Digitising White Leader

[Andy Knight]

Hi there, am new to the forum and wondered if people could help. I have a reel of processed negative Super 8 film and I wanted to splice white leader at various points for an art project. My question is: if I send the newly spliced super 8 film to get digitised will the white leader parts show as ‘white’ Color or does it process as a solid opaque black? Finally for this desire effect (if possible) should I use a particular brand/material of leader? Thank you!

[David Strelitz]

Taking a step back, if you are having it digitised, why bother to put leader in? Any edits can be done from the digital file assuming it is done to a quality file ie ProRes and not a low data rate mp4.

[Andy Knight]

Hi David- it’s an art project so I want as much to be done in the film and nothing in post-production. I’d like to know how the digitised white leader will appear visually

[David Strelitz]

The telecine wil run through a neg converter...so white will be black. Given that white leader isn't 255 255 255 the black will not be 0 0 0 but probably dark greyish.

[Andy Knight]

Thanks for your help David.

[Gregory Oliver]

I'm sure if you look that you can find some black leader that will transpose to white when reversed.
Gregory

[Winbert Hutahaean]

If you want to get the white leader telecined as white, why dont use the 8mm scanner (as a positive) and edit it later with the negative on a video editor?

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Completely black/opaque leaders should work OK.

But once again - why not doing this in post? I'm dead certain that the scanned file attained from the scanning house would need some work prior to being put in use. At the very lease you'd need some format conversion as the resultant file would be in intermediate format intended for editing, rather finished/ready-to-use format as .mp4 for example.

Or if you insist, just have a few feet of black leader spliced to only the head/tail end and inform the scanning house to include this to the scan too. Therefore you can have this leader section to do the non-destructive edit later.