Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Where do you cut the leader on a trailer ?

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Posted by Alan Gouger (Member # 543) on 05-01-2007, 12:05 PM:

Now that my booth and system is near completion it is time to screen a few titles. Building a print is no trouble but adding a few trailers to the beginning I see the sound track starts and ends well before the first and last active frame on the trailer. I see a frame labeled start and one labeled end and I was guessing that is where you make your cut and splice but there a few funky clear frames before that that would flash on the screen ruining the presentation so those starting points cannot be correct. Where do I make this splice so I am not losing any sound information. I guess this holds true with the first and last reel of the movie.

Thanks!!

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-01-2007, 12:22 PM:

Chek this tip section out, for I use this procedure. - Monte

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-01-2007, 12:39 PM:

For the best looking presentation, leave as much of the black film at the beginning and end of the trailer as possible. Hold it up to the light and be sure to cut off any frames where there are blotches of color. You can use an old piece of frameline leader (or any scrap film with a "bright" picture) to find framelines, or for this purpose it's easy to just count a few frames from where you find a valid frameline. (About 99% of trailers have a valid frameline at the beginning of the leader; it's not always very obvious, but if you look carefully you'll find it.)

Don't cut-off the green ratings band, because often the soundtrack is printed into that area so that it starts immediately when the green band fades out.

The page Monte linked to is very informative although the images are a few years old and don't always indicate what you'll run into today.

Posted by Alan Gouger (Member # 543) on 05-01-2007, 01:03 PM:

Thanks Guys. Yea I thought this was very basic stuff but Im finding trailers are a little tricky.
Thanks for the link Monte. I got a kick out of that "What not to do" with the picture of the film dumping into the trash can or the one with the film on the bare spindle!
Mike good tip with leaving as much black leader as possible. This helps.

Posted by Dominic Espinosa (Member # 2122) on 05-01-2007, 05:24 PM:

If you're running DTS you should be conscious of the timecode.
The leaders will contain "null" timecode that drops the DTS unit out of digital (if you are running with a trailer subscription disc).

When cutting trailers intended to be run in DTS leave as much black film as possible but get as close as you can to the actual timecode. Hold it up some time and you'll see what I mean.

As a personal rule of thumb I mark frames on my splicer.
Mark framelines on the casing for easy counting.

Keep it gangsta!

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-02-2007, 01:20 AM:

..yes, even though the tip section contains some outdated information, still one can revise some of this up to current operation levels.

Good luck anywho.

Posted by Alex Grueneberg (Member # 2652) on 05-02-2007, 04:43 AM:

Personally, I have come to always leaving about a foot after the last trailer credits frame (fade out as well) and about 5 frames before the first green band frame. I'd love to leave more on but like you guys are saying, there can be some ugly stuff just shy of the head of the green band. Dolby seems to really like to drop out when I leave all that's available on, or make some weird noise.

Make it nice.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-02-2007, 01:39 PM:

Agreed with the others--I leave as much black as possible with each trailer. Always check the soundtrack for pops or buzzes before and after the trailer; lots of trailers (mostly from Foto-Kem and Technicolor NYC for art-house films and some commercials) have sync beeps at the end shortly after the fadeout and before the first marked framelines on the tail. These obviously need to be removed. I don't know if these are on the digital tracks as well (I don't run trailers in digital).

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 05-02-2007, 03:56 PM:

I've been finding that a good number of trailers have what some refer to as a "cheat line", but it actually looks like a negative splice, exactly six frames away from the start of the green band. Seems like a good place to cut the head to me.