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Topic: Film Leader Colors... What do they mean?

Phillip Grace
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 164
From: ACMI. Melbourne. Australia.
Registered: Mar 2004

posted 11-08-2007 06:20 AM

It probably wouldn't require a digital intermediate to make that possible for all films anyway. There is sure to be some excess trimmed from the head and tail of every shot in the film, so it wouldn't be too difficult to cut in a few frames of a trim into the original final cut neg. Four more joins made in the neg matching department wont involve that much expense. Its the equivalent of 2 more shots in the roll.
While we're at it, couldn't we please have the sound format and intended aspect ratio printed into the leaders? There's space for it, after all. Not every film is matted 1.85, SR-D. And with subtitled shows a mistake in that choice is pretty devastating.

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Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

posted 11-08-2007 11:00 AM

quote: Phillip Grace
While we're at it, couldn't we please have the sound format and intended aspect ratio printed into the leaders? There's space for it, after all. Not every film is matted 1.85, SR-D. And with subtitled shows a mistake in that choice is pretty devastating.

The sound formats are already printed on every movie I've built up for at least a couple years. They appear on the edge of the head/tail leaders on each reel.

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Richard P. May
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 243
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: Jan 2006

posted 11-08-2007 11:24 AM

I think one of the primary reasons for the different leader colors was from a lab standpoint. Consider the lab making hundreds of prints of each reel, then needing to assemble those into complete prints. With the color code, it became very easy to see if a stack of reels, on cores, had any duplicates.
Undoubtedly there were still errors, but it prevented the lab packing room people from having to pull down a length of film to know what reel was being put in the box.\
I've also seen head and tail identification being included, with the tail leader having diagonal stripes across the identification section.

RPM

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Paul H. Rayton
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 210
From: Los Angeles, CA , USA
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 11-08-2007 04:12 PM

And I've always wondered why DeLuxe didn't use a "logical" color sequence when they launched the project, like "Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet and ... (whatever) ... after those first 6 reels. It sure seemed (to me) kind of not-thought-through, in a way.

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Phillip Grace
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 164
From: ACMI. Melbourne. Australia.
Registered: Mar 2004

posted 11-08-2007 10:54 PM

to quote Chris:

"The sound formats are already printed on every movie I've built up for at least a couple years. They appear on the edge of the head/tail leaders on each reel."

Yes. New prints from some sources are properly finished.
We're in a repertory situation here and handle material from all parts of the world. Virtually nothing I have seen in the last five years has had any kind of reliable information on it. We depend on external references and personal experience. Fortunately we are able to test screen a reel when in serious doubt, but there isn't always the opportunity to do that, particularly in a festival program.
My plea is simply for properly finished screening material.

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Blaine Young
Master Film Handler

Posts: 477
From: Kirkland, WA, USA
Registered: Sep 2006

posted 11-09-2007 12:21 PM

quote: Frank Angel
As far as the color leaders, it's nice and all, but going thru all that trouble to color code the leaders isn't much good in the way of helping insure that reel n leader gets attached to reel n print body. It would be a lot more advantagous if they implimented what we talked about many times over the years, i.e., copy an ID frame from the first frame of the print reel and duplicatd it, say for 14 frames, between Nos. 11 and 10 and then again between 4 and 3. Same principle as the colour chart girl. Now THAT would be something impressive and really helpful.

I was building "Lions for Lambs" yesterday (a Deluxe print), and noticed something interesting. At the heads and tails of each reel, along the inboard sprockets, there was a series of yellow squares. I've seen them before, but didn't really pay them any notice. But then something struck me. The yellow squares were repeating in a pattern, along the head and tail, and for a few feet on each end of the reel. Then it struck me - they are Reel markers! There were a corresponding number of yellow squares to the reel number. Now, I've only looked at a couple of prints since then - and none were longer than 5 reels.

While that's not as neat as what Frank suggests here, I thought it is a step in the right direction - being able to ID the reels through something other than cutting off a frame.

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John Hawkinson
Film God

Posts: 2273
From: Cambridge, MA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 11-09-2007 12:22 PM

Frank asked, "But don't all films today, at least Hollywood films, have a digital intermediate."

No.

I think it is somewhere around half. And growing. But not all by a long shot.

--jhawk

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 11-09-2007 03:13 PM

Half the problem solved! Then on the other hand, it would be interesting to find out how many theatres play second run. Because, after all, the problem only exists for the next guy; for the 3000 prints that get built where the picture opens -- for them, the leaders are pristine....until it's sent back.

quote: Blaine Young
The yellow squares were repeating in a pattern, along the head and tail, and for a few feet on each end of the reel.

And of course, that's really the simplist answer -- edge print the damn number as a code or human readable numerics.

Bottom line though, is that all the information we would like to see edge printed, however they want to do it, would only be of issue in subruns, not first run, and films make the bulk of their money in the all important first run. And let's face it, other than creating those fanfolds and consequent frame loss problems in a smaller number of booths WAY down the line, how often does NOT having edge information for us actually impacted our being able to put the show on the screen? Rarely if ever will anyone loose a show because there is no reel ID frames in the leader or reel numbers in the body of the print.

So without significant money being an issue, no suits are going to fret that you and I have to spend some extra time on relatively rare occasions in subrun houses trying to figure out reel sequence or that there are a few frames missing at reel joins. It's a problematic issue for us; it's a non-existant problem for them.

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