Filmchief Manual

Printing festival badges

Overview

This article describes how to use templates to create personal festival badges (or lanyards).

Audience

Exporting and printing badges is often done by users with a Guest service role, but an Administrator role is needed to create or edit the underlying templates.

Word merge template exports are available to festivals with a Premium Filmchief license.

Getting started

Make sure that you have software to create and save docx files, such as Microsoft Word, LibreOffice or Google Docs.

Get high-quality (300 dpi) versions of the badges from your designer, preferably as a png or jpg file. Note: Microsoft Word does not work well with CMYK images, so it's recommended to use RGB images.

Create a new document and start by setting the correct page size, to match the size of the badge. Or, if you have multiple badges per sheet, calculate the page size accordingly.

Using placeholders

Placeholders are text elements in your documents that are replaced with actual content. For instance, the text ${displayName} will be replaced by the full name of the guest.

To export multiple passes into a single document, we need to define the start and end of each badge. For this, use the following placeholders:

${badge}This marks the start of the repeated section. Usually this placeholder is placed at the very beginning of your document.
${/badge}This marks the end of the repeated section. Usually this placeholder is placed immediately after a page break.

When exporting, all content between ${badge} and ${/badge} is repeated as many times as the number of accreditations you have selected for your export.

The following placeholders are supported:

${displayName}Full name of the guest
${firstName}First name of the guest
${lastName}Last name of the guest
${userCountry}Country of residence of the guest
${userImage}Profile picture of the guest. See Processing options for details on how you can customise the exported image.
${crmid}A personal identifier from an external CRM system, if applicable. (Most festivals do not need this.)
${bct}A unique barcode token for the guest. Apply a barcode font (e.g. code 39) to this placeholder to make this work.
${qrCode}A unique QR code for the guest. See Processing options for details on how you can configure the exported QR code.
${organization}Name of the first active organization related to the user profile of the guest. Example: Rainbow Corp.
${occupation}Name and function of/at the first active organization related to the user profile of the guest. Example: CEO at Rainbow Corp.
${capacityUserOrganization:occupation}Name and function of/at the organization selected in the Capacity field of the accreditation. If no capacity is set, the first active occupation related to the user profile of the guest is used. Example: CEO at Rainbow Corp.
${capacityUserOrganization:organization}Name of the organization selected in the Capacity field of the accreditation. If no capacity is set, the first active organization related to the user profile of the guest is used. Example: Rainbow Corp.
${capacityUserOrganization:function}Function at the organization selected in the Capacity field of the accreditation. If no capacity is set, the first active occupation related to the user profile of the guest is used. Example: CEO
${selectedFilmTitle}Title of the guest’s selected film
${selectedFilmCredits}Multi-line text: credits in the guest’s selected film (most important credit types first, no more than 2 types)
${creditsOrCapacity}If the guest has a selected film, this placeholder behaves as a ${selectedFilmCredits} placeholder, otherwise as a ${capacityUserOrganization:occupation} placeholder.
${badgeLabel}Free text from the Badge label field
${invitedFor}Values from the Invited for field
${accreditationRequestedFor}Values from the Accreditation requested for field
${priceCategory}Values from the Price category field
${badgeRequestedAs}Values from the Badge requested as field
${badgeType}Values from the Badge type field
${badgeExtensions}Values from the Badge extensions field
${productionTags}Values from the Production tags field
${hotel}Name of the hotel where the guest is staying (if the text-based field Hotel is used)
${hotelSelection}Name of the hotel where the guest is staying (if the label-based field Hotel is used)
${roomType}Room type in the hotel where the guest is staying
${hotelRemarks}Remarks for the hotel regarding this guest
${nightsAtFestivalExpense}Nights at expense of the festival
${nightsAtGuestExpense}Nights at expense of the guest
${breakfastsAtGuestExpense}Breakfasts at expense of the guest
${mealTickets}Granted meal tickets for this guest
${travelingExpenses}Traveling expenses
${travelingExpensesPaid}Traveling expenses (paid)
${travelingExpensesCashDesk}Traveling expenses (cash desk)
${arrivalDate}Arrival date (at the festival) formatted as ‘1 January’ (full date without year)
${departureDate}Departure date (from the festival) formatted as ‘8 January’ (full date without year)
${crewJobDescription}Text from the Job description field (for volunteers/crew)

Uploading your template

Go to Templates Word merge templates. Click on New to create a new Word merge template.

In the dialog that appears, you can define the Word merge template:

Related eventNew badges are usually designed every year, so make sure to select which event this template belongs to.
Source tableSelect ‘Guests (accreditations)’ for festival badges (or other exports based on personal guest information).
NameName of the template, e.g. ‘Staff Pass 2024’.
DecriptionDescription of the template, for internal reference. It is recommended to describe which type of guests are eligible for this badge type.
Word documentUpload the Word document you created here.
Predefined optionsSelect predefined export options that define how certain placeholders, such as ${userImage} and ${qrCode} are processed.
OptionsYou can optionally modify the export options for this particular template (see Processing options below).

Once you have created a template, click Open to show its details page.

Testing your template

Open any list of accreditations, and select a few guests - preferably ones who have provided information that you want to appear on the badge, e.g. a picture, an organization and/or a function title.

Click on Export > Merge with template > Microsoft Word (.docx) and select the template that you created in the previous step.

Then click on the Export button and open the downloaded file to see the results.

Processing options

In the Options field, you can define additional settings to control the appearance of certain fields in your document.

User image

The ${userImage} placeholder is replaced with the profile picture of your guests. To control the exported size, various options can be defined:

maxWidthThe width (expressed in 100s/inch) of the image container in which the image is fitted.
maxHeightThe height (expressed in 100s/inch) of the image container in which the image is fitted.
scaleOptionsIn this nested object, you can define how the image is automatically cropped to cover a certain area:
coverWidthThe width (expressed in 100s/inch) the image must cover.
coverHeightThe height (expressed in 100s/inch) the image must cover.
cropWidthThe width (expressed in 100s/inch) to which the image is cropped.
cropHeightThe height (expressed in 100s/inch) to which the image is cropped.

Note that in most cases, coverWidth and cropWidth are set to the same value; and the same goes for coverHeight and cropHeight.

targetDimensionsAfter applying the image manipulation defined in scaleOptions you can optionally set the target dimensions of the exported image (expressed in 100s/inch) as [ width, height ]. Leave this null to let the scaler determine the dimensions automatically.

QR code

The ${qrCode} placeholder is replaced with a unique QR code for each guest. To control the exported size and appearance, various options can be defined:

imageTransparent
targetWidthThe width (expressed in 100s/inch) of the image container in which the QR code is fitted. Keep in mind that this includes the ‘quiet zone’ of the QR code image.
targetHeightThe height (expressed in 100s/inch) of the image container in which the QR code is fitted. Keep in mind that this includes the ‘quiet zone’ of the QR code image.
options

This nested object defines settings for the QR code generator. See https://github.com/chillerlan/php-qrcode/wiki/QROptions for all supported options.

Some of the most commonly used options:

PropertyTypeDefaultDescription
quietzoneSizeint4Size of the quiet zone.
imageTransparentbooltrueSet to false to give the QR code a white background.
fgColorarray[0, 0, 0]Set to [r, g, b] (int values between 0 and 255) to define the foreground color of the QR code.
bgColorarray[255, 255, 255]Set to [r, g, b] (int values between 0 and 255) to define the background color of the QR code.

Example

Here's an example value for the Options field:

{
    "qrCode": {
        "targetWidth": 100,
        "targetHeight": 100,
        "options": {
            "addQuietZone": true,
            "quietzoneSize": 1,
            "imageTransparent": false,
            "fgColor": [
                255,
                0,
                0
            ],
            "bgColor": [
                224,
                224,
                224
            ],
        }
    },
    "userImage": {
        "scaleOptions": {
            "coverWidth": 100,
            "coverHeight": 100,
            "cropWidth": 100,
            "cropHeight": 100
        }
    }
}
		

In this example, exported QR codes are generated with specific dimensions and visual styling. The target width and height are both set to 1.00 inch, ensuring that the QR code images are square-shaped. The "addQuietZone" option is enabled, which adds a border around the QR code to separate it from surrounding content; the size of this quiet zone is specified to be 1 unit. The QR code background is opaque, as indicated by "imageTransparent" set to false. Additionally, the foreground color of the QR code, which typically consists of the patterned squares, is defined as red (RGB: 255, 0, 0), while the background color is a light grey (RGB: 224, 224, 224).

Pictures are resized to cover a 1.00 x 1.00 inch area, and then cropped to 1.00 x 1.00 inches, which results in square photos.

{{#files}} {{/files}}