The SATO48 Festival Process
A plain-language walkthrough of how the festival runs from kickoff to final results.
1. Kickoff
The festival begins with a kickoff event where teams are gathered — in person or virtually — and the Inspiration Package is revealed. The Inspiration Package is a set of creative constraints (a theme, a prop, a line of dialogue, etc.) that every film must incorporate. At the same moment, the official turn-in deadline is announced — exactly 48 hours from kickoff.
Teams have 48 hours to write, shoot, edit, and submit a short film of up to 5 minutes.
2. Film Submission
When the 48-hour window closes, submitted films are collected through the Festival Manager. Each film is associated with a team (the production unit) and a studio (the umbrella organization the team belongs to). Films that meet the submission requirements are considered eligible for the judging process.
See also: Film Screenings for where films are later shown publicly.
3. Selection Committee Groups
Eligible films are organized into Selection Committee (SC) Groups — typically labeled Group A through Group F — with roughly 8 films per group. Every eligible film lands in exactly one group.
These groups are created manually by admins in the Festival Manager. The grouping is designed to distribute films evenly; there is no automatic or random assignment — it’s a deliberate curatorial decision.
4. Assigning SC Members
Each SC Group is assigned one or more Selection Committee Members (SCMs). SCMs are trusted volunteers or staff who are given access to the judging interface. They are assigned to specific groups — not to all films — so each SCM’s workload is scoped to the ~8 films in their group.
Admins assign SCMs via the Festival Manager’s Film Groups admin page, drawing from users who hold the [year] Selection Committee role.
5. Selection Committee Scoring
This is the most detailed phase of the process. Each SCM works through the films in their assigned group using the Selection Committee interface in the Festival Manager.
How it works:
- The SCM watches each film via an embedded video player
- For each film, they see the film’s award nominations — the individual craft categories (Best Cinematography, Best Editing, etc.) that the film has been nominated for by the production team at submission time
- For each nominated category, the SCM moves a slider from 1 to 10 to indicate how strongly they feel that film deserves recognition in that category
- There is also one always-on category (Best Film / Best Interpretation of the Inspiration Package) that applies to every film regardless of nominations
- The SCM can navigate between films by clicking poster thumbnails; their position is saved so they can return where they left off
- A per-film completion badge (✓ or !) shows whether all required sliders have been filled in
- After scoring all films, the SCM can visit the Review Rankings page to see their own scores sorted by category — a final sanity check before they’re done
How sliders become ranked choice:
The raw 1–10 slider values are not used as absolute scores. When the admin reviews results, each SCM’s scores for a given category are converted to a ranking — the film they scored highest gets rank 1, the next gets rank 2, and so on. Those per-SCM ranks are then averaged across all SCMs whose ballots are valid for that group. The final score for a film in a category is derived from that mean rank: a film ranked 1st by everyone scores 100; ranked 10th by everyone scores 10.
A ballot only counts as valid if the SCM submitted scores for enough films in the group. This threshold is computed automatically.
6. Interpreting SC Results → Judge Groups
Once all SCMs have completed their scoring, admins review the results on the Selection Committee Results page. This page shows every film’s final score across all award categories.
From these results, admins identify the Top 10 films per category and create new Judge Film Groups — one per award category. Each Judge Group is named after its category (e.g., “Best Cinematography”) and is populated with the top 10 films in that category from the SC results.
This step is done manually by admins. It requires judgment: ties are broken, and the list is reviewed for reasonableness before locking in the groups.
7. Assigning International Judges
Each Judge Film Group is assigned to one International Judge — an external expert in film, typically with professional credentials in the relevant craft area. A judge is assigned to exactly one category group, and they rank only the 10 films in that group.
Judges are assigned via the Festival Manager’s Film Groups admin page, from users holding the [year] International Judge role. The interface also shows which other groups a judge candidate is already assigned to, so workloads can be balanced.
8. International Judge Ranking
The judge’s interface is intentionally simple:
- They see all 10 films in their category as a row of poster images
- They drag the posters to reorder them from best (left) to worst (right)
- Position 1 gets a gold badge; positions 2–10 get numbered grey badges
- They can click any poster to watch the film and read its synopsis
- Rankings are auto-saved on every drag
- When finished, the judge clicks “Mark Complete” to lock their ballot
That’s it. No sliders, no per-category scoring — one ordered list, 1 through 10.
9. Prizes and Audience Favorite (Out of Band)
Several recognition categories are determined outside the SC and Judge scoring process entirely:
- Prize Sponsor awards — sponsors select their own recipient directly
- Audience Favorite — determined by live audience voting at the Film Screenings, tracked separately in the Festival Manager
- Special recognition — any awards given at the ceremony at the discretion of organizers
These results do not flow through the SC or Judge pipelines and are not affected by anything that happens in those systems.
10. Final Results
The International Judges’ rankings are the final word on placement. Each film’s mean rank across all judges in its category is computed, and films are ordered 1st through 10th accordingly.
Final results are announced at the Awards Ceremony, where films are recognized for their placements and any special awards are presented.
Summary
Kickoff + Inspiration Package reveal
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48 hours of filmmaking
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Film submission
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Films sorted into SC Groups (A–F, ~8 films each)
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SC Members assigned → score films via sliders (1–10 per category)
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Slider scores converted to ranked choice → averaged across SCMs
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Top 10 per category → Judge Film Groups created
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International Judges assigned (1 judge per category)
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Judges drag-rank 10 films → ballot locked
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Prizes + Audience Favorite determined separately
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Judge rankings → Final Results (1st–10th per category)
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Awards Ceremony