{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp06_four_proposal_generalization60_20260803","cell_id":"bounded_rivalry_governance__film_media_production","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_id":"brg-fmp-campaign-bounded-festival-slate-004","proposal_index":4,"version":0,"title":"Campaign-Bounded Selection for a Film Festival Slate","problem":"A film festival has fewer competition-screening slots than eligible submissions, but its selection process permits films to compete through unequal access to programmers as well as through their work. Filmmakers, producers, distributors, and sales agents can seek private screenings, repeated meetings, gifts, sponsor pressure, deadline exceptions, elaborate supplementary materials, or premiere-status bargains. Programmers may receive uneven information, carry undisclosed relationships, or reserve attention for familiar intermediaries. The resulting rivalry can reward campaign access, submission expenditure, and rule influence rather than the contribution each film could make to the festival's stated curatorial purpose.","actors":["Festival board and artistic director","Festival programmers and submission screeners","Independent conflict and procedural-review officers","Filmmakers and producers submitting completed films","Distributors, publicists, and sales agents representing submissions","Festival sponsors and partner organizations","Screening-operations and accessibility staff","Selected and unselected entrants","Festival audiences and community programming partners"],"observable_state":"Eligible films receive different submission deadlines, material allowances, screening depth, programmer contact, or opportunities to cure technical defects; private contacts, gifts, sponsor referrals, or premiere negotiations occur outside the declared channel; screeners carry excessive or uneven caseloads; conflict recusals are undocumented; selection rates or exceptions cluster around particular intermediaries without an examined programmatic explanation; or entrants cannot challenge material access and eligibility errors separately from non-appealable curatorial judgment.","consequence":"Scarce festival attention may be allocated according to influence, campaign resources, or hidden relationships. Entrants can escalate spending and unpaid promotional work merely to remain visible, screeners can be overloaded, the final slate can become unnecessarily concentrated, and selection can grant intermediaries privileged access to future editions unrelated to the festival's purpose.","affected_objective":"Assemble a coherent, feasible festival competition slate from qualified films while preserving independent curatorial judgment, equal procedural access, manageable screening labor, declared portfolio coverage, entrant dignity, and the credibility of future selection rounds.","intervention":"Create a campaign-bounded selection arena for one festival competition section. Before submissions open, publish the section's purpose, number and types of slots, eligibility rules, accepted materials, submission-fee and waiver rules, screening stages, individual threshold rubric, portfolio criteria, conflicts, communications boundary, tie-breaks, and procedural appeal route. Accept only a standardized film file and bounded contextual materials; prohibit gifts, private pitches, undisclosed referrals, and entrant-initiated programmer contact about selection. Randomly assign every eligible film to two screeners with capped workloads, reconcile materially divergent assessments through a third review, and require recorded recusals. Films clearing the preregistered individual threshold enter a slate-selection stage in which the panel chooses a portfolio for disclosed coverage objectives such as runtime balance, screening-format feasibility, nonredundant programmatic perspectives, and audience pathways while maintaining a real quality floor and adequately supporting every selected film. An independent process auditor checks a random sample of selected and unselected files for eligibility, assignment, conflict, scoring, and exception compliance. Entrants may appeal procedural errors but not substitute the reviewer for the curatorial panel. Selection lasts for one edition, gives no future fast track, and is followed by a review of access, workload, concentration, disputes, and realized program fit.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Rivalry purpose statement","domain_realization":"Competition is used to choose a finite slate that advances a published curatorial purpose; it is not a general ranking of filmmakers or a campaign contest for programmer favor."},{"archetype_element":"Scarce prize or selection constraint","domain_realization":"A fixed number of competition screenings, associated festival attention, and edition-specific designation are available across declared runtime or format bands."},{"archetype_element":"Competitor eligibility boundary","domain_realization":"Completed films qualify under frozen completion-date, rights, runtime, format, territory, premiere, consent, and submission requirements, with published cure and fee-waiver rules applied consistently."},{"archetype_element":"Contest arena boundary","domain_realization":"Entrants may submit the common film and bounded contextual materials through the official channel. Gifts, private selection pitches, undisclosed referrals, harassment, false rights claims, manipulation of screeners, and post-deadline material expansion are outside the arena."},{"archetype_element":"Performance metric and scoring basis","domain_realization":"Films must first clear a documented individual threshold tied to the section's purpose and exhibition feasibility. The final decision evaluates what each film adds to the slate, so a redundant high-scoring film does not automatically displace a qualifying film that supplies needed portfolio coverage."},{"archetype_element":"Fair process and due process layer","domain_realization":"Random double assignment, workload limits, documented recusals, divergence review, recorded exceptions, category-level debriefs, and time-boxed appeals protect against material process errors while leaving disclosed curatorial judgment with the panel."},{"archetype_element":"Anti-sabotage and anti-collusion guardrail","domain_realization":"A no-contact rule, gift ban, conflict register, controlled referral channel, submission audit trail, and graduated sanctions address pressure on screeners, concealed reciprocal arrangements, false affiliate submissions, and interference with rival films."},{"archetype_element":"Externality and spillover boundary","domain_realization":"Material caps, no unpaid bespoke pitch requests, fee-waiver rules, screener caseload ceilings, accessibility-feasibility checks, and monitoring of exception burdens limit costs shifted to entrants, screening workers, operations staff, and audiences."},{"archetype_element":"Escalation and arms-race damper","domain_realization":"Standardized submission inputs and a prohibition on selection lobbying prevent success from depending on increasingly elaborate campaign packages, travel, entertainment, or repeated private access."},{"archetype_element":"Winner power and lock-in review","domain_realization":"Selection grants one edition's screening status only. It does not confer future eligibility exceptions, programmer access, jury authority, permanent premiere control, or preferential treatment for the film's intermediary."},{"archetype_element":"Learning and recalibration loop","domain_realization":"After the edition, the festival compares selection records with screening workload, appeals, exception patterns, slate concentration, technical failures, accessibility delivery, audience pathways, and program coherence before retaining or changing the arena."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"contest_rulebook","role":"Freezes eligibility, official materials, communications, screening stages, individual thresholds, portfolio criteria, conflicts, tie-breaks, and appeals before entrant identities and outcomes are known.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the rulebook, programmers could grant access and exceptions inconsistently, entrants could not distinguish legitimate curation from off-arena influence, and serious process errors would lack a bounded remedy."},{"mechanism_slug":"multiple_award_or_portfolio_selection","role":"Treats the competition section as a finite slate whose selections must each clear an individual quality floor and collectively provide disclosed, nonredundant program coverage.","counterfactual_removal":"Without portfolio selection, independent ordinal ranking could fill the slate with similar films, while unconstrained portfolio discretion could use complementarity language to admit favorites that never cleared a meaningful threshold."},{"mechanism_slug":"spending_cap_or_resource_cap","role":"Caps the submission materials and selection-related access available to each entrant and caps the number of films assigned to each screener during a review period.","counterfactual_removal":"Without entrant-side caps, well-resourced campaigns could purchase visibility through additional materials and contact; without screener caps, nominally equal review could conceal rushed or missing attention."},{"mechanism_slug":"sabotage_or_foul_penalty_schedule","role":"Publishes graduated consequences for prohibited gifts, private lobbying, false rights or premiere claims, screener harassment, confidential-information misuse, and interference with another submission.","counterfactual_removal":"Without specified and consistently applied consequences, off-channel influence could remain a rational competitive strategy and enforcement could be improvised selectively after favored films are known."},{"mechanism_slug":"anti_collusion_monitoring","role":"Reviews contact, referral, recusal, exception, affiliate, and selection patterns across the section and, where permitted, across editions, referring anomalies for independent inquiry rather than declaring misconduct.","counterfactual_removal":"Without cross-case monitoring, reciprocal arrangements or concealed intermediary influence could look like isolated legitimate exceptions; treating patterns as verdicts would instead risk punishing innocent professional overlap."},{"mechanism_slug":"post_contest_impact_review","role":"Tests whether the selected portfolio served the declared section purpose and whether campaign restrictions, workload rules, exceptions, and selection status produced unanticipated harms or concentration.","counterfactual_removal":"Without review, the festival could repeat a procedurally tidy system whose slate was operationally unworkable, excessively concentrated, inaccessible, or disconnected from its stated purpose."}],"causal_chain":["A fixed competition section makes completed films rivals for scarce screenings and edition-specific attention.","Publishing the purpose, slot structure, eligibility, materials, and appeal boundary prevents the contest from becoming an undefined status competition.","Standardized inputs and a communications firewall remove private access and campaign escalation as permitted routes to selection.","Random double assignment and capped screener workloads make receipt of substantive review less dependent on intermediary relationships or queue position.","Recorded recusals and independent divergence review reduce the ability of one conflicted or anomalous assessment to determine advancement.","An individual threshold preserves a minimum contribution and feasibility floor before portfolio considerations enter the decision.","Portfolio selection directs rivalry toward each film's marginal contribution to a declared slate rather than toward one universal taste ranking.","Audit sampling makes undisclosed exceptions, skipped reviews, assignment errors, and selective rule enforcement more detectable without rerunning every curatorial decision.","Edition-limited status prevents winners and their intermediaries from converting selection into control over future entry or rules.","Post-edition review tests the governance design against realized workload, slate fit, access, harms, and concentration, supplying a revise-or-retire decision."],"baseline":"Programmers draw on submissions, invitations, private recommendations, sales-agent relationships, prior festival encounters, and evolving internal preferences to assemble a slate. Curatorial discretion is broad, but material limits, contact rules, workload equality, conflicts, portfolio criteria, exceptions, and procedural challenges are incompletely frozen or documented.","nearest_rivals":["Unrestricted programmer discretion permits contextual and aesthetic judgment with minimal process burden but leaves entrant access, conflicts, exceptions, and campaign influence weakly bounded.","A simple panel average ranks every film on one rubric and selects the highest scores, but it can create false precision, reward consensus taste, and ignore the slate-level value of nonredundant selections.","An audience-vote qualifier distributes judgment broadly but creates a popularity and mobilization contest vulnerable to unequal existing audiences, coordinated voting, and promotion expenditure.","A lottery among films clearing a minimum threshold limits favoritism and campaign pressure but gives up purposeful slate composition among qualifying entries.","Invitation-only curation reduces submission volume and screener workload but closes entry to films outside the programmers' existing information and relationship channels."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The proposal's limited claim is that when a festival uses rivalry to fill a finite competition slate, it should bound campaign access and screening resources while separating individual qualification from portfolio contribution. It does not claim that this selection model is superior to discretionary curation, lotteries, audience voting, or invitation-only programming in every festival context.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The festival board may approve the section purpose, slot budget, conflict policy, and process safeguards; the artistic director and conflict-screened programming panel retain curatorial selection authority within those rules. An independent reviewer may correct eligibility, access, assignment, calculation, conflict, or rule-application errors but may not replace a lawful curatorial judgment with personal taste.","authorized_first_step":"Run a consented shadow pilot on one small short-film sidebar before it affects official selection. Use the same authorized submission materials, randomly double-assign a bounded sample, apply the proposed threshold and portfolio rules, audit selected and unselected files, and compare process outputs with the existing method without changing entrants' public status or requesting additional unpaid work.","excluded_actions":["Changing eligibility, slot counts, threshold weights, portfolio criteria, or material limits after favored submissions are identifiable","Accepting gifts, private pitches, sponsor directives, or undisclosed referrals about individual selection decisions","Requiring entrants to create unpaid bespoke trailers, pitch decks, events, or revised cuts for ordinary consideration","Publishing reviewer notes, confidential screeners, rights information, or allegations beyond the authorized process","Treating an anomaly pattern as proof of collusion, corruption, or improper influence","Using workload caps to skip required review or using portfolio criteria to admit films below the declared individual floor","Promising anonymity when film content, credits, premiere history, or rights checks make anonymity impossible","Allowing selected filmmakers, sales agents, sponsors, or distributors to control future eligibility, judging, or appeals","Retaliating against an entrant for using the procedural appeal channel","Overriding copyright, privacy, consent, accessibility, sanctions, venue-safety, employment, collective-bargaining, or lawful nondiscrimination obligations"],"halt_rollback":"Pause the affected stage if submission materials are unequal, randomized assignments are corrupted, screener capacity falls below the declared minimum, conflicts cannot be resolved, confidential files are exposed, or material criteria change becomes necessary. Preserve audit records, notify affected entrants through the official channel, suspend disputed penalties, and have the independent reviewer determine whether to correct individual files, repeat the uncontaminated stage, reduce the declared slate under a prewritten rule, or revert to the festival's prior selection process. A shadow pilot creates no selection entitlement and must not alter official outcomes."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"In the shadow pilot, standardized access and double screening do not produce more consistent process treatment, portfolio rules generate unstable or weakly reasoned slates, audit findings cannot distinguish legitimate curation from favoritism, and the added review burden materially degrades attention to the films. That combination would undermine the intervention's proposed causal path.","problem_falsifier":"Submission, communication, assignment, conflict, exception, workload, and decision records show that films are not competing for scarce slots or that all entrants already receive materially equal inputs and review under frozen rules, with no plausible campaign escalation, sabotage, collusion, externalized workload, selective exception, or winner-lock-in pathway.","intervention_falsifier":"Reviewers cannot apply the individual threshold with acceptable agreement; divergent reviews cannot be reconciled without unconstrained discretion; portfolio criteria routinely override the quality floor; randomized assignment creates unresolved expertise mismatches; material caps prevent necessary contextual assessment; or the audit and appeal process cannot correct procedural errors without becoming a second curatorial jury.","risks":["Standardization may remove cultural, production, or safety context needed to interpret a film responsibly.","A declared rubric may encourage formulaic submissions or defensive reviewing.","Double screening and audits may increase festival labor and delay decisions.","Workload caps may force a smaller eligible pool or slate if screening resources are insufficient.","Portfolio criteria may become vague cover for favoritism or token selection.","A quality threshold may reproduce the panel's shared assumptions while appearing objective.","A communications firewall may advantage entrants already legible through credits, press, or prior reputation.","Recorded contacts and conflicts may expose sensitive professional relationships.","Campaign activity may move into harder-to-observe channels.","Fee waivers may reveal financial information or be applied inconsistently.","Procedural appeals may be mistaken for a right to relitigate artistic judgment.","Audit samples may miss selective misconduct or overinterpret innocent concentration.","Edition-limited selection may still produce durable reputational advantages outside the festival's authority.","Restrictions on supplementary materials may disadvantage work whose context cannot be conveyed in a standard form." ]},"next_evidence_step":"Pre-register a shadow-selection protocol for one opt-in short-film sidebar: fixed purpose and slots, standardized materials, screener caseload ceiling, random double assignment, conflict rules, an individual threshold, disclosed portfolio constraints, divergence review, audit sample, appeal simulations, and stop criteria. Use only materials entrants already authorized the festival to review and request no new unpaid work. Measure assignment completion, reviewer agreement, divergence causes, recusal frequency, exception use, time per film, threshold stability, portfolio-reason documentation, audit discrepancies, and whether simulated appeals can correct process errors without reopening taste judgments. Do not infer festival-scale effects from this bounded operability test.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Proposal 1 governs editors who create rival assemblies from common documentary footage for one final-cut stewardship assignment. Proposal 4 instead governs selection among already completed, independently produced films for multiple festival slots; it commissions no competing creative labor, selects no editor, and uses a quality-floor-plus-portfolio path rather than blind comparison of alternative cuts. Proposal 2 governs a production buying VFX services through normalized vendor bids, divisible work tranches, a production-controlled asset floor, remediation security, and challenger contracting. Proposal 4 purchases no VFX deliverable and manages no production pipeline or vendor handoff; it acts through bounded campaign access, randomized screening, conflicts, portfolio curation, and procedural audit. Proposal 3 sells one exclusive territorial distribution license to the highest qualified monetary bidder under release, security, competition-review, and reversion rules. Proposal 4 accepts no price bids and sells no rights; it allocates several exhibition slots through nonprice curatorial and portfolio judgments, with edition-limited status rather than contractual exploitation rights. The festival process can be adopted without changing editorial hiring, VFX procurement, or distribution licensing, and each earlier proposal can be adopted without changing festival selection.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Create one complete proposal at index 4","Address a problem materially different from proposals 1, 2, and 3","Use a distinct and independently adoptable intervention and causal path","Preserve explicit purpose, scarcity, eligibility, arena limits, meaningful selection, due process, anti-abuse enforcement, spillover controls, escalation damping, winner-power limits, and recalibration","Explain diversity from every earlier sealed proposal","Specify actors, observable state, consequences, authority, safeguards, rollback, rivals, falsifiers, risks, and bounded first evidence"],"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"evidence_changes":[],"claim_changes":[]}}