Seeing what a submitter sees

Every submission has two private pages of its own: the filmmaker's scorecard, once it is released, and their submission page — an overview with pages under it, which they can edit until the season's Selections announced date and go on reading after it. Both are addressed to them and both ask a stranger for a nine-character code. This guide covers opening them yourself, signed in, and reading exactly what the filmmaker reads — no code, nothing to ask them for.

Being signed in with access to the festival is the whole of it. You are not asked for the code, you are not asked to log in again, and the filmmaker is not involved.

It is read-only. There is nothing on either page for you to buy, unlock, share, save, replace or send. The scorecard can be switched to Filmmaker view, which draws the filmmaker's buttons too — but none of them acts there either. Everything you do to a submission you still do on its detail panel, which is unchanged.

Opening one

The addresses are on the submission's detail panel, together on its Settings tab. Open the submission from the Submissions list by clicking the film's title, then:

1. Press Copy link on the card. It reads Copied once it has.
2. Paste the address into your browser and open it. A new tab is worth the extra keystroke — the panel is part of the submissions screen's own address, so opening the filmmaker's page in the same tab takes you off the list you were working down.

Neither card is a button you can click through. The address sits there as text with Copy link beside it, exactly as it always has; opening it is your own paste. Once one is open, the two pages lead to each other: the scorecard's top bar carries ← Your submission, which opens the submission page, and the submission page's Scorecard tile opens the scorecard once it has been released. You are staff on both.

It is the same address the filmmaker's email carries. There is no staff-only address and no second copy of either page — what loads is their page, served to you. The one addition is on the scorecard: a strip above it that switches between Staff view and Filmmaker view — see Switching the scorecard to Filmmaker view.

Who can open them

It follows festival access and nothing else. None of the seven capabilities is consulted — not "Manage submissions and imports", not "View revenue and payouts".

Everybody in the "No" rows meets the ordinary code page, precisely as a stranger with the link does: the film's title, its categories, its SUB- number and the season, and a box asking for a code they do not have. Nothing tells them a staff route exists, and nothing about the submission is disclosed.

One other account gets in without a code: the filmmaker's own, once they have saved the submission to their FilmScorecard account. They read it as the filmmaker, with everything the code would give them — not as staff, and with no pill. See Saving a submission to your account.

A season-only grant is enough for that season. Somebody granted one season rather than a whole festival can open the pages of that season's submissions and no others — see Festival access.

The "Viewing as staff" pill

On both pages, in the top bar at the right, a neutral grey pill reads Viewing as staff. On the submission page it is the only thing that says in words whose page you are looking at, and on the scorecard it takes the place of the Preview / Permanent access pill the filmmaker sees there. The scorecard also carries the Staff view | Filmmaker view strip above its top bar; in Filmmaker view the filmmaker's own pill comes back, and the strip is what tells you that you are staff.

On a phone — a screen 640 pixels wide or narrower — the bar carries no pill at all, on either page and in either view; the filmmaker's own page leaves its pill out there too. The scorecard's strip is drawn at every width, so on the scorecard it is still your sign. On the submission page, View details where the filmmaker's tile says Edit details, and the greyed fields behind it that will not take a cursor, are.

Wider than a phone, no pill means you are not reading it as staff — and on the scorecard, at any width, so does no strip. Two things cause that, and the second one matters:

• You are signed out in this browser — a private window, or a different profile. Then you are looking at the code page like anyone else. Type their code there, or open the link from one of their emails, and you are the filmmaker as far as FilmScorecard can tell: your visit, and anything you press, is recorded on the submission's Audit tab as theirs.
• You have typed this submission's access code into this browser at some point. A code holder is treated as the filmmaker for 30 days, on that submission, in that browser — so the pill and the strip go, the Share button and the purchase card come back, and pressing either would act as them. Avoid entering a filmmaker's code on your own machine; you do not need it, and clearing your cookies for the site is the only way back. While you are signed in, none of it is recorded as theirs — see It costs the filmmaker nothing.

The scorecard, from your side

This is Staff view, which is what the scorecard opens in.

It is their page, field for field. Same score out of 100, same header, same category sections, same counts, same rank card, same footer with the SUB- number and the season's questions address.

• A locked scorecard is locked for you too. The blurred scores and notes are placeholders, not a blur over something your browser received — the judges' answers and written notes are not sent to the page at all. Reading what your judges wrote is the Review Queue and the submission's own Scoring tab, which is where staff read scores and always has been.
• There is no way to buy or unlock from here. The purchase card is not drawn in any of its states, and neither is the buy bar a phone shows at the foot of a locked page. Giving a filmmaker their scorecard for nothing is Comp scorecard access, on the panel's Settings tab — see Selling scorecard access.
• The locked page is one column for you, because the column beside it held the purchase card and there is nothing to put in it.
• There is no Share button. The card and the public link a filmmaker can build out of their result are theirs to make and theirs to turn off — see Sharing your scorecard.
• On an unlocked scorecard you see the whole of it, including the indigo confirmation strip and its Receipt SC-40318 number. There is no Download PDF in Staff view — the document is the filmmaker's to keep; switch to Filmmaker view (below) to see the button they get.
• Contact the festival, in the footer, opens the filmmaker's message form with My scorecard picked — in Staff view and in Filmmaker view alike — and its Send message button is turned off, with "Preview only. Staff cannot send a message as the filmmaker." above it. It is there only where the season has a Contact email or your organization a support address. See Messages from filmmakers.
• ← Your submission, in the top bar, opens their submission page, which you read as staff too. It is not drawn for a withdrawn or disqualified submission.
• Before the scorecard is released, you get the "Not available yet" page — the same card any link holder gets, with no pill and nothing to press. See When the link shows "Not available yet".

The unlocked/locked state is the filmmaker's, not yours. Opening the page does not unlock anything, and a locked page stays locked however many times you open it.

Switching the scorecard to Filmmaker view

Staff view leaves out everything that is the filmmaker's own decision — the price, the checkout, Share. Filmmaker view puts it all back, so you can see the page a filmmaker is actually asked to pay on.

1. Open the scorecard as above. A grey strip above the top bar holds two buttons, Staff view and Filmmaker view, with Staff view selected.
2. Press Filmmaker view. The page redraws where it stands, on the same category tab.
3. Press Staff view to go back.

The view is part of the address: Filmmaker view adds ?view=filmmaker, so a reload or a bookmark keeps it. It does something only for somebody who could open the scorecard as staff anyway; anybody else who opens that address gets exactly what they would get without it. The submission page has no such strip.

What Filmmaker view draws, as the filmmaker gets it:

• The filmmaker's pill in the top bar — Preview on a locked category, Permanent access on an unlocked one, and neither on a phone — and Download PDF once anything is unlocked.
• On a locked category, the purchase card and the price they would pay, the two-column layout, the closing band, and on a phone the buy bar at the foot of the screen. Unlock opens the checkout dialog with its figures, the bundle tick box and the promo code field.
• Share in the top bar, and the sheet behind it.
• The two cards under the score: Give your film its best shot at selection, while the submission page is still open and this category was scored without some of its press-kit items, and Your film earned this. Show it off., with the share controls. Finish your press kit takes you to the submission page, which you read as staff. On a phone the two are small tiles side by side, with the filmmaker's shorter wording: Best shot at selection, "Scored without: …" and Finish press kit; Show it off, "Post it, or send a link." and Share your score.
• The Rate this scorecard pill on an unlocked category. Its panel opens empty, whatever the filmmaker has sent.

Nothing you press there acts. Every control that would do something prints one line instead:

Preview only. Nothing happens from the staff side.

A link that carries a promo code is shown without its discount. When you open a link from a results email that offered a code, the filmmaker would see the code's price on every Unlock control. In Filmmaker view the code is never priced, for the same reason as Apply: the purchase card, the price bar at the top of the window, the buy bar on a phone and the closing band all show the price without the code. The purchase card adds "Preview only. The filmmaker sees this code's discount in the total.", and Unlock opens the checkout dialog with the code already in its field and the same line above its button.

Nothing is recorded as the filmmaker's activity, in either view — see It costs the filmmaker nothing.

The submission page, from your side

The filmmaker's own screens, turned off. The address opens on the overview, the filmmaker's main screen, and its pages sit under it: Submission details, Questions for judges and How it's judged. You can open every one of them, and none of them takes an edit.

• The overview has the festival and season over the film's title, one line about where judging has got to, a chip for each category and one for the length, beside the poster. Under them are tiles: Submission details, with the press kit's points; Questions for judges, with the filmmaker's questions; Scorecard; and Contact the festival, where the festival has an address. Your details tile reads View details where the filmmaker's reads Edit details. Nothing is featured for you: the tile a filmmaker sees first is chosen by the email they came from, and the copied address comes from no email.
• Moving between the pages happens in place, without a reload, and the address follows — …/submission/details, …/submission/questions, …/submission/how-its-judged. Back and Forward work as usual.
• Submission details is the edit form, its cards of fields, the press-kit checklist, the poster and the Set by the festival card all reading the record as it stands.
• The fifteen fields are greyed and cannot be typed in. They are not merely ignoring your typing — they are switched off and do not take a cursor, so tabbing through the form skips them.
• There is no save bar, and no Discard changes: nothing on the screen can become unsaved.
• There is no ← Your scorecard button in the bar. The filmmaker gets one once their scorecard is released; you get the Viewing as staff pill in its place. The overview's Scorecard tile opens it once it is released, or open it from its own Scorecard link card.
• The press kit shows the real figures — at the top of each press-kit card, the points filled against the points available; on the checklist, a tick or a cross for each of your items. It is exactly what the filmmaker reads, so it is the fastest way to see what their page is asking them for. Pressing a row that ends in a › scrolls to the field it watches, which stays greyed. The slim press-kit strip a filmmaker's phone shows once the header has scrolled away is not drawn for you.
• The poster is shown and cannot be replaced from here. There is no Replace poster button and no file picker on the card at all. Poster changes are yours to make on the Information tab, or by dropping an image onto the row — see The tagline, the statement and the poster.
• The Set by the festival card reads as it does for them, screener host masked and password shown only as dots. Its Write to the festival link is drawn for you too, and opens the filmmaker's message form with My entry picked — with Send message turned off, as below.
• Questions for judges shows the questions the filmmaker has saved, as read-only cards, with no editor.
• How it's judged is the scorecard every judge fills in for each of the film's categories, one tab each: each section's points, its questions and how they are answered, and your press-kit items marked Filled or Empty, under an overall ??/100. There is no score on it, no judge, and nothing a judge wrote.
• Contact the festival opens the filmmaker's message form — the tile, or Write to the festival — with Send message turned off and "Preview only. Staff cannot send a message as the filmmaker." above it. See Messages from filmmakers.

After edits close, you still get the overview. Once the season's Selections announced date has arrived, or the season is Completed or Archived, the overview and its pages stay open — to you, read-only as always and with the pill, and to the filmmaker. The Submission details tile then reads Edits closed on and the date, or Edits are closed for a finished season, and opens nothing; the details address shows the overview. Only a withdrawn or disqualified submission gets the "Edits are closed" card instead — with no pill, the same card anyone holding the link gets, and View scorecard on it once the scorecard is released. Closing judging and releasing the scorecard change none of this. See Letting submitters fix their own details.

To change any of it, use the Information tab. That is the staff edit surface, it records the change under your name in the Audit tab, and it is unchanged by any of this. A save made through the filmmaker's own page is recorded as the submitter's, which is exactly why yours cannot be made there.

What you cannot do from either page

None of these is greyed out with a reason, with one exception: Send message in the filmmaker's message form, which is drawn for you turned off, under "Preview only. Staff cannot send a message as the filmmaker." The other controls are simply not on the page, because they are not yours to press — except in the scorecard's Filmmaker view, where the filmmaker's own are drawn and each answers Preview only instead (see Switching the scorecard to Filmmaker view). If you open one of these pages in a tab, leave it, and come back to a stale copy, pressing something that is no longer there still changes nothing — every one of those actions is refused outright for anyone but the filmmaker.

It costs the filmmaker nothing

Opening either page on your own session is invisible from their side:

• No attempt is used. Their five-tries-an-hour allowance and the fifteen-minute lockout behind it are untouched — you never reach the code box.
• Their code is not replaced, spent or expired, and their own 30 days in their own browser do not move.
• Nothing is emailed and nobody is notified.
• Your visit is not recorded. Staff visits are never logged: there is no "opened by" line, no entry for you on the Audit tab, and no screen anywhere that says a member of staff has read a submitter's page.
• Nothing you do there is recorded as theirs. While you are signed in with access to the festival, nothing about your visit is recorded — in Staff view or Filmmaker view, and even after you have typed their code into this browser.

The filmmaker's own visits are recorded. The Audit tab shows when they opened their scorecard or submission page, which of your emails they came from, and what they did there: signing in with the code, starting a checkout and unlocking (both shown only to people who can see revenue), sending feedback, creating or turning off a share link, saving a share card, saving the submission to an account, and messaging the festival — the topic, never the message. Anyone holding their link or code counts as them. See The Audit tab.

Related guides

• Opening a submission — the detail panel the two addresses come from, the tab you edit the record on, and the Audit tab.
• Letting submitters fix their own details — the submission page from your side: emailing the links, what keeps a page open, where a submitter's edits show up, and the messages they send you.
• Your submission page and Your scorecard — the same two pages written for the filmmaker, which is what you are now reading over their shoulder.
• Getting into your scorecard — the code page everybody without festival access still meets.
• Selling scorecard access — whether one submission has been unlocked, and comping a filmmaker's access.
• Festival access — the roles and grants this follows.