title: How to change empty_label for modelForm choice field?
body: <p>I have a field in one of my models like the following:</p>
  <pre class="lang-py prettyprint-override"><code>PAYROLL_CHOICES = (
      ('C1', 'Choice1'),
      ('C2', 'Choice2')
      etc.....
  )
  
  payrollProvider = models.CharField(max_length=2, choices=PAYROLL_CHOICES)
  </code></pre>
  <p>When I create a model form for this field, Django correctly generates an HTML select box, but includes a default blank value of &quot;---------&quot;.</p>
  <p>I would like to know how to change this default value to some other text, such as &quot;please choose value&quot;.</p>
  <p>I believe I should be able to set this in my model form's <strong>init</strong> via the following, as documented <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/739260/customize-remove-django-select-box-blank-option" title="this answer">in this answer</a> and several others:</p>
  <pre><code>self.fields['payrollProvider'].empty_label = &quot;please choose value&quot;
  </code></pre>
  <p>However, this isn't working for me. When I include that line in my form's <strong>init</strong>, &quot;--------&quot; still shows up as the initial choice in the select box. I'm pasting the relevant forms.py below, but it seems that others have <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8928565/django-cant-remove-empty-label-from-typedchoicefield">also been unable to access / modify empty_label</a>. At this link, the questioner describes a way to <em>delete</em> the default empty_label value (which I was able to do successfully via his method) but what I really want to do is to <em>modify</em> the empty_label that is displayed.</p>
  <p>Any ideas?</p>
  <p>Here's the code for the form in forms.py, with the empty_label code that isn't successful at changing the default &quot;----------&quot;:</p>
  <pre><code>class PayrollCredentialForm(forms.ModelForm):
      def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
          super(PayrollCredentialForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
          self.fields['payrollUsername'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
          self.fields['payrollPassword'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
          self.fields['payrollProvider'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
          self.fields['payrollUsername'].widget.attrs.update({'placeholder' : '  Payroll Username'})
          self.fields['payrollPassword'].widget.attrs.update({'placeholder' : '  Payroll Password'})
          self.fields['payrollProvider'].empty_label = &quot;please choose value&quot;
  
  
  class Meta:
      model = Company
      fields = ('payrollProvider', 'payrollUsername', 'payrollPassword')
      widgets = {
          'payrollPassword': forms.PasswordInput(),
      }
  </code></pre>