That White Dot That Appears in Old Movies (cue marks)*

I heard the term "cigarette burns" long before Fight Club. I have friends in the film industry who will verify this. Where did you get your info?

 

I've just seen your explanation...Wikipedia and your friends in the film industry.

First of all, if you look on the talk page of the Wikipedia article, you'll see there is a dispute over this as well. The original writer put it in based on Internet discussion forums (and we all know how reliable that info is) for projectionists.

As far as your friends are concerned, well, I have friends in the industry who have used the term. In fact, when I saw Fight Club originally, I said "I knew that" when they mentioned the term. IIRC, I heard it in college when I took film classes.

So I guess the answer is: some people use the term, some people don't.

 

While many of the larger first run houses were unionized at the time, I worked in two independent theaters (The Strand in Ocean Beach and The Roxy in Pacific Beach). The Roxy used to be part of the Mann chain before it was sold; not sure about the Strand. Rocky Horror Picture Show was a big part of The Strand's business in the late 70s on the weekends....

I did work at the Cinema 21 Mann Theater in Mission Valley just prior as an usher and was part of their union. $2.05 per hour in 1977!!!!

Randy

 

Since this is an audio forum, I thought I'd add to the conversation a little technical detail about changeovers.

Because the audio on the prints is printed 20 frames ahead of the picture, when making the print master, we have to do what is called a "pull up." This involves thanking the first section of the next reel and inserting it onto the end of the current reel... this is so there isn't a hole in the audio when the change over occurs....

Because digital audio codecs (i.e Dolby Digital) buffer the audio and cross fade, you usually won't hear a "bump." And because you can also put the digital readers before or after the intermittent, the buffer is fairly flexible in the amount and timing offsets.

Since old habits die hard, and there are still a handful of change over screens left (almost all 35mm screenings in Hollywood proper at the studio screening rooms (which are few and far between now a days) are done with change overs (not to mention a lot of the rest of the world is still on 35mm, platters or not,) most film makers are reluctant to let music go across reel breaks.... even with a digital print, it's usually painfully obvious where the reel ends and starts when there is a lot of music in a film... listen for the abrupt music outs, followed by a couple awkward frames of ambience or silence.... they still have to build in those extra frames (and some projectionists are a little lazy and like to cut off a couple of frames of incoming and outgoing picture to properly identify the trims in platter houses...)

 

Probably done by some newbie lab guy who didn't know what he or she was doing. Upper right was the right place. But nowadays, at least for new film prints, I never see cue marks in the theater anymore; I think those went away with platter systems.

Not if the sound editor and post supervisor balances out the reel timing correctly. Inevitably, there will be moments ever 20 minutes or so where there's a natural silence (or non-musical passage) where a reel change is almost imperceptible. I always argue that 20-minute reel changes are needed just to help the editors and sound mixers work on the film in chunks, rather than having to work with all 2 hours simultaneously.

There's an art to finding a nice quiet place for a reel changeover, and I think it can be done in a way that nobody will hear, see, or notice it in any way. But I'd agree that there are some major films from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s that have some real clunky, obvious reel changeovers.

 

I'll have to respectfully disagree with you as I've had to mix many a cue at the end of reels that sound "in-organic."

While there it might be easy in 20 minute chunks, when the film is assembled, you can run into issues where you will be relegated to reels that are too short or too long to accommodate them... I agree that it's not always a compromise, but I still think it's an underlying "constraint" that is fairly easy to spot, even today... and as I mentioned, more so than the audio, it's the extra frames needed for clean in's and outs of dialog that always seem to rear their ugly heads... maybe I've been doing this for too long..

And it's never been up to the post super or sound editors (I was a supervising sound editor for 7 years before I started mixing...) It has always, in my experience, been in the domain of the picture department, music supervisor/editors and directors.

When you have 60 or 70 minutes of music in a 90 minute film, it can be quite challenging.

But yes, having the reels broken up for you helps make the division of labor on the sound editorial side much easier (and to a certain extent on the picture side as constant picture changes are the norm, rather that the exception of years ago.)

(As an aside, I have no problems taking music across reels nowadays, and most film makers don't either as they understand that change over screenings are the exception now a days...)

I just saw a 35mm screening of an IP print... changeover marks... and I see them every time I check prints for sound... they have most definitely not gone away in my experiences.

 

I used to notice them on TV shows as a kid, especially ones where they had the same old prints since the 60's and 70's still being played in the late 80's. "TheMerrie Melodies Show" is the best example I can think of but there were plentyof others.

 

Sure, it happens. That's because either somebody didn't do their job, somebody chose poorly, or both. Crap happens.

It's different on different pictures. It should be the domain of the post supervisor, but things shift over time. I've worked on about 300 pictures in 30 years, and over the last ten years, I've seen some mammoth mistakes in this area. I can recall one major film (which I won't name) where all the changeovers were perfect, and then the studio demanded a change, which shifted everything by about 2 minutes... and now all the reel changers were screwed. I think we wound up fixing it by having a 12-minute reel for one, and a 21-minute reel for the final reel, which was going to an extreme, but it worked.

Note that splitting a scene in the middle is also a problem for the colorist, because we wind up having to precisely match the color between two adjacent shots. Inevitably, the film quality changes, because of the nature of lab practices and the time of day the release print is struck. I've been to screenings of my own work where I wanted to crawl under the seat because the reel change looked so bad. But generally, nobody noticed but maybe me, the post sup, and the DP -- and we knew it was done right before the lab got hold of it.

Remember there are always departments, politics, and creative issues more important than your own. Also, a lot of these problems go away with digital cinema (no reel changes), and also disappear in home video. On film-outs, you're screwed.

 

I am merely a recent guest in this well established house.

But that comes off as really condescending. I don't think you know me well enough to think I need a reminder about how this business works.

I think I wouldn't be here today if I didn't.

From your post, it seems as if you have a closer relationships to post supers than directors or editors.

If so, that is a wholly different set of waters to navigate.

Again, however, I don't think I need schooling about how things work.

 

Matt has it right. I'm talking about the big picture: the bottom line is that we all work for the director. I've seen effects people, music people, actors, production people, post people, even advertising people all run around in circles believing that the most important thing in the movie is them.

All members of the crew are in the same army, fighting the same war. I get wrapped up in it, too, but ultimately have to concede, "eh... it's not my movie. It's the director's movie." What I think isn't as important as what he or she thinks.

 

I've gotten quite a reputation for working with some of the challenging ones in this business, including producers, editors and directors.

We all serve the film. I agree 100%. If you have to point that out to someone, IMO, they shouldn't be in this business, or at the least won't survive... I'll admit it took me a while to clarify that for myself. But once I did my work and life became much easier.

Having just spent almost 5 months mixing one of our businesses most notoriously demanding directors latest projects, I think I know that better than most of my peers (and his reputation is especially tied to post).... I can attest that I am one of the few crew members that went from start to finish on the project.

I've soapboxed long enough, and understand your points and positions.

If you are working in features, I am sure our works have crossed paths.

I'll amend your last point to say "what I think isn't as important as what they think, even when they're 100% wrong."

A prominent mixing peer has a great saying. "Our job is to get the film to the 10 yard line. Great directors get us into the end zone."

Best. Marc.

 

Should cue marks be edited out for digital versions of films?

I watched Inherit The Wind on DVD tonight and noticed that all the cue marks were left intact. That got me thinking about other films, some of which I remember having cue marks and others that didn't. It seems like the higher-budget releases tend to not have them. Are cue marks left in as a cost-cutting measure, or do some consider it part of the film that should be preserved?

 

God, ain't that the truth. I've occasionally made a vain attempt to try to tactfully protest and advise a little bit, and sometimes they appreciate it, sometimes they slap me down, but at least I know I tried.

I can think of yet another fairly memorable film where the director insisted we time the whole thing very, very warm. Much too red, in my opinion. That's the way it was shown in theaters. A couple of days after it shipped, I asked my supervisor, "hey, when is the home video version scheduled?" He shrugged and said, "we're not getting it. The director is mad because one review said the film was a little red."

I said, "a LITTLE? It was unbelievably, horrendously red! And I tried to argue with the director to tone it down!" (And he had also shot it digitally and added a red filter in production, so the picture was already too warm in the camera.)

You just can't win. It's as bad with picture as it is with sound. And editors give me the same story. I know of a film -- I'll name it, it was Catwoman, for Warner Bros. -- where at one point, there were 11 different edits of the picture: one for several producers, one for the studio, three for the director, one for the exec producer, and on and on and on. To this day, I'm not sure which one shipped. It didn't matter: they were all bad. Good sound, though.

In my opinion, if I was in charge of the digital restoration, I'd remove the cue marks because they're not part of the creative part of the picture; it's a flaw of projection, not needed in digital. It takes maybe an hour or two to paint out the cue marks, using adjacent pixels to cover it up. As long as you can do it imperceptibly, I think it's worth doing.

 

Cue marks are only added to the final release prints. They aren't "edited out" of modern video presentations. Most modern transfers simply use a generation of film (inter-positives or original negatives) that have no cue marks.

 

Actually, it depends. Some negatives were punched at the lab and have permanent changeover cues. In other cases, the surviving film elements have the changeover cue printed in. Definitely in the case of pre-1951 B&W nitrate feature films, pretty much all that's left is generally finegrain prints... and those have the changeover cues printed in. A lot of 3-strip Technicolor projects also have printed in cues; sometimes, they aren't registered very well, and you wind up seeing yellow, cyan, and magenta images slightly overlayed.

But I would say with any modern film done in the last 25-30 years, neither the IP nor the OCN will have the changeover cues. One hopes that either will be used for the final scan, but you never know; stuff gets lost, things get thrown out, studios get impatient.

 

Actually the episode was "Make Me A Perfect Murder". Just watched it a few days ago, and found out about these cue marks. I have seen those marks during the years, but never knew what they were about.

(The episode you mentioned has some screening room-stuff too, maybe that's why you mentioned that?)

 

Doh, I was bothered by cue marks even in the early 1960s, when I was a little kid. I eventually realized that the POP on the soundtrack and the clank in the projection booth meant the projectionist changed over to the next reel.

While there are things I love about film, even film projection, the optical sound pops and the changeovers are not among them.

 

Even better is when they play the wrong reel for a few minutes, stop the film, switch back to the proper reel, and then resume where you left off.

 

What's even worse are the TAP codes for anti-piracy that they flash in the middle of the picture. I regularly notice that in theaters, and it's always annoying.

 

Yikes... been there, done that, during an early-morning shift in local TV with the John Wayne movie Hondo. Thank god, I realized it :30 seconds in, and seamlessly cut back to the correct reel. The nature of the shot didn't change the movie a bit... but it was still embarrassing. Eh, I was 18 and floundering; live and learn.

You have a sharp eye. These are the CAP code (also called "Crap Code" by some film fans):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Anti-Piracy



The Technicolor lab guys would never tell me exactly how they were added to the prints, but they had a way of dropping in 1 frame of digital red dots that would tell them which print and which theater sourced a given video copy. I do see them from time to time, but it depends on where they are in the image. They also do this to the digital DCP copies -- kind of a visual "CopyCode" (if anybody remembers that controversy from the early 1990s).