Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Leaders Marked as Both Head And Tail

This is topic Leaders Marked as Both Head And Tail in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Carl King (Member # 398) on 09-29-2002, 09:04 AM:

Lately,over the last year or so, I've been getting prints in that are head up and marked that way but also have the wording FOOT PICTURE at the beginning of the head leader. It looks as if someone at the lab is just plain too lazy to check their work. This could cause some serious problems if an operator doesn't check the reel properly.

A word of advise for you young projectionists. NEVER, NEVER BELIEVE A LEADER. Look at the image to know if the reel is head or tail, always.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 09-29-2002, 10:12 AM:

Carl,

You are right; I have seen this also, mostly on foreign films. And yes, your admonition is right on the money -- this should be the Standard Operating Procedure for any print preparation.

Frank

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 09-29-2002, 01:20 PM:

What happens is during printing they load and splice and when processing it never stops so the cut the print as it is running using a loop acumulator onto the next core. Some times the word head or tail may get cut early but I have never actually seen a improper head or tail section at the actual end of pix or sound

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-29-2002, 03:41 PM:

I look for two things. Doing this will ensure you never have a problem.

*It is really the tail when you see the frame "FINISH".

*It is really the head when you have "6" "5" "4" "3".

If you're in the habit of noticing winding orientation like I am, you can tell if you have a reel with "excess/incorrect leader" in about the first 2 seconds you look at it before you rewind it.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 09-29-2002, 03:50 PM:

It can get confusing.

One thing that can eliminate some of the confusion:

"Sound Track Towards You, Emulsion Side Up" - Heads will be to your left, and Tails will be to your right.

To determine the emulsion side, wet your lips and clomp them on the film. When you open your mouth, the emulsion side will stick to your lip, and the base side will not.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 09-29-2002, 05:05 PM:

Also, if you breathe on the film, the base side will fog up and the emulsion side won't. Unless, of course the film has something on it like FilmGuard or PhotoGard.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 09-29-2002, 05:11 PM:

Adam, I never thought of that. I'll have to try that sometime.

Posted by Rick Long (Member # 213) on 09-29-2002, 08:34 PM:

The "biting the film with your lips" method Paul mentioned has been a time honoured technique with projection technicians for years. When, while accompanying me on an installation, my youngest son saw me doing that on a piece of test film, he asked,

"You DO know that is silver nitrate don't you?"

I nodded in the affrimative.

"How long have you been doing that?"

"Years" I mumbled, with the test strip still between my lips.

"Hmmm" he said, walking away, "Explains a lot."

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 09-29-2002, 09:49 PM:

Gordon nailed it --- with film coming off a processing machine at almost 1000 feet per minute, it's hard to make a cut to the frame. The operator may accidently cut the film leaving a bit of the leader from the previous reel.

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by Wes Hughes (Member # 981) on 09-29-2002, 11:27 PM:

I just cut it off where the actual head starts.

Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 09-29-2002, 11:29 PM:

John, whatever happened to quality control? If this problem cropped up in the last year or so, what were they using when it was not a problem?

Posted by Peter Kerchinsky (Member # 1098) on 09-30-2002, 04:26 AM:

Paul
You hit the key wors here
QUALITY CONTROL?
Think it went out the ol' window!

Posted by Jamie Sanson (Member # 1161) on 09-30-2002, 08:12 AM:

Hi all
You could also check the change over cues.They should be
on the end.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 09-30-2002, 08:34 AM:

All I can say is...they were doing a lot of drugs out there in L.A. when I left.
Sounds like they're still smokin'.

Posted by Bernard Tonks (Member # 809) on 09-30-2002, 08:52 AM:

quote:
Hi all
You could also check the change over cues.They should be
on the end.

Don't know if it still applies Jamie as I've been retired for 6 months now, but quite a few release prints did not have changeover cues on.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 09-30-2002, 09:53 AM:

Paul asked: "John, whatever happened to quality control? If this problem cropped up in the last year or so, what were they using when it was not a problem? "

Since most of the release print labs have been running very fast processing machines for quite a few years, if this is a recent problem, it may just be a matter of a few operators needing to be reminded that the misscuts can be confusing if they stay on the reel.

Send me samples of the ends of the problem leaders with details (title, print number, lab), and I will pass them along to the lab for attention.

Posted by Craig Hanham (Member # 1010) on 09-30-2002, 08:15 PM:

I dont know about checking the cue marks. Just had a print where some bozo cut out the original cue marks.
I won't mention the multiple H&T splices.
muttermuttermutter

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-01-2002, 12:13 PM:

I've never had a problem with cue marks on prints from US labs (other than the different spacing standards). It seems that some of the European labs aren't printing them, however. Eclair in France seems to be a particular offender. German prints have the funky square motor cues (and, I think, different spacing than American cues). I don't believe that I've run any British prints lately.

The head/tail labelling issue seems to be particularly common with trailers. It doesn't bother me too much with features, however; I usually just snip off the offending piece of film where the lab should have cut it and, if long enough, save it to use as extra tail leader for platter use.

My bigger lab issue at the moment is prints that don't have several feet of _black_ tail leader at the end of each reel and/or don't have _black_ film between the "2" or "3" on the head leader and the first frame of picture. It's becoming very common to see "brown" or clear tail leader, which can cause problems in changeover houses (it's been a couple of years since I last missed a changeover, but having a few extra feet of black makes me feel more secure). Also, tail leaders in general need to be longer than a few feet. At the very least, the last reel of the feature should have an extra 10-20 feet of tail; better yet, make the tails of every third reel (R3, R6, etc.) extra-long for large-reel use as well. I will add extra leader myself if the lab didn't (which is most of the time), but I'm getting tired of having to buy or scavenge clear leader in order to protect someone else's prints.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 10-01-2002, 01:56 PM:

Standard SMPTE 301 specifies 8 feet of "Protective Section" for both head and tail, and also that the black sections be "black (neutral density greater than 1.95)".

AFAIK, the leader is part of the billed footage from the lab to the distributor. So if the leaders are being cut short as a cost savings, don't blame the lab.

Posted by Michael Brown (Member # 890) on 10-01-2002, 04:51 PM:

[quote="Adam"]Also, if you breathe on the film, the base side will fog up and the emulsion side won't. Unless, of course the film has something on it like FilmGuard or PhotoGard.[/quote]

Also if you have the end of a reel of film hold it up and look for the natural curve in the film. The emulsion is the underside.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 10-01-2002, 05:14 PM:

I'm not sure if the curvature of the film is a reliable test. The emulsion will shrink when humidity is too low (causing it to be inside the curve of the film) and will expand when humidity is too high (outside the curve). Nominal humidity level is 40-60% RH.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 10-01-2002, 06:29 PM:

Adam is correct --- curl is dependent on the relative humidity and can be in either direction:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/h1/baseP.shtml#characteristics

In general, film handling characteristics are best between 50 and 60 percent relative humidity, when the processed print film has just a slight amount of "positive" curl.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 10-02-2002, 11:58 AM:

A [related] question about lab shipping orientation.

For the first time in a while, we had a brand new uncut print. I was surprised to find that all 7 reels shipped emulsion-out, four of them tail-out and three of them head-out.

Is this a result of bidirectional printing, or something else? I'm particularly surprised to find tail-out emulsion-out rather than tail-out emulsion-in.

This was Deluxe Toronto.

--jhawk

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 10-02-2002, 12:58 PM:

Orientation differences of new prints are often due to whether that particular reel was run through an inspection projector, or had additional handling in "positive assembly". Typically, labs using unidirectional printers print heads-to-tails, so the film normally comes off the processing machine heads out. But you are correct: prints made on a bi-directional printer are a mix of orientations, and the differences may translate through the processing, inspection, and "positive assembly" stages, depending upon the particular lab's equipment and operational procedures.