's creative card waits for its technical review. In a category that has a technical checklist, nobody is offered the film's creative card until its technical review has been filed and the festival has approved it. A category with no technical checklist never waits.

What that means at Start scoring:

• If you judge creatively only, a film that is waiting is not offered to you at all. It counts as upcoming on your judging home until it is approved — see Films waiting for their technical review.
• If you judge both, Start scoring on a film whose technical review nobody has taken yet gives you the technical card alone — unless another of the film's categories has no technical checklist, when you get both. File the technical card and the film leaves your hands: your judging home offers you another, and counts this one as upcoming, not as scored. Once the festival approves your technical review, the film comes back into your queue for its creative card, if a creative place on it is still free.
• A card you already hold is never taken away. The wait only decides what a new Start scoring hands you, and a scorecard sent back to you for changes can always be filed again.

The top bar

The app's own sidebar and top bar sit around the scoring screen, so the festival's name is in the top bar's festival switcher and the way out is the sidebar. The scoring screen's own bar, left to right: the sitting's name on a single-card screen, the film's title, its tracking number, and a Due pill carrying the season's closing date when it has one.

On the right:

On a narrow window or a phone the top bar is shorter. The app's own bar sits above it — the FilmScorecard mark, Inbox, Menu and your profile circle — and that is the way out. Below it: the film's title with its Due pill, the festival and the sitting's name underneath, and a ⋯ button — "More for this film" — that opens Report an issue and, on a single-card screen, Skip: technical issue and Decline: conflict or other under "Can't score this film?". The festival's mark and the tracking number are left off. Then the Film and Scorecard tabs, which stay pinned as you scroll.

Report an issue keeps the film with you — see Reporting an issue. Skip and Decline hand it back, and both are covered on Leaving a film you started. There is no Skip button when you hold the technical card — a file that will not play is a Fail you record on that card, not a skip. And there is no Skip or Decline on a screen holding both cards — Report an issue is the one control there.

Skip and Decline here withdraw a card you have already filed on the film, whatever the reason. The Skip this film button on your judging home also works on the film you are holding, and it withdraws a filed card too, whatever the reason — its dialog says so. See One film at a time.

Reporting an issue

Report an issue tells the festival something is wrong with this film without giving it up. It is on every scoring screen — one card or two — in the top bar, and in the ⋯ menu on a phone.

1. Press Report an issue. A dialog opens, headed Report an issue with the film's title under it.
2. Under What's wrong?, pick one:
   • Screener or file problem
   • Category or scorecard doesn't fit
   • Something else
3. Under What happened, write what is wrong. This is required — a few words at least, up to 2,000 characters.
4. Press Send report. Cancel sends nothing.

What happens next:

• You stay on the film. The dialog closes and your card is exactly as you left it — nothing is handed back, nothing is filed, and your hold carries on. Keep scoring if you can.
• The button now reads "Issue reported" and cannot be pressed, until the festival marks your report resolved. After that it reads Report an issue again the next time the screen loads, and you can report again.
• The festival's staff are told, by email and on their own screens, with your reason and your words. They may write back to you — their reply arrives in your inbox, on the Messages tab.
• Nothing tells you when it is resolved, apart from the button coming back.
• No other judge ever sees your report, or knows that anyone reported anything.

Use Report an issue when you can carry on, or want the festival to fix something first. If the film truly cannot be judged by you — a screener that will not play at all, a conflict of interest — Skip or Decline is the way to hand it back; see Leaving a film you started.

The film pane

The left half of the screen never changes while you work. Switching tabs, typing, filing — none of it reloads it.

Some films play here; the rest open in a new tab. A Vimeo, YouTube or Google Drive link is played in place, in a frame at the top of the pane. Every other host — FilmFreeway, Dropbox, Frame.io, and anything FilmScorecard does not recognise — gets a block that says where the work lives, with a button that opens it:

This film plays on Vimeo

Open it in a new tab and score here as you watch.

Watch on Vimeo ↗

The platform's name is read from the link itself — Vimeo, YouTube, FilmFreeway, Dropbox, Google Drive or Frame.io. Anything else reads "the filmmaker's link". A screenplay says "This screenplay is on …", "score here as you read" and Read on ….

A screenplay the festival uploaded as a PDF has its own block:

This screenplay is a PDF

Open it in a new tab and score here as you read.

Open PDF ↗

• Open PDF opens the script in a new tab, in your browser's own PDF viewer. Each press opens a fresh copy that works for about ten minutes, so if a tab you left open stops loading, come back and press Open PDF again.

• There is no password with it, and no link to copy — the PDF is the festival's own copy of the script, and it is the only version you are given.

• It opens while the film is yours: while you hold a card on it, and afterwards for a card you have filed. Once a hold has lapsed it no longer opens.

• A film playing in the frame still gives you the link out, as Open on Vimeo ↗ beside the password strip. Use it if the frame shows an error rather than the film: a private video, or one whose owner turned embedding off, fails inside the frame and FilmScorecard cannot tell that it did.

• A password strip appears under the player when the submission carries one, with a Copy button that flips to "Copied" for a moment. The password is on screen in full beside it, so you can also just read it, and a line beside it says where you will need it.

• If nothing was submitted to play from, the block says so instead:

  No screener link on this submission

  Nothing was recorded for this film to play from. Report it rather than scoring blind.

  On a screenplay it reads "No PDF on this submission" and "Nothing was recorded for this screenplay to read from. Report it rather than scoring blind."

• On the creative-only screen there is a Link broken? Skip: technical issue button beside the password strip, because that is the moment you find out.

Under the player: the word Submission, the title, then the tracking number and whatever the record actually holds — project type and genres, the runtime or the page count, the aspect ratio, the shooting format — then the tagline in italics, and the synopsis.

The rest of the record

Below the synopsis, in this order, come four blocks. Every one of them is left out entirely when the festival recorded nothing for it, so a sparse submission shows you the player and the title block and nothing else. You never see a heading with nothing under it.

There is one statement, and its heading says what kind of work you are looking at: Director's statement on a film, Writer's statement on a screenplay. Nothing else about it varies — the heading is the whole of it.

A statement is signed by nobody. No name is printed under it, ever. It is the submission's own statement about the work, not a named person's, and the people who made the film are the ones listed under Credits.

Credits are printed as the festival recorded them. One line may hold several names — "Ana Reyes, Tom Fisher" — because that is one field in the record, not a list.

What is deliberately not in it

You are shown the film, not the filmmaker. The scoring screen carries none of the following, and they are not merely hidden from view — they are never sent to your browser at all:

• The submitter's name, email address, phone number, city or region, and any other personal detail the festival holds — a birthdate, a postal address, a biography or a cover letter.
• The production budget, and what the filmmaker paid to enter.
• The filmmaker's own links — trailer URL, project website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

The only link here is the screener the festival recorded, in the player block, and it is there so you can watch the work.

Anything the festival did not record is left out rather than shown empty.

Making room

On a single-card screen, two small buttons beside the card's heading change the split:

• Expand scorecard to full screen hides the film pane.
• Collapse scorecard, show film only hides the card, leaving a Show scorecard → button.
• Either button pressed again, or ← Show film pane, restores the split.

You can also drag the seam between the two panes. The narrow grey column between them is a handle: drag it left or right to give either side more room, anywhere between roughly a third and four-fifths of the width. It also takes keyboard focus — left and right arrows move it in steps and Home puts it back to the resting split — and double-clicking it resets it too. The handle is there on both the single-card and two-card screens whenever both panes are showing, and it is gone on a narrow window or a phone, where the panes stack one above the other.

Changing the layout changes nothing else. Your answers, the film pane's scroll position and your award picks all survive it, and so does a drag. The width you set is not remembered after you leave the sitting.

Autosave, and the dot

There is no Save button, and there is no draft to lose. Everything you do is written as you do it.

The footer's right-hand corner reports the last write:

"Not saved" is never silent. A line appears above the commit button as well:

A change could not be saved. It will be retried when you next edit this card.

That is exactly what happens — the next time you touch that field it is sent again, and the dot goes green when it lands. The dot stays amber while any field is still unsaved, so it will not tell you your work is safe while one box is behind.

Nothing is sent optimistically. If the dot is green, the server has acknowledged it.

Questions from the filmmaker

On some creative cards, a block sits between the festival's questions and the feedback boxes:

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 filmmaker of this film wrote them, on their own private submission page, before judging started. A festival lets each submitter ask up to two questions of their own, and every creative judge on that film answers them.

• They are marked Q1 and Q2 rather than numbered into the festival's list, so you can tell at a glance which half of the card you are in.
• They are answered exactly like the festival's questions — a row of ten cells, a Yes and a No, a pick-one list, or a box to write in — and they save the same way, the moment you answer or a second and a half after you stop typing.
• Answering them is required. The card will not file until every one is answered; see Filing a card.
• None of it is scored. A 1-to-10 answer here is a number for the filmmaker, not a score: it is not added to the film's result, to any average or to anything else. The line under the heading says so, and it is exact.

Most films have no such block at all, and nothing is drawn where it would be — no heading, no empty space. It is never on a technical review card, whatever the film. A technical reviewer does not see these questions.

You are not told who wrote them. The block carries the questions and nothing else: no name, no email, nothing about the person behind the submission. That is the same rule as everywhere else on this screen — see What is deliberately not in it.

There is no Rewrite button on your answer, the same as everywhere else on your screen. That is a coordinator's tool; see Rewriting written feedback.

If a question appears while you are working

A filmmaker can still change their questions right up until the first creative scorecard on their film is filed — which may be after you took the film. When that happens:

1. You press Submit creative scorecard on a card the screen thinks is finished.
2. The filing is refused: "This card is not finished yet."
3. The screen reloads the card in place. The new or changed question appears, with an empty answer, and everything you had already written stays exactly where it was — scores, your feedback, recommendations, and every other answer.
4. Answer it and press the button again.

A question you had already answered and the filmmaker then reworded loses that one answer, because you would otherwise be on record answering a question you never read. Nothing else is touched.

This can only happen before anybody files. The first filed creative scorecard on a film freezes its questions for good, so once you have filed — or anyone else has — they cannot move again.

The same reload happens if the festival switches a feedback box on while you have the film: it appears, empty, and has to be filled in before the card files. See The two feedback boxes.

Filing a card

The blue button at the bottom of the card is the commit. Each card files on its own — filing one never files, requires or blocks the other, and you can take them in either order.

The button is grey until the card is finished, and a line under it names what is missing, in your own terms:

Add 2 more questions to score and positive feedback to submit.

Add 1 filmmaker question to answer to submit.

Add 3 items still to mark and 1 fail note to complete this card.

The filmmaker's questions are named separately from the festival's, so "2 more questions to score" always means the festival's list and never the block underneath it.

Pressing the grey button on a technical card is not nothing: it turns every fail that still has no note red, so you can find them.

To the left of the dot, a line tracks the same thing while you work — "3 of 5 marked, 1 fail", "4 of 6 scored, feedback incomplete", "All 6 scored, feedback complete" — and, on a film whose submitter asked something, that line ends with the filmmaker's questions too: "All 6 scored, feedback complete, 1 of 2 filmmaker questions". Once the card is in it becomes "Technical filed, 16 of 20" or "Creative filed, 6 of 6 scored".

After you file

A filed card is read-only. Buttons lock, boxes go grey and read-only, and the award list shrinks to the recommendations on the card, with their notes read-only and no search. Your answers to the filmmaker's questions lock with everything else.

You cannot unfile it — but the festival can send it back to you. Before it approves a scorecard, a festival can return it with a note asking for changes. It then heads a Returned list on your judging home with Make changes; the card opens again with the note above it under Returned, you edit it as before, and you file it again with the same button. It never stops you taking new films, and it keeps the rate it was first filed at. See Scorecards sent back to you.

The festival may also change the award recommendations on a filed creative card. One it added reads Added by coordinator, and one it pointed at a different award reads Changed by coordinator; you can see them, and you cannot change or remove them, even on a card sent back to you. A recommendation the festival withdrew no longer shows on your card.

A filed technical card gets a recap strip at the top of the card: green when everything passed — "Technical review filed, everything passed" — and amber when anything failed: "Technical review filed with 1 fail". Both carry the two figures. On the creative tab the strip collapses behind Read it, which expands to every item with its Pass or Fail and any note you wrote. A filed creative card gets no strip — its tab already shows it is in.

The strip ends with the honest instruction:

Filed and locked. Message the coordinator if something here is wrong.

— unless the festival has sent the card back to you, when it opens for changes instead.

Your feedback is proofread just after the creative card files. Filing does not wait for it: the card files at once, with the Positive feedback and Opportunities for improvement boxes it asks for exactly as you typed them — except that every line break and run of spaces becomes a single space, so each box files as one paragraph. Then the text of those boxes is sent to OpenAI to correct spelling, grammar and punctuation — nothing else: not your wording, your tone or what you said — and the corrections replace the text on your filed card a few seconds later. You are usually on your next film by then; open the filed card again and you see the corrected wording.

Your words stay exactly as filed when the correction would change more than spelling, grammar and punctuation, when it does not come back within ten seconds, when the festival has already edited your feedback before it lands, or when the film's scorecard has already been sent out to its filmmaker. Your answers to the filmmaker's questions are not proofread. A box the festival has switched off files empty, whatever you had typed in it before it went — see The creative scorecard.

With both cards in, the footer prints a green confirmation — "Both cards filed on Title." with "Technical 16 / 20 · Creative 6 of 6" underneath — and the button becomes Next film in your queue. That claims the next film in your queue, not this one; if your queue is empty you land on your judging home and it tells you so. If that next film fills up in the moment between your press and the claim, you land on your judging home with the same "That film is no longer available." line that Start scoring gives.

With one of two cards still in your hand, you have not finished the film. It stays your Next submission until the second card is filed too — see One film at a time.

The recap strips end with when the card went in: "filed just now" for the first ten minutes, and the day you filed it after that — "filed Aug 15".

When a card goes back to the queue

Occasionally a card turns amber and stops accepting work:

This card went back to the queue

The hold on it lapsed and the slot was taken, so it can no longer be filed. Everything you wrote has been kept.

This means two things happened, in order: your 48 hours ran out, and then the card's place was filled.

• A technical card goes back when another judge took it.
• A creative card goes back when the category it is for received every scorecard the season asks for while your hold was lapsed. Only that category counts: on a film in two categories, the other one filling up has no effect on your card.

A lapsed hold on its own does nothing — if the place is still free you can carry on and file it normally.

What it does to the screen:

• The card becomes read-only in place. Your answers are all still there to read.
• Its commit button is inert. Pressing it could only repeat the refusal.
• If the other card on the film is still yours, it is unaffected — the line under the tabs says "One card went back to the queue. The other is still yours to work on."

There is no way to reclaim that place. The work is not lost, it is simply not going to be filed there. If you had put real time into it, message the festival — that is a decision for them, not something any screen can reverse.

The film itself can still come round to you when it has room for you somewhere else — another of its categories, or its other technical checklist. Start scoring then gives you the card on that one, and what happens to your answers is on Picking a lapsed film up again.

You may also meet it at the moment you press the commit, if the place was filled while you were finishing. The card flips to the amber state in place and one line appears above the button:

This card went back to the queue while it was open, so it can no longer be filed. Your draft has been kept.

This is never silent. A filing either succeeds or says why.

What you see of other judges, and what they see of you

Nothing, in both directions. The scoring screen contains no other judge at all: no name, no score, no note, no average, no count, no report, and not even how many judges this film needs. That is not a festival setting — there is no switch for it anywhere, for anybody.

The one trace of anyone else here is "This card went back to the queue", and it is deliberately shaped as an effect with nobody attached: the card tells you its place was taken, never who took it. The same is true of "That film is no longer available." on your judging home.

Where your own work goes:

Filmmakers can rate the review, and you never see it. A filmmaker who unlocks their scorecard may answer a few 1-to-10 questions about it, including one about each judge — "To what extent do you feel the judge reviewed your entire submission?", asked of "Judge 1", "Judge 2" and so on, never by name. The festival sees only averages, and only once at least three filmmakers have answered; no one at the festival can read one filmmaker's answers. No judge is shown any of it — not your own average, not anybody else's.

The film's own submitter is not named on this screen either — you see the work, the tracking number and what the festival recorded about the film, and not who sent it in. The people named under Credits are the film's own credits, which is a different thing from the account that submitted it, and the statement above them names nobody at all. That holds for the filmmaker's questions too: you answer them without ever being told whose they are.

Filed cards go to the festival's own review screen, where its staff read and approve them — you are not shown any of that. And "message the coordinator" now has a real route: write to them from the Messages tab of your inbox. Your message reaches the staff member you pick as an email, and their answer comes back to you by email.

If something is refused

Everything you have typed stays on screen through all of these, and nothing is written unless you are told it was.