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A forum for sharing views on the art of film, video and AV sequence making as well as on competitions, judging and festivals.
Dave Watterson

Re: Leaders

Post by Dave Watterson »

I just read the IAC Regional magazines ... several have comments about movie
leaders - usually from disgruntled festival projectionists faced with a pile
of tapes only minutes before the screening.

Maybe our concerns are widespread ones.

Many also note that entrants often fail to label the cassettes as well as
the boxes ... not thinking that the cassettes and boxes may get mixed up
in the rush of presenting a festival or of judging movies.

Finally there is much cursing about the labelling or mis-labelling of soundtrack
types. How about we adopt some symbol which could be written on boxes, cassettes
and even added to the leader ... it ought to be a graphic which is not language-based
so no S=stereo, L=linear ... any ideas?

10..9..8..7..6..5..4..3 Dave
AN

Re: Leaders

Post by AN »

"Dave Watterson" <webmaster@theiac.org.uk> wrote:
I just read the IAC Regional magazines ... several have comments about movie
leaders - usually from disgruntled festival projectionists faced with a
pile
of tapes only minutes before the screening.

Maybe our concerns are widespread ones.

Many also note that entrants often fail to label the cassettes as well as
the boxes ... not thinking that the cassettes and boxes may get mixed up
in the rush of presenting a festival or of judging movies.
Some overseas festivals do make clear what they require re labelling...

Not labelling boxes and cassettes is very bad, but you know Dave, I partly
blame the IAC entry forms for NOT making clear exactly what is required!
I would go one further and make all this clear, THEN add a warning note
that failure to comply with these requirements would make the entry unacceptable!

That may be very harsh, but entrants would soon learn the lesson
after one rejection I bet.

Same with leaders (and unwound tape etc etc!!). It is always made clear
how much we should send with our entry(!) so why
not the rest made clear?

Albert....clearing it up.
Michael Slowe

Re: Leaders

Post by Michael Slowe »

"AN" <AnimatioN@btopenworld.com> wrote:
"Dave Watterson" <webmaster@theiac.org.uk> wrote:

I just read the IAC Regional magazines ... several have comments about
movie
leaders - usually from disgruntled festival projectionists faced with a
pile
of tapes only minutes before the screening.

Only last evening I was trying to set up the system to show two different
club programmes for an inter club competition.

One set was nicely on 1 Mini DV tape with 10 secs black between each tape
BUT no label on the actual cassette!
The other programme was on seperates tapes, some with another film before
the subject one and not all cassettes labelled! Albert is right, (!) tapes
AND cases must be labelled, only 1 film for each tape and preferably a note
of the seconds of black leaders.
As I said the other day Black is preferable to numbered leaders since these
always seem to get on the screen giving a poor first impression which is
bad luck for the film.
Maybe our concerns are widespread ones.

Many also note that entrants often fail to label the cassettes as well
as
the boxes ... not thinking that the cassettes and boxes may get mixed up
in the rush of presenting a festival or of judging movies.

Some overseas festivals do make clear what they require re labelling...

Not labelling boxes and cassettes is very bad, but you know Dave, I partly
blame the IAC entry forms for NOT making clear exactly what is required!
I would go one further and make all this clear, THEN add a warning note
that failure to comply with these requirements would make the entry unacceptable!

That may be very harsh, but entrants would soon learn the lesson
after one rejection I bet.

Same with leaders (and unwound tape etc etc!!). It is always made clear
how much we should send with our entry(!) so why
not the rest made clear?

Albert....clearing it up.
Dave Watterson

Re: Leaders

Post by Dave Watterson »

[This message was sent to me by regular email from Joan on the East Coast
of Australia, but it belongs here ... Dave]

I am one of those people with unflagging enthusiasm for running our video
club and organising things for other video makers around the country.
Have run a few competitions (including an International competition for a
few years) I have had a little to do with videos and their leaders. What
I really do not like are colour bars and count-downs, they make cuing a video
for projection from amateur equipment very difficult. Most VCR's roll back
a
few seconds. So In future I would insist on neither of those!

As long as there is a ten second display of entrant's name, video title,length
of video and date of editing followed by ten seconds of silent black before
the start of the competition entry it doesn't matter how long the leader
up to it happens to be.

Joan Rennie
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