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Topic: Film Leader Colors... What do they mean?
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Phillip Grace
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 164
From: ACMI. Melbourne. Australia.
Registered: Mar 2004
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posted 11-02-2007 11:50 PM
One of the U.S. labs or production houses in the 1980's had a colour code for release print leaders. Each spool had its identifiction info in the head and tail printed over a different coloured background. Cant remember which it was, but it was consistent, and there was a printed chart with the colour codes in the projection room. We ran a lot of Paramount product at that time. It might have been from DeLuxe labs though. The colour code made for an extra check of the spool number. Among other things, operators at the time had an absolute horror of confusing Spool 2 with Spool 5. (Easy to read the numerals backwards) I think that is why today that information is covered with tape, so it can only be read from one side of the film. Archival prints from the Murnau Institute also have a colour coded head and tail. Red, Blue, Green, Orange, Pink, for spools 1,2,3,4,5, and all the subsequent ones are White. Colour is full coat at the head and striped at the tail.
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Frank Angel
Film God
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Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 11-07-2007 06:38 PM
That's all very nice and all, but how helpful is it? And helpful for what exactly? One assumes the projectionist can read numbers -- as long as they print the reel number a few times just in case some footage gets damaged, how does color coding help anything other than looking pretty? If on the other hand, if you want to address the really BIG problem -- that of making sure the body of film reel is accurately identified as to its number, then the leader, colored or not, once it's detatched from the body, is pretty much useless, UNLESS it has some ID Frames printed in it. THAT'S what would REALLY be useful. But then again, given that everyone is looking to digital, there many not be much enthusiasm for tweaking something as minor as a better film leader when everyone on distribution side thinks film is soon to become a footnote.
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