How do I set variables in latex template used for pandoc markdown to pdf conversion [closed]

Question

I'm sorry if this is a bit of a pandoc question, but I'm hoping you tex users have some familiarity with latex templates within pandoc. I'm very new at this, but am excited to get a good work flow going.

I'm trying to figure out how to use latex templates with pandoc when creating a pdf from a markdown file using

pandoc file.md -o file.pdf --template=default.latex

In the command line. I got the default latex template from

pandoc -D latex > default.latex

The pandoc documentation says a bit about using templates and from what I understood, suggested to modify the default (I may very well have understood completely wrong). pandoc template documentation

My main problem is that I can't figure out how to set variables such as title, author, etc... do I do that in the default.latex file? or in the markdown file?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or directions to some good guides.

EDIT/UPDATE:

Okay, so looks like pandoc template variables are not controlled in the LaTex template code or the source Markdown. For reference, however, I'll mention the following:

• Variables are set automatically by Pandoc and can be used within the template. You cannot set variables in the template or original MD source itself(which was what I wanted to do).
• "Variables may be set at the command line using the -V/--variable option".
• AFAIK, Title, Author and Date variables CAN be set in the original md source by declaring them at the top like you would in any other LaTex File.

see http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#templates for more info

I guess this question can be closed as off topic.