1. Who votes
The Panel is a credentialed roster of working craftspeople — editors, cinematographers, colorists, VFX supervisors, directors, critics. Every panelist is individually verified: public body of work, peer nomination, and a short calibration orientation. There is no open signup. Every voter is a real, identifiable human with a public profile on The 1570 and a transparent voting history. Panelists judge; creators are judged — the two roles never blur.
2. How they vote
Voting is head-to-head. A panelist is shown two videos at a time, drawn from a category-specific pool of recent submissions. They pick one. Skips are tracked but do not affect rankings. Each vote carries a public credential weight (1.0×–2.1×) set by seniority of craft, calibration consistency, and category expertise — the weighting model is described on The Panel page. Weights shape how fast a result moves the score, never whether a panelist may vote.
3. How videos are scored
Scores use a standard Elo system (K = 24) — the same model that ranks chess grandmasters and powers LMArena. Every video starts at Elo 1500. Wins and losses recompute the score of both videos in the matchup. Scores update continuously and are recomputed from a clean slate every audit cycle to remove drift.
4. How creators are scored
The Top Creators chart ranks the humans behind the work. A creator's Elo is a weighted aggregate of their top five works' scores — the best work weighs most, and the weights decay from there — so a single hit matters, but a deep bench matters more. Creator Elo is never assigned by hand: it recomputes from work-level scores after every vote.
5. How we audit
Every Tuesday before each release, we replay the week's votes against an integrity engine that flags vote-rings, off-distribution voting patterns, and anomalous catch-up scoring. Flagged matchups are reviewed by hand. Audit reports are public and released alongside The Cut.
6. What gets released
The Cut is the weekly chart. The Marquee is the #1 video. The 1570 Standard is the machine-readable version of every score, available to enterprise customers via API. 1570-Grade is the certification mark verified creators may display on their own properties.
7. Conflicts of interest
Category sponsorship is capped at 10–15% of revenue, by design and on the record. Sponsors do not influence rankings, do not see unreleased Cuts, and have no input into the methodology, the integrity engine, or the chart itself. Panelists may not vote on their own work or work commissioned by a current client. All conflicts are disclosed on panelist and creator profiles.
Methodology v3.4 supersedes v3.3 (March 21, 2026). Full changelog available on request.