# What a new festival starts with

> From FilmScorecard Help: https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/categories-and-scorecards.md) and the
[Awards tab](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/award-categories.md) 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](#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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/categories-and-scorecards.md#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](#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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/importing-from-the-default-list.md).

### 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/setting-up-your-festival.md), or any later one on
[Adding a festival](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/adding-a-festival.md) — it is built in one go from what
the library says at that moment:

1. **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).
2. **Every award in the set, and still active, is attached to it too.**
3. **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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/season-categories-and-awards.md).

### 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/season-categories-and-awards.md). 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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/importing-from-the-default-list.md#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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/finishing-setup.md#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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/season-actions.md#start-the-next-season).
- **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](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/categories-and-scorecards.md) — the library's
  first tab, and the two default pay columns beside these tags.
- [Award categories](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/award-categories.md) — the middle tab.
- [Importing from the default list](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/importing-from-the-default-list.md) —
  filling the library, and the set, from FilmScorecard's ready-made list.
- [Adding a festival](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/adding-a-festival.md) — where the set is actually read.
- [Setting up your festival](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/setting-up-your-festival.md) — the first
  festival, and the empty library it starts from.
- [A season's categories and awards](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/season-categories-and-awards.md) —
  changing one season's line-up, which is a different job entirely.
- [Judge pay](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md) — the two rates a category carries into a season.
