Can we know how our script scored?

[David W. Richardson]

It would be very helpful, perhaps even encouraging, if we could each learn how our script scored, and what ranking it held. Any chance of that?

[MrKilloran]

I second that.

[seansshack]

yep. here too.

[Noel Evans]

Maybe we could find out via PM? Id be interested where I ended up overall as well, good or bad.

[Isaac_Brody]

PM me for your result, I'd like to avoid anyone feeling insecure about where they placed.

[Noel Evans]

Isaac cheers for the PM. Do you mind if "we" state where we finshed?

[Isaac_Brody]

You can state it if you want.

[seansshack]

all I can state is bugger

[Isaac_Brody]

Don't give up so easily, unless you feel like teaching gym. :)

[David W. Richardson]

I won't bother to state where I placed.

Time for a break from writing by the looks of things.

I feel your pain. I think the word is shock.

[Isaac_Brody]

I think a little more voting time would help. We'll stretch it out next time so that every piece gets as much feedback as possible.

And don't take it too personally. I know it's hard as a writer not to, the best thing to do is to keep writing. Some pieces you write will be technically strong but won't connect for whatever reason. It helps to take what was strong with the piece, do that the next time, take what was weak with the piece, and focus extra strong on those issues.

[ConspiracyPenguin]

I feel your pain. I think the word is shock.

So that makes three of us in the same boat, then. :grin:

I am not trying to be cocky, I felt that the script had several weak spots. My opinion was that once CHLOE was introduced the whole thing went to hell. But, as I have said before, this was because sci-fi is NOT my genre. Looking forward to the next fest. I'm not going to give up just because I placed in the double digits (and then some :))

[Noel Evans]

So i guess this is a free will thing. But I am happy to say I finished 20 out of 40. I think I wrote a very solid piece technically as far as writing for screen goes and I think I wrote something thats visually easy to perceive and shoot - I think that also comes from a working knowledge of what shots will work etc. I have some loose ends, that became evident and considering those I am pretty pleased with the outcome. I mean comments I got back, support what I have said above.

[David W. Richardson]

Well I'll say 'Alien Abduction' finished 19th out of 40. Can't quite use the word 'happy' to describe that, though. I do appreciate the positive comments as well as the constructive criticisms. Some of it was dead on target. Thanks.

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

Ninth place here.

Considering that it was a comedy bit... I'm quite happy with the results. The top 3 turned out to be quite what I expected. Great entries.

Well done, everyone!

Mike

[seansshack]

22nd here...

[krestofre]

31st here. Which doesn't bother me as a result, but just about the only feedback I received in the thread was positive, so obviously it didn't work for some people. I'd really apprecaite knowing why. If anyone out there really hated Autonomous, please hop in the thread and tell me why. You won't hurt my feelings, and you'll help me improve my craft.

[David W. Richardson]

I doubt people hated it. I think some people probably didn't get around to reading and reviewing ALL the scripts, only some of them. So some scripts got more votes as a result. The more votes, the better chances for a higher score. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

31st here. Which doesn't bother me as a result, but just about the only feedback I received in the thread was positive, so obviously it didn't work for some people. I'd really apprecaite knowing why. If anyone out there really hated Autonomous, please hop in the thread and tell me why. You won't hurt my feelings, and you'll help me improve my craft.Unfortunately, you can never tell that way. I've seen great short films that get nothing but rave reviews and still they do not place. Yet... other films that get a lot of criticism sometimes place much higher.

You never can tell.

I posted what I thought of it. :thumbup:

Cheers,

Mike

[MrKilloran]

23rd for mine, not bad

[seansshack]

I doubt people hated it. I think some people probably didn't get around to reading and reviewing ALL the scripts, only some of them. So some scripts got more votes as a result. The more votes, the better chances for a higher score. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.If this is true than we need to build in some statistical method in the calculation to even the playing field.

I mean some of the scripts could get 5 solid perfect tens. But won't stand a chance if others get 20 votes of 4 points. You will lose with the perfect script just because people didn't read and vote enough. Might be more help to know how many votes we got, rather than where we came in the table.

The overall score should be an average of votes casted for your work. Otherwise you might score high with 40 readers giving you a score of one. You could improve your chances by call your script "A" and promoting it like crazy in the fest. Even if it's crap, the more people you get to vote the better.

Not a moan, just a way to improve.

Anyway back to fleshing mine out to 10 pages and digging out the silly mistakes that everyone but me could see (need a prove...prof...puff...proof reader).

[Captain Pierce]

I'm pretty sure, based on how the scoring worked for the last film Fest, that it is an average and not a total. But I'm not certain...

[Isaac_Brody]

It is an average, so figure that in some cases scripts we're separated by a very small amount. It's not worth taking too seriously, the important part is feedback and improving. I think more voting time will help the process. We'll stretch it out so that every piece gets enough votes for a proper mean.

[Tom Shortridge]

Where's everybody getting "out of 40" from? I only count 39... maybe I'm an idiot.

[David W. Richardson]

I assumed it was an average. Even so, the more people who cast a vote on your script, the more likely you are to get a higher average score. It would be nice if everyone who voted would vote on EVERY script. I don't know if extending the voting time is necessary though. I would suspect that most of the voting occurred in the first few days. Could be wrong though.

[David W. Richardson]

It's not worth taking too seriously...

Isaac, this is the second time you've said that. (Once in PM.) And I have to take issue with you. I don't know about anybody else, but I took this fest very seriously. I tried very hard to write a great script, and I considered the feedback and comments to be very important. So of course I take the voting seriously. The voting is another form of feedback.

[Isaac_Brody]

It's good you took your script seriously, I don't doubt that, but I think you're taking the voting personally. I'm open to letting you guys know how you placed, but if you can't take the public criticism for your work then I'll probably just tell the top ten.

Again, it's not about how many votes you got, it's about improving.

[David W. Richardson]

I'll admit to being surprised at how poorly Alien Abuction fared. But knowing the score IS valuable, just as much so as the comments and feedback. In fact, it may be MORE valuable than those. People may hesitate to publicly criticize your work, but their vote speaks for them. To my mind, the vote is a more accurate barometer of the overall reception to your work than the comments and feedback are, and as such it is extremely important information to have.

Having said that, I don't believe the vote is infallible either. As I said in a previous post, if everyone doesn't vote on every script, then the results may be skewed. Still, the vote total and ranking are useful when weighed with the critiques and comments.

This is what I mean when I say that I take the rankings seriously. I mean the information has great value.

[Captain Pierce]

I would suspect that most of the voting occurred in the first few days.

I did my voting on Thursday and Friday, got my last vote in with about half an hour to spare. :) I had originally intended to wait until I read them all to vote but then I started getting worried that I wouldn't be able to read them all...

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

I did my voting on Thursday and Friday, got my last vote in with about half an hour to spare. :) I had originally intended to wait until I read them all to vote but then I started getting worried that I wouldn't be able to read them all...I voted just after you I believe. I remember seeing your post.

The deadline snuck up on me. A little more time would have been helpful.

Cheers,

Mike

[Larry Rutledge]

This discussion has been had many times, over many fests, and is the principal reason why it is now the policy of the festivals to no longer publish any stats. It has only been recently that we've made individual placement available, but if all we hear are complaints than we will be forced to go back to only announcing the winners.

The festivals and its underlying scoring system has been looked at critically, during each fest, by a multitude of people. We have debated and tested many different systems in order to get the fairest possible system in place.

The rating system is just that, a rating system not a ranking system. The votes are not decided based on any other entry. Rather it is an pure average of total by number of votes placed. We did extensive tests and found that attempting to skew results by not voting on a particular entry and/or voting low on all entries except the one preferred entry does not greatly affect the overall average.

It's true that the more votes each entry receives, the more precise the average will be; but we have done extensive tests to prove that this is an extremely fair system for rating the entries within each fest. This includes having used it during the recent TimeFest ... where we saw hundreds of votes per entry and yet the average moved very little throughout the course of the voting period. All that changed was the precision of the average. This is because if an entry is truly strong, then the majority of the people will vote high for it and if it is truly weak, the majority of the people will vote low for that entry. Thus, if each person votes honestly, the results are similar enough to give a true representation of the overall ... and this is proven true even if one entry receives 100 votes and another only received 10 ... we have run this type of scenario as well and found that it didn't affect the outcome, unless the 10 all lied and each gave it a 1 and no one else counteracted with a higher, more accurate score.

On that front, we take an active role in the accuracy of these fests. I personally check every vote, and the other mods also have access to the core data to check it as well. I check the overall numbers (vote total, number of votes, and average) for each film, I then check each individual vote for each individual entry, and then, if necessary, check each vote given by each individual voter. It is very easy to see patterns emerge if someone tries to skew the voting.

Understand, I don't have to give any insight into the under workings of the sytem, but I want to make sure that everyone understands we don't take any of this lightly and are actively looking for the most accurate outcome possible at all times. This includes on going discussions amongst the mods to ensure that the rules and underlying delivery/voting system is the best, simplest, most accurate it can be and if we find anything that can be improved we set about to get it improved as quickly as possible (understanding that we have lives and families outside of this site as well).

The system is not up for debate. If you have a problem/issue with the system, please take it up with me. To post messages deriding the system when you have no understanding of what takes place behind the scenes is counter productive and undermines the very system we strive to make the best we can ... and we do it for all of you.

[RodThompson]

I just got my magical PM from Issac, and I am happy with the results. Not for the purpose of scoring...but the feedback. The best feedback I ever received was from a professional screenwriter, about my hideously-written first script. He said, "I can't get past page ten...I have a f---in' headache. Sorry dude."

He went on to acknowledge that screenwriting isn't an easy road, and in some cases can be harder than being a novelist. You have to take all of the details of the visual word and convert them into a SLUG and like two or three descript lines IF THAT! No one starts off on a Ted Elliot-esque level. Watch Little Monsters compared to Pirates of the Carribean and tell me that ole Ted hasn't improved.

Chapel: Take this score with a grain of salt. It's not the Nichol's fellowship, or even (God forBid the horror) the Zoetrope contest. This is a Jury-based contest where we're the judges for everyone else. Like Project Greenlight back in 01-02. Don't look at the score, but instead look deep into the lines of that feedback. Your peers judged you why the did according to their standards (some pre-pro, some amateur), so remember that and roll with it. Take the feedback and learn form it without letting numbers get in the way. You're a writer, not a Physicist...the only numbr you should worry about is the gross of your first film at the box office...many years from now. Yes...years.

Everyone that I read did a gnarly job, and I too am guilty of only voting for a few, so I apologize. So pat yourselves on the back, and raise the bar for the next fest.

See you Hobros at TwilightFest.

Rodimus 5000
Placed 10th

[David W. Richardson]

...but if all we hear are complaints than we will be forced to go back to only announcing the winners.


Excuse me??? Who has complained?? The only thing close to a complaint came from me, and it wasn't about the process. It also wasn't a complaint, it was an observation. I have said repeatedly now that knowing the rankings is VALUABLE as feedback. I don't see that as being a complaint, do you?

Yes, I was disappointed that Alien Abduction didn't do better. But I think that's only human nature. Knowing how it placed is at least as valuable as the comments and critiques. And the fact I was disappointed is no reflection on anything or anybody.

As far as I can tell, nobody else has even remotely complained about knowing their ranking. So please don't overreact and make things worse for them, okay?

[Larry Rutledge]

Read it again ... I never said anyone complained. As you point out in your quoted section, I merely stated that "if all we hear are complaints...". This is not the first time this discussion has been had, I know where it has the potential of going. I tried to clear up any confusion and give as much information as possible.

[David W. Richardson]

Read it again ... I never said anyone complained. As you point out in your quoted section, I merely stated that "if all we hear are complaints...". This is not the first time this discussion has been had, I know where it has the potential of going. I tried to clear up any confusion and give as much information as possible.

Oh. Sorry. I misunderstood what you were saying.

Then my opinion is that knowing the rankings is a GOOD thing, even if our feelings get a little hurt. I think it's very useful information, and would hate to see it taken away.

[RodThompson]

Honestly...I feel bad for anyone who isn't me...

<mourn>

[Tom Shortridge]

Honestly...I feel bad for anyone who isn't me...

<mourn>

So do I, Rod... so do I.

[David W. Richardson]

Honestly...I feel bad for anyone who isn't me...

<mourn>

Your modesty is refreshing! :)

[Larry Rutledge]

Then my opinion is that knowing the rankings is a GOOD thing, even if our feelings get a little hurt. I think it's very useful information, and would hate to see it taken away.

I agree ... and that's why I did the "pre-emptive strike". We've had the discussions for as long as we've had the fests ... initially we provided all the info but honestly people complained so much that we finally decided to keep the info completely private. It wasn't until I released this new rating system that we stuck our toe into the waters again by privately providing individual placement.

So far, we're ok ... as long as everyone keeps their cool :) These fests require a tremendous amount of time and energy on our parts, but we don't mind doing it because we enjoy seeing everyone get excited about their own, and every one else's, projects and we love watching you all grow as writer/filmmakers.

We do everything we can to ensure the fests are as easy and fair as possible.

[RodThompson]

... as long as everyone keeps their cool




Rod crosses the room, hiding his cool in his satchel. Looking about the forum, he thinks of giving it away, but instead lowers his head and walks out. Keeping his cool.

[Larry Rutledge]

Rod crosses the room, hiding his cool in his satchel. Looking about the forum, he thinks of giving it away, but instead lowers his head and walks out. Keeping his cool.

Perfect!! :thumbsup:

[alex whitmer]

Rod crosses the room, hiding his cool in his satchel. Looking about the forum, he thinks of giving it away, but instead lowers his head and walks out. Keeping his cool.

The door closes. A calm silence. Moments pass.

Then - a hair-raising scream. Rod realizes he grabbed the wrong stachel.