SMPTE can recommend anything they want, but Deluxe Hollywood, Deluxe Toronto and Technicolor does NOT follow it, or every single studio they print for is instructing for them not to. Also, no depot in the US still rewinds film onto reels, they all use "clip together" reels and the film is not even unwound at the depots before they are sent out to theaters. Sorry, but your last statement is wrong (at least in the US) and there are several hundred other people that post here that can easily back that up. I do agree to the 33' of extra leader, for that is where my 25' number of *additional* leader comes from.

John,

I really like your attitude of (paraphrasing) "if no one else cares, why should I?" Also, the idea is for you to add extra leader and LEAVE IT ON! (This doesn't have to be any kind of super expensive leader, even just cutting up a trailer will suffice.) Since you only work a changeover theater where you run a film once or twice, of course you are never going to see what is happening, but it is happening John. Every time you run a film without extra leader protection, you ARE adding a little bit more dirt to the ends, which end up causing scratches from cinching during rewind or improperly adjusted feed backtension.

Dirty reel cans? Wrap the reels in a plastic liner before you ship them back! Your laziness attitude is pathetic. Just because you don't care enough to take every possible bit of care to the films you run in your booth does not mean that the next guy doesn't care. Since you are not a first run theater, but a college theater, this just makes things worse, for you are handling repertory prints which are the only surviving copies for others to present for what could be years and years. I'm glad you have a changeover setup, for running a film once or twice on reels is generally considered less wear than to load up a film on a platter only to show it one or two times, but for you to not admit you are adding marks to the film is ludicrous.

Case in point, Joe worked as a projectionist at the Telluride film festival a couple of years back where they run on 2000' reels and never even cut the film. All of the prints were brand new and on the first day Joe reported the presentation looking perfect. Each film ran no more than a dozen times and no film had extra head or tail leader added to it. Joe reported that after only a few days (with each film being ran once or twice a day) that NOTICEABLE dirt, scratches and other wear had become apparent!

And you know what John, I am not going to waste any more of my time trying to explain this to you either, for you just don't get it and you obviously do not care to. Go back and re-read this thread slowly and without your comments. I think it is pretty well explained. The forum is for people who believe in "Film Done Right".

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Sure, as a general principle adding extra leaders to both ends so that everyone and everything stays well away from the picture can only help but in a world where 98% of prints are going to be built on platters or towers which unfortunately requires direct handling of actual "live" film that is the primary place where the problem of dirty heads and tails originates. The projectionists who handle film very delicately with gloved hands during buildup and breakdown are the rare exception.

Let's face it, many of the most popular makeup tables ought to be outlawed for the way they force or encourage bad film handling. Horizontal reels that dump film on the floor? No proper work area for a splicer? Compared to this reality I am quite satisfied that my prints are remaining pristine winding directly onto a reel even without the benefit of excess leader. I'm not sure where it would pick up any dirt at all. The tail leaders do not normally slap the ground even after the reel runs out and there's not enough travel on the top (feed) side for the dangling end to touch anything either. There is of course the hypothetical opportunity for dirt pickup during the inspection process but extra leader isn't going to help there.

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Steve, maybe because you have screening prints your leaders are a bit longer??? (Always a possibility.) Anyway, kudos to you for setting up your reel arms so that the film does not come into contact with anything when the reel runs out. I would assume you keep a super clean booth environment too. However I still stand by my statement that if you are running without adding extra leader, you are causing damage to the print. (I define "damage" as any kind of damage, including dust and dirt, no matter how minor.) Since you probably only run your prints one time, of course there is no way you will see the difference with your booth being set up as described. Regular commercial theaters that run their prints via changeover over and over will see the damage after a short while. Heck, even the changeover god Steve Guttag adds extra leader, threads on that leader and motors the film down to the starting point so human hands never touch the roll of film as it was received from the lab. (I know his procedure because the two of us have had discussions about this previously and I agree 100% with that method.) Now if you are running your prints one time and do not pre-inspect on the bench, under your booth conditions I would probably agree to just run it and be done with it, for it wouldn't be worth two rewind cycles to add the leader. However, if you are going through the trouble to inspect before projection, adding some extra leader wouldn't be any real extra hassle and would help to protect that print in the future. Out of curiosity, do you thread with gloves?

By the way before you ask, yes I ALWAYS add an extra 25 feet of head and tail leader to all reels of a print that is going to be ran via reel to reel. This seems to greatly aggravate some operators who run the prints that I prepare for them, but when I loan out a print that is about to play at a commercial engagement to a screening room (with studio permission, of course), if I don't add that extra leader, the last 10 feet of the reels tend to come back covered in dirt, oil and scratched. All this after only one show too! Granted this is an extreme example of old equipment and a not-so-ideal booth environment, but it happens guys.

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As for good operating practice in the booth re: protection leader, I have to agree with the rule-of-thumb that at Brad's 25ft and the SMTPE's 33ft protection is the best way to avoid dirt migration into the body of the print. On the other hand, I don't ascribe to putting blank raw leader or that white leader (I hate that stuff) at the head of the reels, simply because it forces the projectionist to find framelines so he can properly threadup. The more frameline-less leader you have, the more he's got to pull off the supply reel. Will he know or care to be sure none of this 33 feet touches the floor? Will he have a felt-lined wastepaper basket beside the projector to dump this leader into while he threads? Will he be able to wrap 33ft of leader around his neck so as not to dirty it? Probably not. Will he look at you as if you are a crazed lunatic when you suggest that he do any of this? Probably.

Solution: the best to avoid this "where's the frameline" problem is to use frameline leader as the protection leader. But at whose expense? Why the studio's of course -- use that pile of trailers which eventually will be thrown out. Usually you can see FLs quite easily on any trailer. This puts framelines right out to the film end. Then any projectionist, no matter how unaware he is of the creeping crud syndrome, will be able to threadup without needing to pull any excessive lenght of film off the supply reel and certainly he won't have to wrestle the stuff from touching the floor.

But what if he is REALLY slow and thinks the trailer is actually part of the print? I say, let him run it so he will loose his job. Actually, what I do is, I take a razor and simply scratch a line down the center of the emulsion so it is quite clear that this is NOT the print.

Kodak had to eliminate the inked or perforated "pinhole" framing marks many years ago, since the film edges and area between the perforations is now often occupied by digital sound data. They would match the actual frameline only if the printer operator took care to thread the unexposed raw stock so the marks lined up with the framelines. Likewise, the latent image frameline marking of the duplicate negative is usually not printed through onto the print with the available printer "edgelight", as it would interfer with the digital sound data.

That coupled with my prior statement about how, at least in my situation, there isn't going to be any dirt picked up on the end anyway, and even if there was, the direction of travel would move it away from picture would make this a wasted effort.

Actually no, dirt doesn't know which way is the heads and which way is the tail. It will migrate in either direction. I commonly find that on changeover prints the tail end of reels more offensive than the head ends. Often the head ends are just fine after several runs. Those tails are just too short. Try this extreme test. Get a reel of film that has a bright final scene. Now chop off all but 1 foot of the tail leader and run that reel multiple times. Handle it as carefully as you want, but the last few seconds after not-too-many-screenings will start to show damage. As you continue to run the reel, the damage will migrate further and further into the print. This test will show how dirt migrates forward or backward. If the last wrap of film gets dirty, it will transfer the dirt to the next-to-last wrap of film and so forth. Like I said, it may be very minor and some people may argue they don't see it and as such it is not a problem, but it is there and it is damage. (Heck, for years people watched movies not knowing what the CAP code is and never saw it! )

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Specifically though, dirt comes from just about everything. I've seen dust come from AC systems, un-mopped/un-vacuumed floors, your clothes, the shedding of the film itself, the dusty reel cans, exhaust systems, editing gloves that "shed", just...everywhere. Take a look inside the amplifiers in the sound rack. See any dust? How did it get there? Who knows, who cares. All I know is I've never seen a projection room that was so clean that dust never formed anywhere, and just because you are running reel to reel doesn't mean you don't have to worry about it (granted not as much as when running platters though). Even just the takeup reel spinning stirs up the nearby dust.