What a new festival starts with
Every festival you create is born with a line-up: a set of submission categories, and now a set of awards. You choose what is in that set, once, in your organization's library — and every festival created afterwards starts with it.
This is one flag on one library row, in three places: a DEFAULT tag on the row, a checkbox in the create form, and a pair of buttons on the selection bar. It is on the Categories tab and the Awards tab alike.
It applies at festival creation and nowhere else. Starting next season, duplicating a season, and every season that already exists are completely unaffected — see When it does not apply. That sentence is the whole of the risk in this screen, and it is why the flag is safe to change whenever you like.
Finding it
Both tabs of Categories and scorecards, in the left navigation of every organization screen:
/org/<organization>/categories
/org/<organization>/categories?tab=awards
Who can change it
Organization owners. Everyone else in your organization reads the same tags and the same tables and has no checkboxes, no selection bar and no create button — exactly the split the rest of the library already uses. See Who can change the library.
The DEFAULT tag itself is visible to everybody who can read the library, so a coordinator can see what the next festival will start with without being able to change it.
The three places it appears
The tag on the row
A row that is in the set carries a small indigo DEFAULT tag, on the second
line of the name cell beside the CAT- or AWD- id. Hover it and it says what
it means:
In the set a new festival starts with.
There is no ninth column and no legend — the tag is the whole marker. It stays on the frozen part of the row, so it is still there when you scroll the table sideways.
It is drawn in the Archived view too, on archived rows that carry the flag. That is deliberate: archiving and defaulting are separate facts, and a row you restore should not have quietly lost its membership while it was away. An archived row never seeds a festival regardless — see Archived rows.
The checkbox in the create form
Both the New category dialog and the New award category dialog carry one checkbox under the other fields:
Start new festivals with this Applies when a festival is created. Seasons of festivals that already exist are not affected.
- It starts ticked. Anything you create joins the set unless you untick it.
- The category dialog carries it on Edit as well, prefilled — so you can change one category's membership from the same form you rename it in.
- The award's own page does not carry it. An award's full page edits its name, description and eligible categories only; to change an existing award's membership, tick its row and use the buttons below.
Everything you import from the default list arrives in the set too, categories and awards alike, with no checkbox to untick on the way in. Take an import out of the set with Remove default afterwards. See Importing from the default list.
The two buttons on the selection bar
Tick any rows and the selection bar at the bottom of the screen gains two buttons beside Archive:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Set as default | Puts every ticked row into the set. |
| Remove default | Takes every ticked row out of it. |
- Neither asks for confirmation, unlike Archive and Restore. Nothing downstream moves, and the other button undoes it.
- Your selection survives, so you can watch the tags appear or disappear on the rows you still have ticked. That is the only feedback there is.
- Both buttons are offered in the Archived view as well, for the reason the tag is drawn there.
- Rows already in the state you asked for are simply left as they are.
A refusal is silent. If your access changed while the page was open, nothing happens and no message appears — the tags stay where they were. Reload the page to see where things stand.
What creating a festival then does
When somebody creates a festival — the first one, on Setting up your festival, or any later one on Adding a festival — it is built in one go from what the library says at that moment:
- Every category in the set, and still active, is attached to the new festival — narrowed to the kinds of work the creation form asked about (see below).
- Every award in the set, and still active, is attached to it too.
- The festival's first season takes a snapshot of both — the categories with their library judge pay, and the awards.
All of it is one action. If any part of it fails, nothing at all is created.
Creating a festival never imports anything. It reads your own library and nothing else; FilmScorecard's default list only reaches your library when you import from it.
Attaching by hand on a season's settings screen still works and is still the way to change one season's line-up — see A season's categories and awards.
The kinds of work the form asked about
Both creation forms carry two tick boxes — Films and Screenplays — and both start ticked. They are the one part of a new festival's line-up decided on the form rather than here, and they can only narrow what this flag already chose: a category is attached when it is in the set, still active, and of a kind that was ticked.
- Both ticked is the same as not being asked, so a library curated here behaves exactly as it did before those boxes existed.
- Awards are not narrowed. An award is not a kind of work, so the boxes do not touch them.
- Nothing is stored. The choice is not a property of the festival and no later screen reads it. A category the boxes skipped is untouched — in your library, active, and attachable on the season's own settings screen.
Archived rows
An archived category or award never seeds a new festival, whether or not it carries the tag. Archiving already means "do not offer this for new attachments", and festival creation is a new attachment.
This is a change: an archived category used to be attached to, and snapshotted into, every festival created after it was archived. It no longer is.
When nothing is in the set
If you take everything out of the set, a festival created afterwards is born with no categories and no awards, and its first season's line-up is empty. That is your configuration rather than an error, and nothing warns you about it on the creation form.
The way back is the season's own settings screen: Attach categories and Attach awards on A season's categories and awards. The new season's Welcome page points there: while the season has no categories, its Set up categories button opens that season's Categories tab when your library has categories to attach — see On the Welcome page.
A brand-new organization
A new organization's library is empty apart from three shared scorecards — Film Technical, Screenplay Technical and Press Kit — so there is nothing in the set, and its first festival is created with no categories and no awards.
The set fills up as you build the library: every category and award you import from the default list, and every one you create with the box left ticked, joins it. From your second festival on, the flag is what decides the line-up.
For the first festival, importing and attaching are two steps. Its Welcome page's Set up categories button opens your library, where an owner finds FilmScorecard's presets; what you import there reaches your library only, and the line that confirms the import links back to the new season's Categories tab, where you attach it. See Getting categories onto the season.
When it does not apply
Three things people reasonably expect this flag to touch, and it touches none of them:
- Seasons that already exist. Nothing on this screen ever rewrites a season's line-up. A season's categories and awards were copied when it was created and are its own from then on.
- A new season of a festival that already exists. Start next season copies the season you duplicated — its categories, its fees, its judge pay rates, its awards and their add-on prices. It never reads the library. See Season and festival actions.
- Festivals that already exist. Changing the flag today does nothing to any festival created yesterday. To change what an existing festival's next season runs, work on that season.
Which means the flag is safe to change at any time. The only thing it can affect is a festival somebody creates after you change it.
Duplicating carries the flag
Duplicate on a category or an award gives the copy the same membership as its source. A copy of a row that is in the set is in the set; a copy of one that is not, is not. That matches everything else duplication carries — the type, the description, the limit, the default pay and the slot attachments.
Related guides
- Categories and scorecards — the library's first tab, and the two default pay columns beside these tags.
- Award categories — the middle tab.
- Importing from the default list — filling the library, and the set, from FilmScorecard's ready-made list.
- Adding a festival — where the set is actually read.
- Setting up your festival — the first festival, and the empty library it starts from.
- A season's categories and awards — changing one season's line-up, which is a different job entirely.
- Judge pay — the two rates a category carries into a season.